Art As a Catalyst for Transnational Dialogue: Cinematic Insights into Turkish-German Relations
This paper is based on first findings of our ongoing DAAD-TÜBITAK-funded bilateral project ‘Distant Neighbors: Exploring Political Narratives and Visual Culture in Turkish-German Relations’ that aims at challenging the dominant narrative among contemporary prevailing scholarly debates on Turkish-German relations that mainly focus on political elites and decision-making processes on the diplomatic level of high politics (e.g. Arısan-Eralp et al. 2022; Aydın-Düzgit and Tocci 2015; Turhan 2019). From such a point of view, for example in the research fields of European Union studies and foreign policy analysis (e.g. Reiners and Turhan 2021; Tekin and Schönlau 2022) scholars often diagnose a growing distant and pragmatic relationship between Germany and Turkey due to an alienation in the European integration process and the strategic game between both countries around geopolitical concerns, the EU-Turkey deal on refugees and currently the Israel-Gaza war. Following this focus of analysis, the relationship is characterized as a transformation from a befriended to a rather pragmatic mode of cooperation.
By broadening the empirical scope from political elites to the art scene and cultural actors (filmmakers, novelists, musicians, artists etc.) from both countries in their European and transnational context, we argue that these actors, have developed and established practices and creative techniques in transnational cooperation and thereby overcome the nationalist-driven narratives of a distant relationship. Given both countries’ growing ties in light of the 1960s labor migration from Turkey to Germany, today’s postmigrant and culturally diverse societies gave birth to a vivid transnational cultural scene. This paper investigates the influence of cinema in shaping present-day Turkish-German relations.