Within the last few years, “Kurdish cinema” has emerged as a unique discursive subject in
Turkey. Subsequent to and in line with efforts to unify Kurdish cultural production in diaspora,
Kurdish intellectuals have endeavored to define and frame the substance of Kurdish cinema as
an orienting framework for the production and reception of films by and about Kurds. In this
article, my argument is threefold. First, Kurdish cinema has emerged as a national cinema in
transnational space. Second, like all media texts, Kurdish films are nationalized in discourse.
Third, the communicative strategies used to nationalize Kurdish cinema must be viewed both in
the context of the historical forces of Turkish nationalism and against a backdrop of contemporary
politics in Turkey, specifically the Turkish government’s discourses and policies related to the
Kurds. The empirical data for this article derive from ethnographic research in Turkey and Europe
conducted between 2009 and 2012.
Within the last few years, “Kurdish cinema” has emerged as a unique discursive subject
in Turkey. Kurdish films and filmmakers have come to occupy an increasingly large
space in national festivals and have attracted significant attention in Turkish cinema
panels, film festivals, and television shows. There were a few interrelated triggers to
the development of such discursive currency. The most immediate was the “Kurdish
Opening” (Kurt Ac ¨ ¸ılımı), a project established by the Justice and Development Party
(AKP) in 2009 for the ostensible purpose of promoting the cultural rights of Kurds.1
Kurdish issues, including the Turkish government’s new positioning toward the Kurds,
are of growing interest in popular culture, including in films by and about Kurds, which
have in turn provoked discussions around a possibly distinct “Kurdish cinema.”
Kurdish films, even before their amplified national presence, were already gaining
greater international circulation and visibility, especially since the early 2000s. For
instance, Bahman Ghobadi, an Iranian Kurd, won the prestigious Camera d’Or award
at the Cannes Film Festival for his 2000 film A Time for Drunken Horses (Zamani
Baraye Masti Asbha). In 2001, electrified by Ghobadi’s international success, Kurdish ´
immigrants from Turkey living in Britain organized the first Kurdish Film Festival.