On Turkey's big screen, America cast as villain

ISTANBUL -- In ''Valley of the Wolves: Iraq," US soldiers shoot small children at point-blank range, harvest kidneys from Iraqi prisoners for shipment to Tel Aviv, blow a Muslim cleric out of his minaret and, to top it all off, display utter contempt for Turkish foreign policy. The feature film set a box office record in its first weekend, after opening in more theaters than any movie in Turkish history.

Meanwhile, the American television series ''24" did not open at all in Turkey last fall, despite high ratings over the three previous seasons for agent Jack Bauer and the swashbuckling Counter-Terrorist Unit. The problem: In season four, the terrorists intent on destroying America were Turks.

''It's kind of like firing missiles at each other!" Yasar Aktas said of the pop culture war now playing between the United States and Turkey. The unemployed cook was one of 1.75 million people who saw ''Valley of the Wolves" in its first six days in Turkey. It opened last week in Europe, where the US Army issued a notice warning service members to stay away from affected multiplexes and ''to avoid getting into discussions about the movie with people you don't know."

That two NATO allies that often speak of mutual respect regard each other so darkly on-screen says a good deal about the uneasy state of relations between Turkey and the United States.

None of the atrocities in ''Valley of the Wolves" shocked Ulas Aker.

''These are things we knew were going on anyway," the cafe owner said, as he emerged from a Thursday matinee in downtown Istanbul, where the movie was playing in 63 of the city's 72 theaters.

US troops strafing an Iraqi wedding? It was two years ago that Turkish newspapers splashed news of an aerial bombardment of a wedding that US commanders insisted was a gathering of insurgents.

Organ harvesting? Aker said he had heard rumors, and in the movie's surgery scenes, a stocky female American soldier strips Iraqi soldiers for stacking in a human pyramid.

A TV series inspired the movie. The move to the big screen was to avenge the notorious events of July 4, 2003, which went largely unnoticed in the United States. That day US troops arrested a team of Turkish special forces in northern Iraq. The Turks were smuggling arms to ethnic brethren squared off against the Kurds, who were allied with US forces. Photos of handcuffed Turks with bags over their heads deeply humiliated and angered the Turkish public.