The choice of a Kurd as the perpetrator of the rape, which is the main trauma in the series, while the primary issue in the country is racism, is an undeniable contribution to racism. The creators of the series have either repeated the harm built by Kemalist Republican memory upon the Kurdish ethnicity or have seen no issue with such an interpretation.
Like all art forms, the nature of cinema means that the representations created by filmmakers within their films convey things that the filmmakers may not have accounted for. This aspect of interpreting artworks or subjective artistic readings often leads to a sort of reproduction with each new interpretation. While an artist cannot prevent all the different interpretations of their work, nor may they be held responsible for them, this possibility also compels the artist to be cautious about the potentially dire consequences of this dangerous area.
Even if a filmmaker does not intend to convey a message through their film, films still communicate something to viewers, and what is communicated can be related to the filmmakers in countless ways, revealing uncontrolled aspects of the shared memory they are part of. Sometimes these works are so influential in unintended ways that they surpass both the artwork and the artist, having significant impacts on societies; countries change, governments fall, and dictatorships are established.
We are witnessing what the TV series sector has been doing in interaction with the palace in recent times in Turkey. The influence of series on the country's regime dynamics continues at full speed, and we are observing the state's conversion of its decor into TV set designs and the re-production of history through series. The power that has discovered all these very useful tools is feeding its neo-Ottoman accounts by reproducing or enabling the production of series as even more useful examples within its own dictatorship; reshaping society; and paving the way for wars and occupations.
Against the violent, dirty, and world-distorting cinema of our time, "Bir Başkadır" has demonstrated the possibility of another series format beyond the spiral of physical violence-action-melodrama-fantastic mystery and has rightly attracted significant interest. However, it is worth paying attention to the serious issues in its representations within a sometimes vague and foggy atmosphere. Now, let us try to view the series from the perspectives of different groups observing this magical foggy landscape, and let one of these perspectives be that of a Kurd. To do this, we must at least know what it means to be a Kurd, or perhaps even if we are Kurds, we must have a consciousness of Kurdishness. Otherwise, it will be impossible for us to do so. Since the series includes different representations of Kurds, those who made the series should have had sufficient awareness and knowledge about racism, but due to the lack of such awareness, which even the Kurds themselves have not been able to fully develop, racist templates have emerged in the series.
Now, let’s examine the racism from the perspective of a Kurd. To those who find these questions problematic, I would like to say this immediately: The questions might indeed be problematic or unjust, but they are not more problematic or unjust than the details in the series to which these questions are directed.
What does this series say to Kurds?
The selection of a Kurd as the perpetrator of the rape, which is the main trauma in the series, while the primary issue in the country is racism, is an undeniable contribution to racism. The creators of the series have either repeated the harm built by Kemalist Republican memory upon the Kurdish ethnicity or have seen no issue with such an interpretation. For the role of the rapist, they chose an uneducated Kurdish villager and initially relocated him from Kurdistan to the place where the rape took place. They then subjected the Kurd to a cultural shock upon arrival, preparing justifications for his becoming a rapist based on his migration, poverty, and backwardness. After gathering all the justifications, the Kurd’s rape was depicted. One of the templates of the existing, prevailing racist memory was inserted into the series. Regardless of how much the justifications around the figure taken from this racist memory are corrected, it cannot cover the data of the memory that racism has built upon the Kurd. The depiction of the kick given to the Kurd thirty-five years ago and its consequences might serve as a justification that those who made the series are not racist, but it does not mean that there are no templates of racism in the series. The dire and unequal conditions of the Kurds are not only not dissolved on an imagined equal ground but are also completed by forcing the Kurd to apologize for the created rapist, thus adding a layer of assimilation.
The creators of the series did not choose the rapist based on statistics or based on the frequent rape news seen in newspapers or reports. They did well not to do so, but if they had followed that route, undoubtedly, the rapist in the series would correspond to another character depicted in the series. This problematic memory has been justifiably corrected here, and there is no issue with that, but the same perceptual break has not been applied to the Kurd. The lines erased in others are thickly drawn on the Kurd.
Suppose the creators of the series claim that they see everyone as equal and do not differentiate between affiliations, thus seeing no issue with choosing a Kurd as the rapist, even if it is not a correct stance. This situation itself involves a significant irresponsibility towards an ethnic minority community and the problems arising from it. In Turkey, Kurds cannot be represented on equal terms with Armenians or Turks. Just as Black people in the US are never represented on an equal footing with Whites because they are not truly equal, the same is true for the Kurds. The template where women dominate in Kurdish families is also strangely processed, while simultaneously these people are depicted as the ones who have made the AKP a nuisance for Turkey, with no issue seen in this.
Regardless of whether the questions and their answers are positive or negative, in another world, this series would first be accused of winking at racism despite all the good things it contains and would later lead to a major scandal. But this does not happen in Turkey, and the fact that it does not happen shows that racism is normalized by most of Turkish society.
No people without a country or with a country that has been occupied and deeply scarred in their collective memory can create a country for themselves by disciplining their occupiers. We Kurds will never be able to do that either. Even if the occupying countries become the most perfect in terms of human rights and freedoms, it still would not be possible. Having a country is much more than the rights one possesses. One has greater power and inspiration in their own hell than in someone else’s heaven. That is why, even if it is hell, those who have a country have their languages, civilizations, arts, literatures, cinemas, and cultural fields. If we Kurds made this series, who would be the figure committing the rape in our version?
That is why the experience of "Bir Başkadır" is unique for us Kurds.
— Nurettin Erkan GAZETE DUVAR Madison, Wisconsin, November 21, Saturday 2020, USA
