BEYOND THE BOSPORUS: Turkey is run by mobsters, says film director Fatih Akin in Cannes interview
Turkey is run by “mobsters”, says Turkish-German film director Fatih Akin, who has described how he fears ending up in jail if he goes back to his family homeland. Akin spoke out while talking to AFP at the Cannes Film Festival.
The auteur’s manager Ayse Barim has been in prison in Turkey since January. The talent manager is accused of having ordered actors under her management to take part in anti-government protests and support Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, the main political rival to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Imamoglu was jailed in mid-March in what is widely seen as a political operation designed to sideline a politician who would be expected to beat Erdogan in an election.
Frequenter at Cannes
Akin, born in Hamburg in 1973 to a family of Turkish migrants, is a renowned movie director who won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival with his film Head-On (Gegen Die Wand/Duvara Karsi) in 2004. He also scooped a best screenplay award in Cannes with The Edge of Heaven in 2007, and the Golden Globe award for best foreign language film with In the Fade in 2017.
Akin, a frequenter at Cannes, was this year present at its film festival with his latest work, Amrun.
Apolitical, neo-liberal capitalist
Barim is “totally apolitical and innocent” of the charges brought against her, Akin also told AFP, adding: “If they put her in prison, what the hell is going on? So, I better not go there. I don't want to take the risk.”
“Officially there is no warrant for me. But to be honest, I don't know,” he added.
Barim is about as far from being an activist as you could imagine, according to Akin.
“She's an agent, a talent manager, a neo-liberal capitalist for heaven's sake,” he also said.
Certain politicians are not even afraid to go to war if this helps them to stay in power and Turkey’s Erdogan is one of them, according to Akin.
Gezi cases, the regime’s panacea
As part of the case of “nonsense” faced by Barim is the statement that she talked 39 times with businessman Osman Kavala (imprisoned in Turkey on similar charges made up of “nonsense” since 2017) during the Gezi protests of 2013, Akin also told the news service.
“Those 39 times were because of my film The Cut. Kavala financed part of it and she's managing me. So they talked because of me and both are now in prison. I'm the connecting point,” he said.
Court cases related to Gezi are what Turks refer to as “omnibus cases”. Anyone and everyone can somehow be linked to the countrywide mass protests that broke out and the regime repeatedly uses such omnibus cases when it decides to jail someone.
Akin said he suspected that Turkish prosecutors would try to pretend that he was also “part of the [imaginary] gang” that plotted to overthrow Erdogan in 2013.
“A lot of people are proud of me for showcasing Turkish culture and the diaspora. But these people [the Erdogan regime] don't care about that,” Akin remarked.
Accused by government media
Akin referred to the formal charges Barim has faced in court. However, when it comes to the informal accusations against her circulated by government media, the claims are mostly related to the support shown by actors in her stable for Imamoglu during the Istanbul mayoral election re-run in 2019.
Observers of the regime claim that Barim’s arrest in January formed part of the preparations made for the Imamoglu operation put into effect in March. The government, they say, set out to spread fear and anxiety among celebrities that would dissuade them from supporting the mayor once he was arrested.
Film noir: Actors jailed for perjury
On May 23, two actors under Barim’s management, Halit Ergenc and Riza Kocaoglu, were handed prison sentences for perjury related to the Barim investigation.
Following the detention of Barim, prosecutors approached the duo, pressing them to testify as witnesses. According to local media reports, they were pushed to state that they attended Gezi protests on the orders of Barim.
After they told the prosecutors that Barim did not contact them before they joined the protests, legal complaints were filed against them for perjury.
“Mobsters” in Cannes
Turkey’s general directorate of cinema (@SinemaGenelMd) opened a stand in Cannes, the country's culture ministry (@TCKulturTurizm) announced on May 14.
Turkey’s populist authoritarian leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is fighting for his political survival, says a Council on Foreign Relations academic and analyst in a May 29 article published by Foreign Affairs titled, “The End of Erdogan: How the Turkish Leader Has Engineered His Own Undoing.”
Looking at Erdogan’s “predicament” since in the early hours of March 19, he “orchestrated a raid on the home” of Ekrem Imamoglu, Istanbul’s popular mayor and his chief political rival, who was arrested and indicted on “highly dubious charges, including baseless accusations of corruption and terrorism”, Henri J Barkey argues: “The charismatic and competent Imamoglu may be a uniquely threatening rival. But in truth, Erdogan’s decision to arrest Imamoglu did not create this crisis. It reflected a growing weakness.
“Erdogan was already confronting mounting public fatigue with his presidency. His hubris and domineering leadership style have eroded the once broad enthusiasm for his rule, making him ever more desperate to constrain a now irrepressible dissatisfaction. A March 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 55 percent of Turkish adults held an unfavorable opinion of Erdogan, and his party lost the 2024 municipal elections.
“The depth, scope, and duration of the recent protests [against the move on Imamoglu, who remains imprisoned] are new: the demonstrators fused their street protests with organized boycotts of pro-Erdogan businesses, online activism, and civil disobedience. Imamoglu’s arrest also brought fresh instability to Turkey’s already struggling economy.
“Erdogan has responded by doubling down and arresting, on a rolling basis, hundreds of Imamoglu’s associates, including colleagues, friends, former business partners, members of the Turkish business community, and family members. But these repressions now seem less like the acts of a potent authoritarian and more like the flailing of a threatened, insecure, and imperiled man.”
Imamoglu remains in jail, but 'it is Erdogan who is trapped'
Although Imamoglu remains in jail, it is Erdogan who is trapped, says Barkey, contending that his deepening unpopularity have diminished his ability to change the constitution or force early elections, the two legal options he can take to find a path that would enable him to extend his presidential tenure.
Four years from now when his current presidential term runs out, Erdogan will almost certainly no longer be president, predicts Barkey. “The fact that so many young Turkish citizens dared to demonstrate against him reflects the irrevocable degradation of his popularity.
“As the only leader these youth have ever known, he once seemed eternal, a fact of life. But no longer: his own missteps have doomed him. Polls suggest that if elections were held in Turkey tomorrow, he would not win. Regardless of future developments, Erdogan’s legacy will likely be defined by his decision to imprison his principal opponent—and serve as an example of how even the most formidable authoritarian leaders can overstep.”
In Barkey’s eyes, “until Imamoglu arrived on the scene, Erdogan had managed to turn bouts of public opposition or the emergence of competitors into excuses to further strengthen his authority”.
He adds: “Although he cultivates an image of omnipotence and infallibility, Erdogan is exceptionally thin-skinned. Turkish jails now overflow with politicians, journalists, academics, and citizens whose words or actions have been construed as offensive or oppositional.
“Individuals often languish in detention for months, awaiting trial for alleged offenses as trivial as a social media post from years past deemed insulting to the president. Between 2014 and 2020 alone, Erdogan’s government investigated approximately 160,000 Turks for insulting the president and prosecuted 35,000.”
Imamoglu, notes Barkey, “is the first politician in years to seriously jeopardize Erdogan’s hold on power” and Turkey’s leader of 22 years now wants to outlast the crisis provoked by jailing him “by relying on brute force, as he did during the 2013 Gezi Park protests. But his overreach has unintentionally united and energized the Turkish opposition. Labeling protests and economic boycotts terrorism or treason or banning marches is less successful today, because the opposition now has an appealing leader in Imamoglu as well as a unifying idea: that Turkey deserves a chance at building a democracy”.
“The longer Imamoglu remains imprisoned, the more his stature grows. It is only a matter of time before comparisons between him and figures such as Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim or the Czech playwright Vaclav Havel are drawn,” Barkey assesses.
And he concludes: “The fact is that the indomitable Erdogan has run out of room to maneuver. By choosing the time and manner of his exit, he could help ease the transition to a new leader and ensure Turkey is at peace with itself. He can still shape his legacy.
“His personality, however, suggests that he is unlikely to embark on such a shift. If he sticks to his typical approach, there is a significant risk that the Turkish public will turn decisively against him—and that his long, eventful tenure in office will be remembered more simply as an era of autocracy.”
Henri J Barkey is Cohen Professor of International Relations Emeritus at Lehigh University and Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the New York-headquartered Council on Foreign Relations.
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