An Examination of Recent Turkish Cinema in the Context of Democracy: Behind the Hill and Majority Film Examples

Abstract

When we review the literature regarding communication studies, there are many studies which features media and democracy as a context. However when we focus on film studies concerning the relationship between cinema and democracy, there are not many comprehensive studies. The most extended and comprehensive study about this matter is Evolvement of Democracy Notion in Turkish Cinema (Turk Sinemasinda Demokrasi Kavraminin Gelismesi) authored by Oguz Onaran, Nilgun Abisel, Levent Koker and Eser Koker in 1994. Aforementioned study investigates the effectiveness of democracy and democratic process in fictional universe which has been created by film makers. This study applies this point of view to research Turkish Cinema in the context of democracy. This article focuses on two recent movies Cogunluk/Majority (Seren Yuce, 2010) and Tepenin Ardi/Behind the Hill (Emin Alper, 2012); which are films that have been subjected to many articles in both academic and non-academic writing. As the theoretical framework, this study uses the same approach which has been used by Onaran, Abisel, Koker and Koker (1994) to investigate the films in the context of democracy. In order to analyze the films, textual analysis has been applied. It has been determined that both films do not have the qualities predicted by modern democracy, but possess the qualities which antique democracy defends.