‘Midnight Express’ a pale comparison of prison conditions

THE 1978 prison drama film, Midnight Express, tells the story of a young American student, Bill Hayes, who spent five years in various Turkish prisons from 1970 to 1975 after being caught attempting to smuggle 2kg of hashish out of Turkey.

The Academy Award-winning film has once again gained attention. The White House press secretary of former US President Donald Trump, Stephanie Grisham, mentioned in her newly released book, I’ll Take Your Questions Now, that during the 2019 G20 Summit, Trump randomly asked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo÷an whether he’d seen Midnight Express.

The movie, which was one of the most controversial of its era, offended the Turkish nation, with prison scenes being described by critics as “nightmarish” and “unforgettable”. Recent information indicates that the reality of life in Turkish prisons is far worse than the shocking portrayal from four decades ago.

Considered one of Alan Parker’s greatest movies, Midnight Express is based on Hayes’s 1977 non-fiction book Midnight Express. The movie won two Oscars and became a huge part of pop culture. It was filmed at Fort Saint Elmo in Valletta, Malta, after permission to film in Istanbul was denied, and depicted Turkish prison guards and prisoners as sadistic, villainous, and corrupt.

Hayes, who made several trips to Turkey before his incarceration in 1970 and had several friends in the country, including a girlfriend, later, on several occasions, expressed his deep regret for what he called a misrepresentation of people and exaggeration of events as well as from the misunderstanding that arose from the film.

The Californian documentary film-maker Sally Sussman, who premiered her film Midnight Return in Cannes in 2016, spoke of the political ramifications, describing the devastating impact the movie had on the Turkish tourism industry.

Sussman, who visited Turkey with Hayes to shoot the documentary, said: “He (Hayes) was very emotional being back in Turkey because he really loved Turkey and he always felt bad about its portrayal in the film … When he was back there, it was a chance for him to reassure Turkish people that ‘no, I don’t hate you’… even if they hated him.”.

While Midnight Express was a controversial film and offensive to Turks, the reality is that torture and severe human rights violations are being committed by the Turkish state. The International Turkey Tribunal, which consists of six judges, heard the testimony of 16 post-coup victims in Geneva on September 28 and found that around 3 000 complaints of torture are filed against the Turkish authorities each year.

Kurdish sympathisers and Gulen

Movement members were found to be the most-often targeted groups. After hearing from various Turkish teachers, journalists and members of the judiciary who were subjected to inhuman torture by the Turkish state, the judges concluded that “the acts of torture and enforced disappearances committed in Turkey, in applications brought before an appropriate body and subject to the proof of the specific knowledge and intent of the accused, could amount to crimes against humanity”.

The South African Mail & Guardian newspaper reported that the Turkey Tribunal was preparing an application to the International Criminal Court after finding that torture and abductions have become systematic since the country’s attempted coup in July 2016. Despite recent findings during Turkey’s Tribunal as well as other international bodies’ damning reports and criticism, such as that of the UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the EU, the Turkish state continues persecuting several minority groups and especially Gulen Movement members.

Hayes was unhappy with the movie’s portrayal of all Turks as evil, but never denied that he had endured torture.

“I’ve had handcuffs on. Handcuffs are nasty,” he says at one point, with no prodding. “Chains? There’s a whole different feel when they chain you. That brings back some deep, I dunno what, but I don’t like chains at all. I didn’t like getting tied and beaten, either, Hayes said while recalling his prison experience in Turkey.

Hayes managed to escape prison, was welcomed by Greece and sent back to his country. But thousands of postcoup purge victims are not as lucky and are imprisoned for “crimes” such as having an account in a bank, or for their charity work, and are slowly and painfully dying in Erdo÷an’s prisons.