Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin warns he won’t return to Turkey, fearing imprisonment following his agent’s arrest. At the Cannes premiere of his latest film Amrum, he condemned the Turkish regime as increasingly authoritarian.
Acclaimed film director Fatih Akin said he fears ending up behind bars if he returns to Turkey, with his manager there in jail accused of attempting to overthrow the government.
The Turkish-German auteur — a hero to many in the country for films like Head-On, In the Fade and the Istanbul music documentary Crossing the Bridge — told AFP late Friday that agent Ayse Barim is "totally apolitical and innocent" of the charges, which relate to protests 12 years ago.
"If they put her in prison, what the hell is going on?" Akin asked. "So I better not go there. I don't want to take the risk."
Barim, 56, who was arrested in January, denied helping to organize the 2013 Gezi protests that shook the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — who was prime minister at the time — saying she only attended the protests to accompany her clients, some of Turkey's most famous stars.
Prosecutors accused her of "pushing" her actors to take part, a claim she denies.
A small demonstration to save some trees in a park in central Istanbul spiraled into nationwide anti-government protests that brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets.
Hamburg-born Akin, whose new film Amrum premiered at the Cannes film festival, said "officially there is no warrant for me".
"But to be honest, I don't know," he added, saying anything was possible as Turkey was being run by "mobsters".
"They have other values, it's shocking," he said.
Opposition silenced
"Certain politicians are not even afraid to go to war if this helps them to stay in power. And Erdogan is one of them," he added.
Turkey has been hit by the biggest wave of protests since Gezi since the arrest in March of Istanbul's opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on corruption charges.
The popular mayor is Erdogan's biggest political rival, with the opposition and rights groups saying he was locked up to stop him running against the president in elections in 2028.
Nearly 2,000 people, including journalists, have been arrested in the crackdown on dissent since, with Imamoglu's X account blocked.
Akin, whose family comes from the Black Sea region like Erdogan's, said part of the "nonsense" case against Barim is that "she had talked 39 times" with jailed liberal philanthropist Osman Kavala, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2022.
"Those 39 times were because of my film The Cut (which touched on the Ottoman-era genocide of Armenians) because Kavala financed part of it and she's managing me. So they talked because of me and both are now in prison. I'm the connecting point," he said.
Barim was about as far from an activist as you could imagine, he added. "She's an agent, a talent manager — a neo-liberal capitalist for heaven's sake."
The Golden Globe and Golden Bear winner, 51, said he suspected Turkish prosecutors would try to pretend that he was also "part of the gang" plotting to overthrow Erdogan.
"A lot of people are proud of me" for showcasing Turkish culture and the diaspora, "but these people don't care about that," Akin added.
Turkish authorities regularly target journalists, lawyers, celebrities, and elected political representatives, especially since a failed 2016 coup against the government.
By Fiachra GIBBONS / AFP
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