Turks avenge Israeli raid on the big screen

ISTANBUL: You cannot kill a Turk with impunity — this is the message to Israel from a Turkish film that opened on Friday and is based on taking fictional revenge of the deadly Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound aid ship last year with threatening political tension.

Valley of the Wolves: Palestine will be screened in more than a dozen European countries and more than 20 other countries in the Middle East. The film promises to be a blockbuster with the Turkish and Arab audience, but may make life harder for Turkish diplomats at a time when ties with Israel are already in a deep crisis.

“Go and show the world what is really the state of Israel,” says an Israeli officer named Moshe Ben-Eliezer. The raid on the Turkish vessel claimed the lives of nine Turks, served a death blow to the once-close Turkish-Israeli ties and triggered a wave of international criticism of the Jewish state.

The movie attracted criticism even before its release as its creators have already been under fire for earlier productions that drew Israeli ire and triggered condemnation at home for glamourising violence and nationalism.

“Valley of the Wolves,” which started as a television series in 2003 and became an instant hit, angered Israel in January 2010 with an episode that showed an Israeli embassy being stormed to rescue a Turkish boy that had been kidnapped.

A senior Turkish diplomat commented that the production company was motivated by profit following the commercial success – at home and abroad – of their 2006 movie that dealt with the US invasion of Iraq.

“Now they believe they will sell well this one too, especially in the Arab world. Undoubtedly, it is not very helpful but we cannot prevent them from doing so,” the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 31^st,  2011.