of mayors and superheroes and bronze statues (and rakı)

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Via several channels, the news that Huseyin Kalkan, the mayor of the city of Batman (pop. 250,000) in eastern Anatolia, is suing Warner Brothers for copyright infringement over The Dark Knight and other Batman films. (Good luck with that, dude).  According to the Independent, he claims that “the film’s psychological impact on Batman inhabitants is to blame for a number of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate”–shades of Pamuk’s Kar.  There’s an interesting ethnic/regional political subtext to this all, not easily gleaned from some of the international reportage–Kalkan, like much of Batman’s population, is Kurdish, and represents the Kurdish-identified social-democratic DTP (Demokratic Toplum Partisi, or Democratic Society Party), the most recent heir to a series of successively outlawed Kurdish parties (DEHAP, HADEP) shut down by the Constitutional Court over the years for supposed links to the PKK or Kurdish nationalism.  Back in February, Kalkan was convicted (under our old friend law no. 3173, the “struggle against terrorism” law) for praising a banned Kurdish TV station–broadcast from Denmark–that the Turkish authorities deem to be a PKK mouthpiece (apparently, Germany also recently banned Roj-TV).  Kalkan’s sentence was reduced to a fine and he remains in office, but the recent comic-book shenanigans might possibly be read in the context of broader political lunacies.  For another look at the interplay between municipal politics and state-level dynamics in the Kurdish southeast, check out Nicole Watts‘ short film on Osman Baydemir’s 2004 run for the Diyarbakır mayoralty, Campaigning with Osman.

In any case, Mr. Kalkan has just validated years of obvious puns by students of Turkish (and international travelers) about the city’s name.  As in so many political claims in Turkey, the mayor he rests his case with an appeal to history: “The mayor will produce evidence of his city’s neolithic origins to support his case that it predates the celluloid Batman.”

Relatedly–a former coworker sent a link to this NYT article about the new film (a sort of biopic/documentary) about Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), which has hardline nationalists all up in a lather:

The film is by no means an effort to tear the leader down. It is a largely sympathetic portrayal. But the mere fact that its director, Can Dundar, was able to show Ataturk looking less like a bronze statue and more like a man with a bad drinking habit who sometimes got bored, says a lot about how far Turkey has come in the past 10 years….The film, which opened on Oct. 29, National Day, and is being shown in more than 200 theaters around Turkey, was praised by intellectuals but drew a frenzy of angry reactions. (Mr. Dundar, knowing the delicacy of the topic, preferred to speak in his native Turkish for the interview for maximum precision of language, though his English is fluent.)

A cranky viewer on the movie’s website accused the director of being deserving of a Nobel Prize (read: like that traitorous Orhan Pamuk).  I’ll have to get my hands on a copy of the film–grist for the thesis mill–and see how it measures up to the usual Kemalist paraphenalia.  Also, I’m looking forward to checking out some of the new new lira: “New bank notes planned for circulation in 2009 picture the leader smiling, not scowling.”

(this post comes to you live from an apartment where a recent dinner party featured both commentary on Atatürk’s stern banknote visage–evidence produced was of the old million-lira kind–and three men Kurdish line-dancing in the kitchen, after rapid consumption of a bottle of Efe Rakı.  I wish the pictures hadn’t come out so blurry, but the photographer partook of her fair share of the rakı, too.)

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