Istanbul International Film Festival Kicks Off

September 29, 2011

People view an exhibition by leftist Turkish victims of the Sept. 12, 1980 military takeover that shows a replica of the gallows used to hang suspects, torture devices as well as letters, newspapers, clothes and photographs of comrades who died, went missing or were tortured, in Ankara, Turkey, September 11, 2011.

This week the city of Istanbul is hosting a ground-breaking international film festival. Called "Crime and Punishment," it is focusing on military coups. Turkey is no stranger to coups with its military seizing power three times since 1960. Even though the army last took power in 1980, coups have remained a taboo subject

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The opening speeches of the "Crime and Punishment" festival address the painful legacy of Turkey's history of military coups, in which thousands of people were detained and tortured and hundreds more disappeared.

For decades that legacy was buried. The army was strictly off limits to journalists, documentary and filmmakers.

"For 20 years you could not talk about anything, you could not create about that issue," said festival film organizer Hulya Sungu. "It was just taboo. Actually it was so hard to organize this kind festival in Turkey without a Turkish film about military coups, because it was not so easy to make a movie about the coup itself. But we just tried to gather all of the country's movies, like Venezuela Argentina and Peru, get their military coup reflection on cinema, and get them together."