Billy Hayes atones
Istanbul recently hosted Billy Hayes, the hero of the film “Midnight Express,” who in 1978 was said to have been seriously brutalized during his incarceration in a Turkish prison for drug smuggling. Hayes, who was in Istanbul, to attend an international security conference was contrite. On the verge of tears he told a press conference that he had to accept his share of responsibility for the damage this film had done. “It created a terrible impression of Turkey and the Turkish people that was not fair to them or true to my experience.
The portrayal of prison and the Turks in the movie was not accurate, and it left the false impression that all Turks were like those in the film,” he said with his voice cracking. I was working as a clerk at the Turkish Embassy in Dublin at the time in order to finance my university education and had to bear the brunt of indignation toward Turkey and Turks that crystallized after Midnight Express hit the big screen in Ireland. Those were also years when intellectuals in Turkey were being sent to prison, and being mistreated – much worse than common felons – for merely reading the “Communist Manifesto.” This was a fact that was widely reported in the western press, but we never got any letters or calls of sympathy for those Turks during the six years that I worked at the embassy. When the subject was a blond haired blue-eyed westerner, however, who was sent to a Turkish prison, the attitude changed immediately. All the latent prejudices that exist about this country, even today, came to play instantly. Billy Hayes’ book was too good a chance to miss for the anti-Turkish lobby (and those who have watched Midnight Express might have wondered about the large number of Armenian names in the credits). The opportunity to whip up anti-Turkish hysteria was not missed of course.
The film – directed by Alan Parker and scripted by Oliver Stone – did not even reflect the facts in the book written by Hayes, let alone facts about Turkey. For example there is a scene in the film where Hayes stands up in court and heroically proffers that “Although they do not eat pork, Turks are a nation of pigs.” There is no such line in the original book written by Billy Hayes, and one wonders why Stone would add it to the script and Parker allow it to go ahead. Such distortions based on age old prejudices turned the whole thing into a 30-year old headache for Turkey. Dr. Goebbels, I am sure, would have been proud of the “propaganda coup” this film represents against Turks, who were portrayed as creatures short of being wild beasts. It will be studied in years to come as a prime example of how prejudice can be turned to propagandist advantage. Much older and apparently a little wiser now, Mr. Hayes seems to have cultivated a conscience and is openly admitting, “The portrayal of the Turks in the movie was not accurate.” This also highlights the intelligence of millions in Europe and the U.S. who watched Midnight Express unquestioningly, and whose support for it brought the film an Oscar. Put simply, they were duped and willingly so, because “the grand old European virtue” of “doubting and questioning in order to arrive at the real truth” was cast out of the window when the subject was Turkey. But little has changed, as evidenced by the paranoia that is being whipped up in Europe today over the question of Turkish membership in the EU, a paranoia that is being actively stoked by unscrupulous politicians. When the question is Turkey, there still seems to be no shortage of prejudice that can be pulled out of the bag in order to be used for this or that political purpose. To take an example, this is exactly what the politically motivated Armenian lobby is relying on today. It is also why this lobby hates Ankara’s suggestion of a commission comprising Turkish and Armenian as well as independent historians from other countries to study the events of 1915 from every aspect possible, in order to arrive at a complete picture about how the tragedy of the Armenians, as well as millions of Moslem subjects of the Ottoman Empire, came about. This is the only way that correct lessons can be drawn from history, and not just by Turks but by everyone. If, that is, the object is really “to learn from history” rather than serve an undying political desire “to get even.” One cannot help but wonder if there will be politicians, journalists and academics in Europe and the U.S. who in 30 years time will come out like Billy Hayes, admitting that “Their portrayal of the Turks was not accurate.” It is more than likely that their Turkish counterparts will only come out then with their own admission about the darker side of Turkish history, and not before.