Papers by Özgür Yaren
Cultural Sociology, 2025
This study explores how conservative/Islamic art audiences in Turkey describe and classify good t... more This study explores how conservative/Islamic art audiences in Turkey describe and classify good taste in art and how their cultural repertoires inform their notions of 'us' and 'them'. Despite the significant popular attention conservative art and its associated taste communities have received with the rise of political Islam, little is known about how such art is understood by its audience or its position within existing taste hierarchies. Drawing on cultural classification literature, our analysis of 36 interviews with conservative/Islamic art audiences in Turkey addresses this gap through an inductive, qualitative approach. The findings reveal three modes of appreciationeclectic, moralist, and cosmopolitan-each associated with different levels of identification with conservative taste communities, challenging assumptions about the existence of a homogeneous conservative art audience. This study also provides a nuanced view of how political and moral values influence aesthetic judgements and create unique strategies for boundary-making and boundarycrossing, contributing to discussions on localised forms of cultural eclecticism and exclusion.
Studies in European Cinema, 2025
Recent Turkish political cinema features films that are designed and interpreted as national alle... more Recent Turkish political cinema features films that are designed and interpreted as national allegories. Born from a climate of economic and political turmoil, these films symbolize a dark, hopeless national experience. Burning Days (2022) and Black Night (2023) converge to exhibit symptoms of Turkey's ongoing political and economic turmoil, reflecting Jameson's description of third-world intellectuals' hopelessness. This article examines two recurring metaphors-the posse and the sinkhole-to explore their allegorical significance in capturing national anxieties. I argue that filmmakers Alper and Alper, while rooted in century-old literary traditions, tropes, and an understanding of power politics, cannot escape these influences. Emerging from a period of crisis, their films introduce a novel crisis aesthetics marked by a defeatist tone. While sharing parallels with earlier Turkish political cinema, their unique response to Turkey's recent context establishes a new aesthetic paradigm in contemporary Turkish cinema.
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Aug 27, 2024
The Islamic-conservative cultural sphere in Turkey has rapidly expanded during the 20-year rule o... more The Islamic-conservative cultural sphere in Turkey has rapidly expanded during the 20-year rule of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party. Despite popular debates regarding the rise of ‘conservative art,’ academic studies have thus far limited their focus to the cultural policies and actions of the ruling power. Consequently, our understanding of cultural producers within this expanding sphere, their aesthetic viewpoints and their position within the broader cultural field remains limited. To address this gap, we employ Bourdieu’s field theory and explore the dynamics of this cultural sphere by conducting in-depth interviews with artists and cultural intermediaries active within Islamic/Islamist art circles. Our findings suggest that the sphere is relatively autonomous from the broader cultural field, characterized by its closed-circuit production and circulation network, specific forms of capital, and exclusive ties to the realm of power. However due to its own tensions and fragmentations, this autonomous sphere does not function as a monolithic bloc of Islamic/conservative forces struggling for legitimacy against an established secularist/Kemalist/leftist bloc, as has been often presumed throughout Turkish history. Our discussion also contributes to the broader Bourdieusian literature by questioning the utility of concepts such as ‘field’ and ‘pillars’ in comprehending contexts with emerging Islamic/conservative cultural sphere.
European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2020
In this article, we draw on the growing Euro-American literature on cultural recognition, legitim... more In this article, we draw on the growing Euro-American literature on cultural recognition, legitimacy, and film criticism and focus on the classificatory struggles taking place in the Turkish film field. We content-analyze the criteria that critics deploy as they review films as recognized by different institutions and actors. Multiple correspondence analysis demonstrates that the distinction between artistic and commercial films is still very prominent. Moreover, the existence of political content in a film elevates its symbolic status, regardless of its production mode. To account for this peculiar finding, we explore a fraction of the reviews qualitatively. Our research contributes to the cultural legitimacy literature by crosschecking the effectiveness of recently posited trends and questioning the role of politics in the process of critical recognition in a specific national context located on the margins of Europe.
Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture and Media Studies, 2018
This article aims to explore trash erotic productions in Turkish cinema in the 1970s. To referenc... more This article aims to explore trash erotic productions in Turkish cinema in the 1970s. To reference it with the popular denomination of the period, The ‘Sex Influx’ (seks furyası) of the late 1970s was the result of persistent economic and political crises, and symptomatic of the ends of certain cultural and economic modes, dominant in film production.
While, Turkish film producers had adapted European exploitation films, and particularly Italian erotic comedies, by time they had created a trashy, irregular yet, an authentic film practice, addressing the specific needs of its assumed audience: young, unemployed, underclassmen with rural background. Focusing on this very authentic level of Turkish sex films, the article investigates how these films identify and discuss the social oppositions upon which the “desire” is manufactured. It also questions repercussions of these films on cinematic and social level and how they had affected moral codes about female sexuality. Moving from Alan Soble's Marxist take on contemporary pornography as compensatory fantasies, the article suggests that working class heroes of exploitation films symbolize revenge of the downtrodden for powerless masses of working class and underclass. It is also argued that starting out as exclusively sexist and misogynistic narratives, sex films eventually worked for legitimizing women’s sexual desires. As sex segregated screenings of Emmanuelle tell us, feminist impulses are embedded in, perhaps, unexpected places.
Keywords:
Exploitation, Turkish Cinema, Sex Films, Erotic
The Journal of Popular Culture, 2017
This article aims to map out the boom in trash erotic productions in Turkish cinema during the 19... more This article aims to map out the boom in trash erotic productions in Turkish cinema during the 1970s. Though it is partly related with the adaptation of European cases in order to resort to sex films as a survival strategy, the “Sex Influx” (seks furyası) as it is popularly named, was unique on many levels. It was designed to circumvent strict censorship, negotiate with the authorities, and survive a grim decade of crisis that began and ended with military coups. Above all, it was symptomatic of the end of certain cultural and economic modes that were dominant in film production.
AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, 2019
This paper aims to illustrate the transformation of point of view in apocalyptic/ dystopian genre... more This paper aims to illustrate the transformation of point of view in apocalyptic/ dystopian genre films, abandoning the lamenting tone in favor of other species. It also intends to exhibit the aesthetic strategies conforming to the shifting tone of these genre films towards a post-human stance. It can be argued that the conjuncture which is shaped by several coinciding narratives of crisis from the Anthropocene to the more recent political crisis of rising Populism led Posthumanist discourse gain prevalence. The paper will try to link the shifting tone of genre films with the lineages of Posthumanist discourse and contemporary collective anxieties. Through analyzing the voice of narrative and its visual language, this paper will attempt to layout significant characteristics of post-human aesthetics in apocalyptic/dystopian genre films. In times of crisis, eschatological narratives tend to proliferate and flare like symptoms during allergy season. In the form of dystopias, horrors, catastrophic or apocalyptic films, these narratives on the ultimate destiny of humanity or the end of the world reflect our contemporary anxieties, fears, and concerns. In the face of an acute and inevitable struggle of life and death with a tangible foe, and a prospect for better days ahead, moral narratives accommodating rightful heroes help us confront our anxieties. However, uncertain, pervasive and chronic crises, lacking a certain nemesis and accompanying pessimistic future projections, lead to despair and cynicism. While we are experiencing a simultaneous political-economic crisis, ecological crisis and a deeper existential crisis, our apocalyptic narratives and dystopias are deviating from an anthropocentric point of view. On one hand, feeding on sores of global capitalism, social inequalities, migration waves, and rising reactionary populism, a crisis of democracy is sprawling, and it is leading to illiberal or authoritarian regimes, and to one-man rules trivializing democratic institutions and civil rights. On the other hand, a moral and existential crisis is unfolding in the face of ecological crisis, natural
Kosmorama, 2011
""Die Fremde er den seneste i en række af (transnationale) indvandrer- film, der skildrer indvand... more ""Die Fremde er den seneste i en række af (transnationale) indvandrer- film, der skildrer indvandrerkvinder som ofre. Umay er blot endnu en tragisk og afmægtig heltinde.
Med deres fremstil- ling af indvandrerkvinder som ofre støtter disse film derfor op om Europas populisti- ske og xenofobiske kræfter og disses tale om uforenelige verdener og ‘multikultu- ralismens fallit’. Når Die Fremde har fået så stor offentlig opmærksomhed, skal det således ses i lyset af den nylige genopblus- sen af diskussionerne om uforenelighed og fejlslagen integration.""
English version of “Die Fremde, Det europæiske rum og indvandrerkvinder som ofre”, Kosmorama – ... more English version of “Die Fremde, Det europæiske rum og indvandrerkvinder som ofre”, Kosmorama – Tidsskrift for filmkunst og filmkultur, 247:55-64 (2011).
Hrvatski Filmski Ljetopis, 2010
In Turkish cinema, the dramatic increase of production numbers in last decade opened the gates fo... more In Turkish cinema, the dramatic increase of production numbers in last decade opened the gates for horror genre (which was virtually not existed before), resulting in around ten productions from 2004 till the present day. Many of these films inspired from previous films of the genre, in the means of content and form. The degree of inspiration ranged from adoption to imitation, from reinterpretation to translation, but almost in each case, in an effort to deal with the collective fears of Turkish society, local and Islamic motifs have been utilised along with the conventions and the themes of the genre.
The intersection and interaction of global conventions and local motifs rendered these films as examples of transnational cultural mode. This article particularly focuses on the way these films have inserted/substituted local and Islamic motifs to the genre. Interaction of local motifs with the conventions and themes of the genre such as misogyny, the antagonism of faith and science, or technological anxiety serves intriguing clues about this transnational cultural mode, where the audience reactions teach us different ways of experiencing it.
* * *
U turskoj je kinematografiji dramatičan porast produkcije u posljednjem desetljeću otvorio vrata filmu strave (koji dotad praktički nije postojao), što je za posljedicu imalo desetak takvih filmova između 2004. i 2010. godine. U pogledu sadržaja i forme mnogi od tih filmova crpe inspiraciju iz ranijih filmova toga žanra. Možemo govoriti o različitim stupnjevima inspiriranosti, od usvajanja do imitacije, od reinterpretacije do translacije, no gotovo u svakom slučaju, u pokušaju opisivanja kolektivnih strahova turskoga društva, nailazimo na lokalne i islamske motive usporedno sa žanrovskim konvencijama i temama. Presijecanje i interakcija globalnih konvencija i lokalnih motiva čine ove filmove primjerom transnacionalne kulturne pojave. Ovaj se esej posebice bavi načinom na koji su ti filmovi umetnuli lokalne i islamske motive u taj žanr. Interakcija lokalnih motiva i žanrovskih konvencija i tema, kao što su mržnja prema ženama, antagonizam vjere i znanosti ili tehnološka anksioznost, daju zanimljive odgovore o ovom transnacionalnom kulturnom fenomenu, pri čemu nam reakcija publike pruža uvid u različite načine doživljavanja.
Özgür Yaren"
Moment, 2015
Almost two decades ago, along with the increasing frequency of migrant films, 'migrant cinema' as... more Almost two decades ago, along with the increasing frequency of migrant films, 'migrant cinema' as a generic domain entered into the discussions. The optimism brought by extending and deepening union of Europe, growing acceptance of multiculturalism as a merit and new concerns on the idea of nation-state helped migrant cinema to be embraced as a category. In the wake of the disruption of the thick shades of national cinemas, transnational, migrant, diasporic films and pluralist practices became visible. While European identity is smitten by the rise of far-right, Euro-skeptics, economic depression which hit Greece and tend to spread, destabilized neighboring regions, and the influx of asylum seekers, the optimistic cosmopolitan ground for the idea of a united Europe is losing power. Today changing priorities of 1990's welfare Europe and emphasized European identity transform migrant films, as well. As the focus slides from migrant communities to asylum seekers, this work aims to question the validity of the term 'migrant cinema'.
MOMENT, Jun 2015
Yaren, Ö. (2015), “Göçmen Sinemasını Yeniden Düşünmek”, Moment: Hacettepe Ün. İletişim Fak. Kültü... more Yaren, Ö. (2015), “Göçmen Sinemasını Yeniden Düşünmek”, Moment: Hacettepe Ün. İletişim Fak. Kültürel Çalışmalar Dergisi, 2(1): 207-223. ISSN: 2148-970X.
Varlık, 2017
Yaren, Ö. (2017), "Post-Sinema Çağına Henüz Girmedik mi: Sinemanın Krizi ve Post-Sinema Tartışmal... more Yaren, Ö. (2017), "Post-Sinema Çağına Henüz Girmedik mi: Sinemanın Krizi ve Post-Sinema Tartışmaları", Varlık, 2017/12, 1323:28-31
Alternatif Politika, 2010
This article abstracts essential positions in the early debates on Marxist Aesthetics at the firs... more This article abstracts essential positions in the early debates on Marxist Aesthetics at the first half of the 20th century, which has been shaped by prominent Marxist thinkers such as Georg Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. It claims that these early debates are at large related with the competence of the audience. It also focuses the relation between these debates and film.
Key Words: Film, Marxist Aesthetics, Brecht, Benjamin, Adorno, Lukács, Modernism, Classical realizm.
İdeal Kent, Sep 2013
Bu çalışma Yugoslavya’nın 1990’lar boyunca yaşadığı uzun, sancılı ve şiddetli dağılma sürecine pa... more Bu çalışma Yugoslavya’nın 1990’lar boyunca yaşadığı uzun, sancılı ve şiddetli dağılma sürecine paralel olarak Belgrad merkezli film yapımının, Sırp ulusal sinemasına dönüşürken Yugoslavya’nın dağılışına, totaliter ve militarist Milošević rejimine, savaş ve çatışmaların kentte ve ülkede neden olduğu çöküntüye nasıl tepki verdiğini ele alır.
Belgrad hem bir ulus devletin başkenti hem de ulusal kültürün ötesinde sofistike bir metropoldür. Çalışma özellikle Belgrad merkezli bir bakış açısıyla militarizm, totalitarizm, şiddet kültürü, ekonomik kriz, ahlaki dekadans, kentli-köylü yarılması, politik muhalefet, Milošević sonrası dönem, yüzleşme ve apoloji gibi temaları kullanan filmlere odaklanır.
Anahtar kelimeler: Post-Yugoslav, Belgrad, Balkanlar, Savaş sineması, Milošević
Sine/Cine, Apr 2014
Soğuk savaşın ardından politik istikrarsızlıkların, ekonomik krizlerin ve etnik çatışmaların damg... more Soğuk savaşın ardından politik istikrarsızlıkların, ekonomik krizlerin ve etnik çatışmaların damgasını vurduğu geçiş dönemi sona erdiğinde Doğu Avrupa devletleri serbest Pazar ekonomili post-komünist ulus devletlere dönüştüler. Bu sancılı sürecin hayal kırıklığına uğrattığı halklarda totaliter geçmişin travmalarını gölgeleyen huzursuzluk, belirsizlik ve güvensizlik hissi belli bir tür nostalji duygusu doğurdu. Bu özel nostalji biçimi tüm Doğu Avrupa’da Jugo-nostalgija ya da Ostalgie gibi farklı isimler altında ortaya çıktı. Doğu Avrupalı postkomünist filmler, bireysel ve kolektif bellek, sözlü tarih, şehir efsaneleri, belgesel ve arşiv görüntüler yoluyla geçmişle yüzleşirken bu komünist nostalji deneyimine katkıda bulundular. Bu makale postkomünist filmlere ve bu filmlerin en yaygın başvurduğu estetik stratejilere, özellikle geçmiş rejimi grotesk törenlere indirgeme ve belgesel arşiv görüntülerini oyuncu bir biçimde kullanarak manipüle etme stratejilerine odaklanıyor.
Kültür ve İletişim , 2006
63 kültür ve iletiflim • culture & communication © 2006 • 9(2) • yaz/summer: 63-80
Book Chapters by Özgür Yaren
Sinema Kuramları II, 2013
A basic review of narrative theory, particularly structuralist narratology and film.
ReFocus: The Films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Gönül Dönmez-Colin (ed.), 2023
Auteur theory and the very concept of the auteur have long lost their per- tinence in the academi... more Auteur theory and the very concept of the auteur have long lost their per- tinence in the academia. Film studies scholarship today focuses more on reception and spectatorship and tends to conceive of films, whether labelled as artworks or popular cultural products, more as the products of social and political context than the individual ‘craftsmanship’ of the directors/producers. Nevertheless, auteurs, as well as the term itself, seem to endure paradigmatic theoretical shifts. Having accomplished becoming simultaneously a transna- tional filmmaker and a part of the national film canon, despite the different and sometimes conflicting requirements of each role, Nuri Bilge Ceylan personifies what auteur – or global auteur – means today. To understand how Ceylan has secured his position in the complex and precarious map of competing value systems, we need to explore contemporary auteurism and the tensions between different modes of artistic recognition in global and national contexts.
The Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Turkey, Joost Jongerden (ed.), 2021
While many AKP supporters have achieved significant economic and political upward mobility and th... more While many AKP supporters have achieved significant economic and political upward mobility and the party consolidated its power to the extent of operating a de facto party-state over the past two decades, AKP officials’ and Islamists’ discontent with a perceived deprivation of cultural power has continued unabated. In recent years, this discourse of being historically bereft of cultural power has accompanied conspicuous interventionism in the field of culture through the use of the state’s ideological apparatus and economic resources. The first years of the AKP’s reign were shaped by liberal cultural policies aiming to withdraw the state (and its support) from the realm of culture and art. As the AKP consolidated its power, however, cultural policies made a U-turn toward interventionism, proactively aiming to create a conservative art field. In this chapter, we try to situate AKP officials’ and Islamists’ yearning for cultural hegemony within the general political and ideological context of contemporary Turkey. We then examine the forms in which the AKP utilized the state’s ideological apparatus and economic resources to intervene in the cultural field. Lastly, we will assert that such recent attempts to transform the field of culture from above is a historically specific phenomenon that cannot be simply grasped as yet another manifestation of a long-standing polarization between secularists and conservatives in Turkey.
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Papers by Özgür Yaren
While, Turkish film producers had adapted European exploitation films, and particularly Italian erotic comedies, by time they had created a trashy, irregular yet, an authentic film practice, addressing the specific needs of its assumed audience: young, unemployed, underclassmen with rural background. Focusing on this very authentic level of Turkish sex films, the article investigates how these films identify and discuss the social oppositions upon which the “desire” is manufactured. It also questions repercussions of these films on cinematic and social level and how they had affected moral codes about female sexuality. Moving from Alan Soble's Marxist take on contemporary pornography as compensatory fantasies, the article suggests that working class heroes of exploitation films symbolize revenge of the downtrodden for powerless masses of working class and underclass. It is also argued that starting out as exclusively sexist and misogynistic narratives, sex films eventually worked for legitimizing women’s sexual desires. As sex segregated screenings of Emmanuelle tell us, feminist impulses are embedded in, perhaps, unexpected places.
Keywords:
Exploitation, Turkish Cinema, Sex Films, Erotic
Med deres fremstil- ling af indvandrerkvinder som ofre støtter disse film derfor op om Europas populisti- ske og xenofobiske kræfter og disses tale om uforenelige verdener og ‘multikultu- ralismens fallit’. Når Die Fremde har fået så stor offentlig opmærksomhed, skal det således ses i lyset af den nylige genopblus- sen af diskussionerne om uforenelighed og fejlslagen integration.""
The intersection and interaction of global conventions and local motifs rendered these films as examples of transnational cultural mode. This article particularly focuses on the way these films have inserted/substituted local and Islamic motifs to the genre. Interaction of local motifs with the conventions and themes of the genre such as misogyny, the antagonism of faith and science, or technological anxiety serves intriguing clues about this transnational cultural mode, where the audience reactions teach us different ways of experiencing it.
* * *
U turskoj je kinematografiji dramatičan porast produkcije u posljednjem desetljeću otvorio vrata filmu strave (koji dotad praktički nije postojao), što je za posljedicu imalo desetak takvih filmova između 2004. i 2010. godine. U pogledu sadržaja i forme mnogi od tih filmova crpe inspiraciju iz ranijih filmova toga žanra. Možemo govoriti o različitim stupnjevima inspiriranosti, od usvajanja do imitacije, od reinterpretacije do translacije, no gotovo u svakom slučaju, u pokušaju opisivanja kolektivnih strahova turskoga društva, nailazimo na lokalne i islamske motive usporedno sa žanrovskim konvencijama i temama. Presijecanje i interakcija globalnih konvencija i lokalnih motiva čine ove filmove primjerom transnacionalne kulturne pojave. Ovaj se esej posebice bavi načinom na koji su ti filmovi umetnuli lokalne i islamske motive u taj žanr. Interakcija lokalnih motiva i žanrovskih konvencija i tema, kao što su mržnja prema ženama, antagonizam vjere i znanosti ili tehnološka anksioznost, daju zanimljive odgovore o ovom transnacionalnom kulturnom fenomenu, pri čemu nam reakcija publike pruža uvid u različite načine doživljavanja.
Özgür Yaren"
Key Words: Film, Marxist Aesthetics, Brecht, Benjamin, Adorno, Lukács, Modernism, Classical realizm.
Belgrad hem bir ulus devletin başkenti hem de ulusal kültürün ötesinde sofistike bir metropoldür. Çalışma özellikle Belgrad merkezli bir bakış açısıyla militarizm, totalitarizm, şiddet kültürü, ekonomik kriz, ahlaki dekadans, kentli-köylü yarılması, politik muhalefet, Milošević sonrası dönem, yüzleşme ve apoloji gibi temaları kullanan filmlere odaklanır.
Anahtar kelimeler: Post-Yugoslav, Belgrad, Balkanlar, Savaş sineması, Milošević
Book Chapters by Özgür Yaren