Valley of the Wolves: Iraq

Valley Of The Wolves: Iraq
Directed by	Serdar Akar
Produced by	Raci Şaşmaz
Written by	Raci Şaşmaz Bahadır Özdener
Starring	Necati Şaşmaz Billy Zane Ghassan Massoud Gary Busey Diego Serrano Gürkan Uygun Bergüzar Korel
Music by	Gökhan Kırdar
Distributed by	Pana Film
Release date(s)	2006-02-03
Running time	122 minutes
Language	Turkish English Arabic
Budget	$14,000,000
Box office	$27,900,000

Valley of the Wolves: Iraq (Turkish: Kurtlar Vadisi: Irak) is a 2006 Turkish action film, directed by Serdar Akar, about a Turkish commando team which goes to Iraq to track down the US military commander responsible for the Hood event.

The film is set during the Occupation of Iraq and includes references to other real events such as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the container shipping incident where prisoners were suffocated and shot. The film, which went on nationwide general release across Turkey on February 3, 2006 (2006-02-03), was the highest-grossing Turkish films of 2006 and is one of the most expensive Turkish films ever made.

It is part of the Valley of the Wolves media franchise, based on the Turkish television series of the same name, and was followed by Valley of the Wolves: Gladio (2008) and Valley of the Wolves: Palestine (2010).^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]}

Filmed with a budget of $14 million, Valley of the Wolves : Iraq was the most expensive Turkish film ever made at the time of its release before being surpassed by A.R.O.G..^[4] The film grossed $27.9 million at the box office – $25.1 million in Turkey and $2.8 million in Europe.

Opinions of the film greatly varied. While the Wall Street Journal characterized it as "a cross between 'American Psycho' in uniform and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,"^[8] Turkey's parliamentary speaker Bulent Arinc described it as "absolutely magnificent".^[9]

Contents 1 Cast 2 Plot 3 Negative reactions 4 Film messages 5 International reception 5.1 Turkey 5.2 Germany 5.3 Jewish communities 5.4 United States 5.5 Google 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

Cast

• Necati Şaşmaz – Polat Alemdar
• Billy Zane – Sam William Marshall
• Ghassan Massoud – Şeyh Abdurrahman Halis Karkuki
• Bergüzar Korel – Leyla
• Gürkan Uygun – Memati
• Diego Serrano – Dante
• Kenan Çoban – Abdülhey
• Erhan Ufak – Erhan
• Spencer Garrett – George Baltimore
• Gary Busey – Doctor
• Nusret Şenay – Turkish commander
• Tayfun Eraslan – Lieutenant Süleyman Aslan (a suicide at the start of the film)
• Tito Ortiz – Major U.S. official
• İsmet Hürmüzlü – Arab leader
• Jihad Abdou – Kurdish leader
• Yavuz İmsel – Turkmen leader
• Mauro Martino – Mr. Fender, hotel manager

Plot

The movie opens with a depiction of a real-life incident: the arrest on July 4, 2003 of 11 allied Turkish special forces soldiers and 13 civilians. Sam William Marshall (Billy Zane) in the northern Iraqi Kurdistan town of Sulaymaniyah. The Turkish soldiers suppose that this is an ordinary visit from their NATO allies, but this time is different.

This arrest is infamous in Turkey as the so-called "Hood event". The soldiers were led out of their headquarters at gunpoint, with hoods over their heads and subsequently detained for sixty hours before being released. This was the first time such an incident had taken place between the two NATO allies. Donald Rumsfeld later issued a statement of regret for the detention, but many Turks took offense at the incident.

One of the Turkish officers, unable to bear the shame of the hooding, committed suicide. In the film, one of the special forces troops, Suleyman Aslan, is so humiliated by the shame of the hooding that he commits suicide after writing a letter to his friend, Polat Alemdar (played by Necati Şaşmaz, shown in large profile on the poster). Alemdar is a former Turkish intelligence agent who has recently severed links to the government agency for which he worked. Determined to avenge his friend's humiliation, Alemdar travels to Iraq along with several of his colleagues to seek vengeance on the American commander whose actions led to Aslan's suicide.

At a checkpoint, Alemdar and his team murder three Iraqi Kurdish paramilitary troops called "Peshmerge". They attach explosives to the foundation of a hotel. They demand commander Sam William Marshall, who was responsible for the hooding incident, to come to the hotel. When Marshall arrives, Polat wants him to put a sack over his head and to publicly leave the hotel with him, allowing journalists to take photos, taking the same insult he committed to Polat's dead friend. The group threatens to blow up the hotel unless Marshall and some of his men let themselves be led out of the hotel while hooded. Marshall refuses and brings in a group of Iraqi children as human shields. Alemdar gives in and leaves.

Marshall raids an Arab wedding on the pretext of hunting terrorists. When the usual celebratory gunfire starts, one soldier says: "Now they are shooting, now they are terrorists." They attack a wedding party. A small child named Ali sticks a branch up the barrel of one of their guns. The soldier fires back, shooting the child Ali dead in front of his parents. The movie fails to convey whether it was intentional or a reflex action, though the soldier is well aware that there is child in front of his gun as the little boy sticks the branch in the barrel twice. At first, the soldier just hushes the boy away. The second time, he opens fire and afterward looks astonished as he sees the little child dead. The rest of the soldiers panic and open fire on the wedding guests, beat up the bride, shoot the groom in the head in front of the bride, shoot the guests and children (see controversy, below). The survivors are captured and forced into an airtight container truck and sent to Abu Ghraib prison (the infamous prisoner mistreatment is then depicted later). Enroute an American soldier complains that the prisoners might be suffocating in the truck. One of Marshall's men then fires on the truck, spraying the detainees with bullets. "See, now they won't suffocate to death," he says. When the soldier threatens to report the incident, he is promptly shot.

Meanwhile, in Abu Ghraib, a gruop of American soldiers, among them the sole female westerner in the film(a clear refernce to Lynndie England) is making naked human pyramids from those arrested in the wedding, aided by an arab interpreter. The prisoners are washed with high pressure nozzles in what appears to be cattle stalls.

In a later scene, an execution of a Western journalist by Iraqi rebels is about to take place, but a sheikh esteemed by the rebels prevents it and offers the journalist the opportunity to kill the rebel who was about to kill him – the rebel does not resist, but the journalist declines the offer.

The bride Leyla wants revenge by becoming a suicide bomber, but is talked out of it by the Sheikh. Leyla hurries to a market to stop her friend, father of a child killed at the wedding, from blowing himself up where Marshall is having a meeting but is too late. Alemdar and his men, who also happen to be there to assassinate Marshall are led to safety by Leyla.

Alemdar and his team then attempt to kill Marshall again by rigging a bomb in a piano (which once belonged to Saddam Hussein) that is being delivered to Marshall as a gift. The bomb explodes prematurely, and Marshall survives.

Alemdar and Leyla then go to a mosque, to meet the Sheikh. Marshall tracks them down, however, and a big firefight ensues. The entire village and mosque is destroyed by heavy gunfire. Together they manage to kill Marshall, but Leyla is also killed by Marshall.

Negative reactions

The film has upset some viewers for its heavy and incriminating subject matter. Some have criticized it for its stereotyping and "black and white" portrayal of the opposing forces. ^[10]

• In one sequence, American soldiers raid an Iraqi wedding and massacre a number of civilians, which might allude to allegations of a wedding party massacre in Mukaradeeb on May 19, 2004.
• U.S. soldiers torture detainees in Abu Ghraib prison, which includes a female soldier making a human pyramid, referring to the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse. It is the first depiction of actions by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison on film.
• While captives are transported on a long journey in a container on a truck, one guard says to the other: "They might suffocate in the container because there is no fresh air supply". The truck stops, the (American) guard gets off the truck and fires hundreds of bullet-holes into the container with an automatic weapon "in order to make holes for the air to get in", and as a result many detainees are injured or get killed. A similar event is reported to have occurred in Afghanistan after the battle for Mazar-i-Sharif on November 9, 2001, with Taliban soldiers in the container and soldiers of the Afghan Northern Alliance as their guardians, as described in the documentary film Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death by Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran. This event is also reenacted in the film The Road to Guantanamo.
• The film features a Jewish-American U.S. Army doctor (Gary Busey) who removes organs from injured civilian prisoners to sell to rich people in New York, London and Tel Aviv for transplantation.

Film messages

The film's scriptwriter Bahadir Ozdener has defined the film by saying:

“

Our film is a sort of political action. Maybe 60 or 70 percent of what happens on screen is factually true. Turkey and America are allies, but Turkey wants to say something to its friend. We want to say the bitter truth. We want to say that this is wrong.[11]

”

The movie's director, Serdar Akar, went further and said the film was supposed to promote a dialogue between religions.^[12]

International reception

Turkey

• The film has pulled in record audiences on its release in Turkey, capitalizing on widespread opposition to the Iraq War.
• When asked about the factual nature of the scenario, Bülent Arınç, the Chairman of the Turkish Parliament, replied "yes, this was exactly as it happened". He called the movie "an extraordinary film that will go into history".^[13]
• Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul states that "the film is no worse than some of the productions of Hollywood studios".^[14]
• Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş told the Associated Press that the movie "was very successful – a soldier's honor must never be damaged."^[15]
• The reception in the Turkish media was split. Some called it a milestone for the Turkish film industry – others warned the movie might lead to a strengthening of religious extremism.^[12]
• Mehmet Ali Birand, a prominent Turkish columnist and anchorman, said he admired the filmmakers. "They have played with the inner feelings, unsatisfied feelings of Turkish public opinion, and they are making money."

Germany

• In Germany, the home of European Union's largest Turkish community, the film was heavily criticized for its alleged racism and antisemitism by several politicians from both the right and left ends of the spectrum of mainstream German politics and in several leading newspapers. As a reviewer in the mainstream magazine Der Spiegel put it, referring to the film's reliance on a revenge motif, "This wouldn't be so bad if the film didn't portray the opponents of Turks and Muslims so brutally – the bad guys in this black and white world are the Americans, the Kurds, the Christians and the Jews.^[16]

• In an interview with Bild am Sonntag on February 19, 2006, Bavarian premier Edmund Stoiber called upon German theatre owners to stop showing Valley of the Wolves. Shortly afterward, Germany's largest cinema chain, CinemaxX, pulled the film, which had been popular among Germany's large Turkish community, from its theatres in response to the criticism from politicians.^[17]

• The film won a Bogey Award in Germany.^[18]

Jewish communities

• "The Central council of Jews", a Jewish-German organization, have expressed their opinion that Valley of the Wolves – Iraq (Kurtlar Vadisi – Irak) holds antisemitic views, and is racist. They requested German cinemas stop showing the film.

United States

• The film has received only minor exposure in the United States and is not widely known.

• On Comedy Central's The Daily Show, Jon Stewart lampooned actors Billy Zane and Gary Busey, in an attempt to satirize the mainstream media's reaction to the film. During the same segment, several clips were played from American films portraying unidentified terrorists of Muslim, Arab or Middle Eastern extraction. The segment juxtaposes the stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in Hollywood to the reactions of mainstream American media pundits regarding the film.^[19]

• The U.S. Army recommended that Army personnel overseas not approach cinemas in which the movie is played.^[20]

• Vicki Roberts,^[21] Busey's attorney for the past six years, said "If Gary played a rapist in a movie, would anyone believe him to be an actual rapist? He is an actor, not a politician." When asked about the moral and ethical implications of portraying what could be construed as an antisemitic stereotype in a foreign movie, Roberts declined to comment.^[22]

Google

• Taken as an indicator of general interest, Google trends show that the search term "Valley of the Wolves Iraq" (or "...Irak") has been keyed in the most frequently in Turkey followed by countries with large Turkish minorities such as the Netherlands, Germany and the U.S.A. On a per country basis once again, the film's Turkish title, Kurtlar Vadisi Irak, has been searched most extensively in Azerbaijan, coming even before Turkey, and the leading search languages were Turkish, German and Dutch.^[23][24][25]

See also

• Turkey – United States relations
• Metal Fırtına, a 2004 Turkish hit novel also featuring a Turkish-U.S. conflict
• Kurtlar Vadisi, the TV series version of the film

References

External links

• Valley of the Wolves: Iraq at the Internet Movie Database

• Official site
• News media
  • Turkish movie depicts Americans as savages, CNN, 2006-02-02
  • Turkish rush to embrace anti-US film, BBC, 2006-02-10
  • The nefarious parts we play, The Jerusalem Post, 2006-02-15
  • Referenced in BBC Documentary Archive podcast Death To America Part Two: Turkey (May 2007)

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Valley of the Wolves Films Valley of the Wolves (TV series) · Valley of the Wolves: Iraq · Valley of the Wolves: Terror · Valley of the Wolves: Ambush · Valley of the Wolves: Gladio · Valley of the Wolves: Palestine  · Valley of the Wolves: Karabakh Characters Polat Alemdar Related articles Muro: Damn the Humanist Inside