You cannot kill a Turk with impunity - this is the message to Israel from a Turkish movie that opened Friday, taking fictional revenge of a deadly Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship last year and threatening fresh political tensions.
"Valley of the Wolves: Palestine" - to be shown in a dozen of European countries and more than 20 others in the Middle East - promises to be a blockbuster with Turkish and Arab audiences, but may make life harder for Turkish diplomats at a time when ties with Israel are already in a deep crisis.
"Go and show the world what is really the state of Israel," says an Israeli officer named Moshe Ben-Eliezer - an incarnation of evil - as he orders the assault on the Mavi Marmara ferry in the film. The May 31 raid on the Turkish vessel claimed the lives of nine Turks, dealt a major blow to once-close Turkish-Israeli ties and triggered a wave of international criticism of the Jewish state.
In the movie, scenes of massacre on the Mavi Marmara are followed by Turkish agent Polat Alemdar stepping in to settle the score - namely to kill the hateful Moshe. The Turkish hero goes to Israel and accomplished his mission at the end of 110 minutes of gunfire, punctuated by Israeli atrocities against innocent Palestinians, including the death of a paralysed boy under the debris of his demolished home.
A young Jewish-American beauty is also involved in Polat's adventures and eventually takes up the Palestinian cause. The movie attracted criticism even before its release as its creators have already been under fire for earlier productions that drew Israeli ire and triggered condemnation at home for glamorising violence and nationalism.
"Even in the fragments we see... some generalisations about the Jewish people and anti-Semitic approaches that are quite disturbing," Israeli Ambassador Gabby Levy said earlier this week, quoted by Anatolia news agency. In Germany, the film, which had been scheduled to debut on Thursday, coinciding with Holocaust remembrance day, was first stopped and then banned for viewers aged under 18.
"Valley of the Wolves", which started as a television series in 2003 and became an instant hit, angered Israel in January 2010 with an episode that showed Polat storming an Israeli embassy to rescue a Turkish boy kidnapped by Mossad. Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon gave the Turkish ambassador a public dressing down in a meeting to protest the series, infuriating Ankara. He later apologised to avert a crisis.
The movie's creators reject accusations of enmity towards Jews, arguing they target only Zionism and Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. "In our movie, we are exposing a fascist, racist ideology and we are trying to kill it before the eyes of the people," scriptwriter Bahadir Ozdener said. Actor Necati Sasmaz, who plays Polat Alemdar, insisted: "We have no problem with any people. There is no anti-Semitism here."
Fresh tensions with Israel would certainly not help Ankara at a time when it is seeking an apology and compensation from the Jewish state to settle the crisis over the raid A senior Turkish diplomat commented that the production company was motivated by profit following the commercial success - at home and abroad - of their 2006 movie that dealt with the US invasion of Iraq. "Now they believe they will sell well this one too, especially in the Arab world... Undoubtedly, it is not very helpful but we cannot prevent them from doing so," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.