America: The War Within

Revolutionaries passed before the streets of the 1960s on the road to democracy. Then the youth with the victory songs, the workers with the rebel flags, the rightists, the leftists and the putschists again. The country spent 12 years in the grip of the revolution and in the end all roads came to the same crossroads. Ankara was restless in the minutes when the ousted prime minister of the Democratic Party, Adnan Menderes, was hanged. The news of Menderes' execution had not yet come. There was an anxious wait in the houses. Ears were on the radio. Everyone was wondering what happened in Imrali. In the Assembly, the National Unity Committee was in a meeting. They were also trying to learn the fate of Menderes. Suddenly, news came that EP Chairperson Ragıp Gümüşpala and Secretary General Şinasi Osman wanted to meet with the committee urgently. The committee members did not break the request of their former commander Gümüşpala and made an appointment for 14:30...

This documentary shows the fascist might of the Marcos regime and how militarisation and human rights violations were institutionalised in Philippine political life. The film exposes the human rights violations during the Marcos regime, unmasking the dictator's claims that there were no political detainees under martial law. Arrogance of Power (1983, TRT 38 mins.) is a documentary by AsiaVisions (previously named Creative Audio-Visual Specialists or CAVS) made originally in Super 8 migrated to U-matic and digitized for access.

In 2017, twenty years after the British handed over Hong Kong to China in 1997, young people, more politicized than any previous generation and proud of their land, do not feel Chinese and actively fight against the oligarchs who want to subdue them to China's authoritarian power.

In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed ceramics workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act - the take - has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head. Armed only with slingshots and an abiding faith in shop-floor democracy, the workers face off against the bosses, bankers and a whole system that sees their beloved factories as nothing more than scrap metal for sale.

By the end of 1963, the word coup was no longer spoken in Turkey. Talat Aydemir is history, the last tremors of the May 27 earthquake have passed and the sliding faults of the regime have begun to settle into place. In this transition period, which lasted more than four years, the person who managed to get the ship to the port without running aground was İsmet İnönü. He ruled for four troubled years in a country torn between armed uprisings, Cyprus crises, coalition governments and regime debates. But meanwhile, he was also worn out. In the local elections held at the end of 1963, while the CHP's votes remained at 37 percent, the AP found 45 percent. But on the very day of the final election results, a few gunshots heard from across the Atlantic turned everything upside down...

The slogan "Great Türkiye" began to be heard for the first time in the mid-60s. The Turkish economy had become unstable and stagnant at the hands of military interventions and the provisional government. After 1965, the system began to settle. The economy's also recovered. With the 2nd Development Plan, the wheels of a liberal economy were turned. On the 1 hand, private sector incentives, big projects such as Keban Dam and Bosphorus Bridge. Electricity was going to the villages, Turkey was getting its share from the growth in the world, the country was "doubling up" in the words of the prime minister. Inflation was five percent. Demirel, who rushed from one groundbreaking ceremony to the next, had nothing to say. Of course, this vitality was also reflected in social life. Unions, associations, universities were fidgety. The world and Türkiye were going to 1968 at full speed. The year that gave its name to a generation in the history of the world and Turkey; 1968 had come...

When March of 1971 knocked on the door, a military intervention was imminent in the country. Bombs were exploding in a strange way from right to left, and the urban guerrilla was resorting to unconventional acts such as bank robbery and kidnapping. The generals had decided to put a stop to this trend. Dynamite was placed under Prime Minister Demirel. The question now was who would ignite the fuse of the dynamite. President Sunay was waiting to watch the approaching explosion silently from Çankaya. Tuğmaç, Chief of General Staff, tried to delay the explosion as much as possible, preferring Demirel to self-destruct. The two generals were watching each other to see who would ignite the fuse first. These two generals were Faruk Gürler and Muhsin Batur. The fire was in their hands. They were going to detonate the dynamite...

Demirkırat stumbled on March 12, 1971. Actually, you know, they shoot limping horses. But this time it didn't. Turkish democracy continued to run despite its wounds. Because March 12 was not a "seizure" but a "warning". The generals were saying, "If what we want is not done, we will seize it." The country was entering a new era under this Sword of Damocles. A president who was helpless in the face of events, a prime minister who had to leave his seat, a newly fallen parliament, four generals neither inside nor outside the power... Now, a solution would be tried to be found out of this complex equation. But how and with whom? No one knew the answer to these questions in Turkey on the morning of March 13.

Looking back at the turmoil of the 1950s today, it's hard not to be sad. Even though one knows the end of the story, he is always waiting for something to happen to prevent this bitter ending. He wants the mistakes made to be noticed, a common point to be agreed and the accident that says I am coming to be prevented. But in vain... After the accident today, all we can do is look at the causes of the accident and learn from it... Beginning from the mid-1950s, the democracy, which was knitted stitch by knot before, began to unravel again, stitch by stitch. A tense, harsh, vicious period has opened in the political arena... It seemed impossible to see the future and take precautions in that dusty smoke...

During the multi-party period in Turkey, no party could achieve the success that the Democrat Party achieved in the 1954 elections. Since those days, no party has been able to repeat the 56 percent of the DP's votes in that election. Now, 93 out of every 100 deputies in the parliament were from the DP. The DP power had reached a heavy and overwhelming majority... Menderes was at the peak of his power and prestige. But as in everything else, the highest point reached in politics was also the point where the descent would begin.

In the past, when spring came, there was a spring atmosphere in politics. But the spring of 1959 brought the CHP's spring offensive on the contrary. Seeing that the opportunity for a dialogue was completely lost after Menderes' plane crash, İsmet Pasha put on his boots in April and took his 46 deputies with him to the expedition. The chosen route was the route of the Great Offensive in the War of Independence. Uşak, where İnönü took the Greek Commander-in-Chief Trikupis prisoner, was the first stop...