Turkish cinema asks: Which human rights?

Celebrating global Human Rights Day, here is a look at human rights violations in recent history with a brief journey through Turkish cinema. Hunger strikes, political prisoners, war in southeastern Turkey and disappearances in custody are some of the subjects of these films

Today is Human Rights Day across the globe, the day we celebrate the proclamation and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For many in Turkey there isn’t all that much to celebrate these days considering the hunger strikes, imprisoned journalists, disappearances in custody and a growing perception that the rule of law is no longer the norm.

Perhaps the best way to take a look at human rights in Turkey - or rather the violation of human rights - is to remember some of the feature films and documentaries that have brought some of these violations into the spotlight in recent memory.

The obvious first choice is journalist Ruhi Karadağ’s documentary Simurg (Simurgh), currently on release in theaters. The film focuses on hunger strikes, an issue that recently made the news, although the recent hunger strikes were different to the ones shown in the movie. What’s more, the recent ones did not end up with an infamous operation in which police and soldiers broke into prisons to halt the strikes.

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YouTube joins activist world with Human Rights Channel

As we have seen in the last two years with the Arab Spring, social media can be the ultimate tool in the fight for equality, rights and justice. In line with this, YouTube, together with two partners, has launched the Human Rights Channel, a platform for citizens around the globe to upload their videos on human rights violations. No videos, however, have yet been uploaded from Turkey

Did you know that you can now watch human rights violations and under-reported human rights stories all around the world on a single channel? Maybe not a TV channel, but perhaps a more powerful, impartial and global source of videos. YouTube’s very own Human Rights Channel opened in late May with the slogan, “Film it. Share it. Change it.”

With a single click, you can now watch the gruesome footage of a raid by Syrian security forces on Aleppo University’s dormitories that claimed four lives and its aftermath, or recent rallies in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, a man publicly whipped as punishment in Iran, or cousins burning themselves to protest Chinese rule in Tibet.

The channel asks people around the world to upload videos “to shed light on and contextualize under-reported stories, to record otherwise undocumented abuses, and to amplify previously unheard voices.” The all-too-important hashtag is #video4change.

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Human rights films becoming an integral part of cinema

Using cinema for political propaganda has always been a given. Now, it’s taking the coveted role of the human rights advocate. More and more films are shedding light on human rights violations around the world, reaching more audiences.

Moving images might be the single most powerful tool for propaganda, and it has been that way since the appropriation of cinema as a form of mass entertainment in the last century. Early Soviet cinema, the German and British cinemas of World War II, and, well, Hollywood cinema are just some that have used film for the blatant promotion of ideologies and political propaganda.

If cinema has served as a powerful tool to impress masses by disseminating messages to promote dominant ideologies, it has worked the other way as well. The violation of human rights, wars, repression, oppression and censorship have also found their way into movie theaters, not from the point of view of those responsible, but from the oppressed.

Not until very long ago, films addressing human rights issues reached only small numbers of people, mostly those who were already aware of the issues. That all seems to be changing now. Film has become a widespread medium to inform, inspire and influence audiences around the globe on struggles small and grand, ongoing and historical.

Click here for full article (Hürriyet Daily News)