Recursive Hellscapes and Abusive Authority

The Horror of Police Corruption in Can Evrenol’s Baskin (2016)

Abstract

Turkish horror films typically centre Islamic horror and Djinn narratives, but Director Can Evrenol's Baskin (2016) is one of the few post 2000s to offer a sociopolitical rather than a religion-based commentary, one that is inextricable from notions of masculinity and policing. With a premiere at the Midnight Madness Film Festival in Toronto, Canada, this self-financed horror film from a television commercial director turned film director effectively put Türkiye (formerly referred to as Turkey) on the map for Western audiences as the 8th Turkish film to earn a theatrical release in the United States as of 2015.  Horror is still a relatively new genre for Turkish film, with only four horror films produced during the Yeşilçam, or golden, era (1950s to 1980s) followed by a mini-boom occurring in the early 2000s. The opportunity to repress anxiety is disrupted if not prevented outright in Baskin. Enmeshed in polarizing tension between conservative and secular values, post-millenial horror in Türkiye mediates, represents, and responds to distinctly Turkish anxieties about justice, rights, and religion.  In Turkish, ‘baskin’ means a raid, foray, incursion, or a descent and signals moral and institutional decay in Baskin as five police officers descend into hell after responding to a distress call from one of their units. This article explores how Baskin creates a scathing indictment against the misuse of force and power by Turkish police and of authoritative power in general through an analysis of symbolism, color, and allegory. These elements in turn mediate and inform a sociopolitical commentary on real-world antecedents in Türkiye, and most notably, the Gezi Park protests in 2013.