Yurt - Dormitory

Directed by Nehir Tuna

Starrings: Doğa Karakaş Can Bartu Arslan Ozan Çelik Tansu Biçer Didem Ellialtı Orhan Güner Işilti Su Alyanak

Ahmet Hakan Yakup Hodja Father Mother Behlül Hodja Sevinç

Country: Türkiye

Year 2023

Review author: Shane Virunphan

Click Here for Italian Version

“Not everything Arab is sacred.”

In Turkey, in the 1920s, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, an army officer, unleashed the challenge to the decadent Ottoman Empire from Anatolia. His motivation for fighting was no longer religious. His principles were those of secularism, patriotism, and the westernization of society. With his victory, Turkey became a Muslim country but with a secular leader. A frequently violent controversy broke out between the two factions. The Kemalist republic was opposed by an energetic religious opposition. There were numerous revolts, such as those of the dervishes and other brotherhoods.

“During the 1960s and 1970s, these militant religious organizations seemed to have lost ground, and in many countries their activity was prohibited or restricted; However, they continued to operate clandestinely and were in tune with the tendencies and desires of many members of the lower classes of Islamic society." (1)

The conflicts between seculars and brotherhoods are still fought out today. A war with alternating victories and defeats, with a divided Türkiye. In the era of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, religious brotherhoods have acquired an advantage but certainly not a clear predominance.

In 1996, this competition was won by the seculars, who dominated in the schools. In schools, young religious people were viewed with revulsion. It is the historical period of the film Yurt – Dormitory by director Nehir Tuna presented at the 80th Venice International Film Festival.

In dispute with the secular schools were the Yurts, the dormitories managed by the brotherhoods with an intensely religious spirit and incompatible with the system of secular government.

Ahmet is a teenage student. He comes from a deeply religious family, with a father who was a member of an important congregation. He studies in a secular school but simultaneously lives in a Yurt. He is ashamed of his condition in front of his classmates. He does not reveal the dormitory to him, stopping far from the Yurt so as not to expose his duplicity.

Likewise, the dormitory hides its non-religious aspect, often coming into conflict with the rigid rules.

There is also a social component. The school is attended by children of the middle class, a nascent bourgeoisie that grew up thanks to the politics of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

The guests of the dormitory are instead young people from more disadvantaged and destitute families.

Inside, Ahmet manages to make friends with Hakan, an orphan welcomed into the hostel.

Nehir Tuna was born in 1985 and is the same age as the protagonist. He had similar experiences, hosted in Yurts. In interviews he states autobiographical influences:

“Just like Ahmet, the main character, I’ve spent five years in a religious boarding school. I keep abiding memories of this experience, and most of them are quite similar to what Ahmet is going through: being brutally separated from one’s family, having to get used to new living conditions overnight... The reasons why my father wanted to send me to a boarding school are also addressed in the film: to climb the social ladder, to assert his faith and his religious responsibilities, to set himself up as an example within the community... Ahmet’s father is seeking his own salvation by sending his son away.

Just like I was, Ahmet is a hard-working student, who doesn’t rebel much and who wants to please everyone, especially his father. He is also really resilient: he knows that time will prove him right.” (2)

The author describes these arguments, both the primary one of the dispute between lay people and believers, and others of equal depth.

“Being brutally” seems like the director felt the first time away from his family intimately, in fact he says:

“... being brutally separated from one’s family, having to get used to new living conditions overnight.” (2)

The family and the human conflict with the father is underlined in many sequences. The father and son discussions even culminate in a bloody argument in which Ahmet injures the parent by cutting his hand. A clear Oedipal circumstance.

The director uses it to narrate love relationships, both family ones, and the one with his friend Hakan, and even the one with his classmate, courted by Ahmet:

“How would you describe the relationship between Ahmet and Hakan? Is it a love story?

All relationships are multifaceted, and sometimes it just take a different outlook to change the nature of a bond. Overall, I think that Yurt is the story of a young boy who is searching for love: the love of his father, or the -more classically romantic- love of the young girl who joins his class during the year, or that, more friendly, between him and Hakan, whom he sees at once as a model, a big brother... To me, Ahmet’s story is a combination of those three relationships. And maybe he gradually realises that his relationship with Hakan features all these aspects: filial love, romantic love, friendship/love.” (2)

It is a common attitude of a teenager, a coming-of-age story set in a dramatic era, in a nation that is economically growing but so far socially struggling.

In his interview Nehir Tuna talks about friendship, love and even homo impulses experienced by Hakan with an intransigent and fervent professor.

Ahmet is characterized perfectly in the frame by his entrance into the school. All his comrades' shoes are old, broken and dirty. His shoes, on the other hand, are shiny and very clean. Despite coming from a rich family, underlined by his luxurious house, Ahmet is a loner. He faces hostile environments and contexts with his authoritative father or secular classmates or with the love of a girl. He appears immature but is intelligent, careful in his studies. He doesn't know how to extricate himself between the two worlds. He loves and accepts them both. He is forced to face decisive circumstances also because of his father, who pushes him to support his way of life.

In the end he makes a choice. To obtain it he had to involuntarily trample on a friend, the weakest person, sacrificing him for his impulses.

Hakan is without a family, without a home. Without the dormitory he would be homeless. He seems interested in Professor Hodja's religiosity but in reality he is driven by his hormonal impulses. It's not a religious choice, he tries to make up for his loneliness.

Ahmet and Hakan are opposites. Ahmet's parents are wealthy. Hakan is poor and orphaned. Ahmet lives in a comfortable home, surrounded by the affection of his father and mother. Hakat lives in a loveless dormitory. Ahmet learns profitably and slowly approaches religiosity. Hakat is strictly religious, needing an alternative to the void in which he is immersed.

Their friendship is a conscious turning point. The basis is a chimera, a search for treasure, a hope of finding money. Their expedition, with a stolen car, establishes their attachment and their irresolvable difference.

But there is an imbalance. Hakan has a more evil but at the same time more sincere humanity. Hakan is attracted to his partner but at the same time suffers from a hidden envy. He steals his shoes and other items to sell on the black market. He is fragile, insecure, unstable, melancholic.

These characteristics emerge clearly during their attempt to recover the treasure. Both have the conviction and desire to be able to emancipate themselves. Yet there is a fundamental discrepancy. Ahmet has his back covered, he lives it as an adventure, behind him he has a wealthy family ready to help him even in case of trouble.

For Hakan it's different. His life, his future is at stake. He has only one chance so he has to push his luck. Failure would be the end: expulsion from the dormitory and wandering.

Disinterested in his friend's needs, the ending shows Ahmet's selfishness.

The director uses various languages.

Starting from black and white. He uses it deliberately:

“Yurt starts in black and white and then, mid-course, it switches to colour. What was the motive for this bold move?

Symbolically, I thought that black and white suited life at the boarding school: everything in there is unequivocal, it is either all black or all white. You are either a devout person or an infidel, there is no room for nuance. There is no room for colour either, especially for the mixing of colours. Colours only appear when Ahmet and Hakan run away and experience a true feeling of freedom. The film becomes more dynamic, the camera is more mobile, and freer as well... Then the colours slightly fade out as the film draws to an end.” (2)

It is a Truffaut film both for the beauty of black and white and for the adolescent story of an eternally difficult growth, tormented between the love of his father and that of his friends.

Black and white eventually disappears. We return to color. It's time to escape. The kids feel falsely free. They have the youthful adrenaline of doing something forbidden, a rebellion against everyone, secular and religious. Therefore color paints the dream of the two friends, because life can be in black and white but you always dream in color.

The film focuses on the daily, meticulous existence in the dormitory. It's not easy to live there. Too many differences, too much discipline, too many prohibitions, too many bullies. The kids are slowing down. So they react. Quarrels, fights, even sexual disturbances arise, with the viewing of pornographic images and some enticements outside of the inflexible teachings.

The obsessive relationship with the father occurs both in the scene of his wounding and in another more intense one. The father has gone out, Ahmet is at home, in bed. He looks for the pillow his father slept on. He takes it and continues to sleep with it. An expressive, passionate, obvious sequence. It is not a normal generational dispute but it is an impetuous request for love. In the epilogue the father is proud of his son. Hakan has disappeared, injured during the escape, probably living on the street. Ahmet knows what to choose.

Secular and religious disagreements are fierce. The dormitory is shocked by the continuing police searches in search of nothing, but carried out only for the purpose of intimidation.

Added to the threat are attacks on young people from secular movements. A difficult situation, still present in a Türkiye eager for pan-Islamic domination.

The viewer remains doubtful. They expect the opposite, that is, fundamentalists who attack secularists, not knowing the powerful evolutions of Turkish history.

Not even the secular and bourgeois school is a paradise. “It's scary there is someone like that among us” Ahmet's girlfriend declares her fear for the presence of Yurt students in the school. The girl is unaware of Ahmet's truth. Discrimination against individuals with a religiosity. Ahmet hides, hides the reality of him for love. Another love, the one for the beautiful companion.

The director is very good. An esthete of beauty, praising color and photography like a painter. The black and white has sensible nuances constantly following the characters and their evolution. Their glances, the implications are minimal movements of the body and eyes.

The structure is explained and didactic. The stages of story development are precisely outlined. The final twist with Ahmet's decision is integral to his development.

The film has atmosphere, formal, poetic, elegant chromaticism, an ethical hesitation for ambiguous behaviors.

1. Bernard Lewis, La costruzione del Medio Oriente – The Shaping of the Modern Middle East, Edizione economica Laterza, II edizione, 2011, Pagina 144/145 Translated by authour

2. Director’s Interview. Pressbook.