Abstract

This article historically delves into the modernist1 and distinctive Turkish auteur Derviş

Zaim's first two movies of 'traditional Ottoman arts trilogy’, Waiting for Heaven (2006) and The

Dot (2008)2, through the inquiries of principal dichotomies of Turkey, such as Ottoman

traditionalism-Kemalist Westernization; the East-West dichotomy; and Islam and Secularism.

Zaim’s attempt is a pioneering work following former Turkish director Metin Erksan and his

movie, Time to Love (1965), in accordance with its modernist facets. Beyond Erksan, Zaim

constructs a novel attitude, whereby he employs tradition through a diverse cultural heritage. He

engages historical Turkey motifs in a branch of Western art, cinema; and attempts to construct

local aesthetics by creating a structure suitable for the authentic Turkey identity that is a mixture

of Western and Eastern cultures. Therefore, his forms and narratives propose an understanding

for an interaction amid the East and West fusion or dilemma in cinematic language. Furthermore,

Zaim's utilization of Sufi Literature and finding new forms regarding Sufi narrative and Ottoman

arts are dug out throughout the study. Within this context, this article deconstructs Zaim’s

common approaches in Waiting for Heaven and The Dot according to their narrative and form;

and researches the aesthetic and fictional correlations.

Keywords: Waiting for Heaven, The Dot, Ottoman handcraft trilogy, East and West

dichotomy, form, narrative

Feature of Forms Rooted back to the Ottoman Tradition: A Modernist Analysis of

1
Despite its various usages, modernism is elaborated as a concept that defends the reproduction of historical
background in line with contemporary fashion in this article.
2
The last movie of the Ottoman art trilogy, Shadows and Faces (2010) is not involved in the analysis due to its
explicit stance in late politics.
 Derviş Zaim's Waiting for Heaven (2006) and The Dot (2008)

Introduction

This article delineates the familiar narrative elements and their reflections on the form of

the first two movies, 'traditional Ottoman arts trilogy’, Waiting for Heaven (2006) and The Dot

(2008), shot by the idiosyncratic Turkish auteur Derviş Zaim. For echoing genuine Turkey, Zaim

delves into the dualism of the East-West, Islam, and secular lifestyle by incorporating historical

Ottoman arts and culture with local aesthetics. Zaim attains these characteristics by not building

an Orientalist, Islamist, or radical positivist structure, which are ideological discords common

among fundamental schisms of Turkey, rooted back to the beginning of Westernization process.

Within this context, the following section concisely explicates the debates and progress during

Westernization process of Turkey in order to reveal the country’s position between the East and

West. Then, the subsequent section concisely introduces Zaim's career; and then, inaugurates

film analysis, respectively, by delineating Waiting for Heaven and The Dot.

Short History of Turkey's Westernization Process

In order to understand Zaim's propensity to reveal Turkey’s synthesis, full of interstices,

amid the East and West, the Westernization process of Turkey ought to be understood

fundamentally. The entanglement and fusion of Turkey between these two prominent

civilizations date back to the Westernization process of the country in the last three hundred

years. Until the late 18th century, the rulers of the Ottoman Empire considered that the empire

was superior to the West by grounding upon the war victories. After the Industrial Revolution,

the extraordinary rise of the West imposed on Eastern societies a matrix that the countries and

cultures apart from the West either were compelled to convert into colonies or must implement

the social and institutional alteration compelled by Westernization. Culturally, Westernization

that entered the Ottoman lands heated the debate on how to exercise this massive transformation.

The educated groups as well as movers and shakers, were simply divided by the implementation

of social and institutional necessities of Westernization. The young intellectuals, who took the

Western style of education in Europe, advocated a radical cultural, technological, and scientific

reformulation. In contrast, the conservative group, led by Ûlema, the top Islamic clergy class,

and the Sultan, were on behalf of conserving local culture, therewithal, merely making use of

Western science and technology. The second group embraced Islam more to prevent the empire

from disintegration and protect the local fixity of identity. The first group is known as, 'Young

Turks', who opposed the Sultan, fought for democratization, and supported reforms in the first

half of the 19th century Ottoman Empire. Young Turks’ reactive movement grew swiftly. These

rebellious organizations, along with the endorsement of the West and serial losses in wars, yield

to 'Imperial Edict of Gulhane' (1839) and 'Edict of Reform' (1856) that diminish the authority of

the Sultan in addition to some other Western model social and institutional reforms. In this more

democratic milieu, the modernist, positivist, and reformist Committee of Progress and Union

Party, led by chief military officers and bolstered by the reformists, took over the power in 1908.

As a consequence, the Sultan became a symbolic figure, a democratic parliament was

consolidated, and these reforms paved the way for the Kemalist reforms. However, Turkey's

Westernization process maintains its top-down and military aspects from the beginning, and it

results in a schism between secular elites and religious masses, which remains today. These two

sides generate the thesis and antithesis; as a result, today's synthesis of Turkey emerges through

the Westernization process and its dissidents.

By means of Kemalist reforms as of the 1920s, the 300-year transformation process of

Turkey essentially ends with the victory of Western culture’s radical acceptance, which
sometimes reaches the level of degenerated and emulated imitation. However, some Turkish

intellectuals, such as Tanpınar (2008), reject the radical Republican way of understanding and

stress that the haphazard Westernization actually causes a cultural decadence (p. 206). In other

words, Tanpınar would like to point out that the revolutionary effort for metamorphosis is neither

able to be entirely accepted nor rejected, since an evolutionary method, which keeps local

identity, while making reforms, were not implemented. Concordantly, this alteration results in a

sort of 'psychosis', which arises from the pendulum movement between the East and West,

among intellectuals and even ordinary people. The application of cultural conversion did not

consider the acknowledgment of Turkey's cultural background, as Tanpınar (1999) states,

"However, even in order to leap and change the horizon, you have to step somewhere" (p. 171).

Turkey did not step anywhere, but employed imitation; therefore, neither the meticulous

examples of local artworks, nor elite samples of Western art forms have been able to be

constructed in general during the Republic period. The fusion of tradition and reforms would

provide a rooted modernization; however, the cultural chain, encompassing Ottoman arts and

crafts, is broken due to the awry and hesitant Westernization. The reflection of this dubious state

of ordinary life and culture, which naturally reflects on the terrain of art, has serious

consequences. The artistic apparatus of the West is adopted to produce Orientalist artworks

and/or emulations of Western art. This symptom approximately becomes chronic, a vicious circle

in all fields of Turkey art. Some of the artists of Turkey, including Zaim, attempt to break this

endless loop by using the Western artistic tools, inclusive of cinema and novel, by not generating

Orientalist productions; in contrast, these artists focus on projecting the local culture as authentic

as possible, while reproducing the tradition in new forms.

Zaim's Career and Traditional Arts Trilogy

 Zaim’s background probably bolstered him to incorporate the historical grounds and

outcomes of the East-West problem or entanglement or fusion, whereby he will build some of his

films in his upcoming career; therefore, covering his background is essential. Zaim was born in

Cyprus. Having graduated from Boğaziçi University, he earned his master's degree in Cultural

Studies at Warwick University. The Turkish director mixed his Western model education with

his knowledge about local culture by differentiating himself from most of Turkey’s intellectuals.

In this respect, Zaim made use of Ottoman arts and architecture, especially in his traditional

trilogy and Dream (2016) as central themes, to uphold a cinematic language approaching

tradition and its position in modern Turkey. In order to obtain his goal, he discovered new

cinematic forms to achieve harmony amid this language and structure. Divergent from a common

auteur, his career deals with various themes; however, he is mainly interested in tradition. His

multicultural background and education probably play a huge role in his thematic praxis.

Zaim is cited as the initiator of the New Independent Turkey Cinema, which

approximately attracts as much attention as the Iranian New Wave at the prestigious international

film festivals, with his debut film, Somersault in a Coffin (1994) (Atam, 2010). However, he is

not generally recognized by European Film Festivals except for this movie, chiefly because of

his employment of various thematic modalities during his career. According to “the importance

of European festivals as a locus of cultural exchange between the realms of (…) the world

cinema” (Evans, 2007, abstract), Zaim’s Ottoman arts trilogy is not valued as it is deserved; in

this respect, one of this article’s aims is to introduce these movies by deconstructing them.

Within this context, after concisely mentioning the career of Zaim, this article fleshes out the

first two movies of the traditional arts trilogy within the upcoming sections subsequently.