Turtles Can Fly The Movie

The film is based on the Kurdish people and their long history fighting for a national identity which can be seen in their history. The Kurdish people are Sunni Muslim people, who have their own language and traditions, living on the mountainous borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Armenia. They are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East but they are still considered “nationless”. The traditional Kurdish life was nomadic until World War 1 and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. The 1920 Treaty of Sevres created the nation states Iraq, Syria, and Kuwait. It was also supposed to include the Kurdistan but that was never implemented. The Turkish and Iraqi government have outlawed the use of the Kurdish language, and traditional customs along with encouraging them to move into …show more content…
The Kurdish people have rebelled multiple times against the oppressing government but are still fighting for their national identity today. (Washington Post, 1999) This movie also gives the view an inside look of the individual effect of not having a national identity. Roger Ebert said it best in his review of Turtles can fly “It is about the actual lives of refugees, who lack the luxury of opinions because they are preoccupied with staying alive in a world that has no place for them” (Ebert, 2005). The people in the camp are living day by day to just survive and they do not have the numbers or the power to assert their dominance and make the surrounding countries see them as equal. The characters in Turtles Can Fly serve as a scaled representation of the fight for national identity and the effect of not having a solid national identity can have on the individual and a