By Jon Gorvett

WHILE the dispute over the publishing of insulting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Danish and French newspapers-and the associated debate over free speech-has been crossing continents in recent weeks, Turks also have been finding the limits of what can and cannot be said.

In the process, the current state of play on a number of political sore points has been writ large, as has the troubling nature of certain recent events on the nation's psyche. Behind all this many see the stormy waters of a country in transition, where old established ways are being comprehensively challenged.

The most recent public example of this was a feature movie, "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq." In this, a Turkish James Bond figure avenges the death of a friend who commits suicide after being shamed by the U.S. military. During the resulting odyssey around northern Iraq, the Turkish special agent makes much use of his license to kill, dispatching U.S. soldiers with ease and cool usually associated with 007's effortless slaughtering of gangs of KGB agents. Sinister Israelis are blasted as well, their trade being in the stealing of organs from Iraqi babies, provided to them by an obliging U.S. military when it is not too busy machine-gunning wedding parties.

Grotesque as all this might seem, it has been the most popular Turkish movie in years, breaking all box office records within days of release. Based on a popular TV series, it was always likely to do well, but has clearly exceeded the expectations of even its most optimistic producers.

All of it is perfectly true, too, according to many of those involved in its production-and certainly according to many of those in its audiences.

The initial incident is indeed based on a real event. Back on the 4th of July of 2003, U.S. soldiers arrested 11 Turkish Special Forces soldiers in Suleymaniye in northern Iraq. Simultaneously, they also raided the city's offices of the Turkomen Front, and most analysts saw the two as related. The soldiers first were charged with plotting to assassinate the Kurdish mayor of the city, then were released with an apology.

The incident rankled enormously in Turkey, which was already strongly opposed to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and had refused Washington use of its territory for the operation.

What the incident in Suleymaniye primarily revealed, however, was the collapse of Turkish influence in northern Iraq. During the years leading up to the 2003 invasion, the Turkish military had launched many invasions of its own into Iraq, usually under the rubric of "hot pursuit" operations against the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK). These had often reached the size of army corps assaults, with permanent Turkish military bases inside Iraq also established.

Following the U.S. arrival, however, and with the Iraqi Kurds proving Washington's most loyal allies, things changed. Indeed, much of "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq" is about the loss of the "old" relationships, of authority and prestige in a northern Iraq suddenly made foreign again. The Special Forces soldiers likely were part of Turkish efforts to establish a rear guard "stay behind" force in northern Iraq among the Iraqi Turkomens, for whom Ankara had often claimed a special responsibility, yet who by 2003 already were loudly condemning Ankara for having abandoned them. That even this operation was so easily rolled up by the U.S. and its Kurdish allies added even greater to the sense of frustration and loss in the Turkish military and its associated organizations.

Much, then, as James Bond covered the retreat and collapse of British influence around the world in a hail of bullets and bedroom conquests, "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq" masks a Turkish retreat too.

At the same time, the silver screen has long been a popular place to work through fantasies of revenge. But another stage recently-and perhaps more seriously-proving popular for this has been the Turkish courtroom.

While "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq" may not represent a serious public discussion of issues such as Turkey's policy in Iraq and toward the Kurds-over the border as well as domestically-others who have tried to be more serious have not been so fortunate.

Back in October 2004, the Human Rights Advisory Board, attached to the Turkish Prime Ministry, held a press conference to deliver its conclusions on the state of human rights in Turkey, with particular reference to minority rights.

Such was the anger this discussion generated among certain members of the board, however, that before its chairman, Baskin Oran, had gotten into his opening speech, another member of the board had grabbed the report from Oran's hands and torn it up in front of the cameras, denouncing it as the work of traitors.

Now, in February 2006, Oran and fellow board member Ibrahim Kaboglu have been put on trial, charged under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code-the same article used to charge Nobel Prize nominee Orhan Pamuk and many journalists. All have been accused of "insulting Turkishness."

The board's report, which has never been published and was disowned by the very government that had commissioned it, called for the recognition of Kurds as a minority and said that non-Muslim minorities were often unfairly treated in Turkey-they are forbidden, for example, from joining the police or Foreign Ministry, or from becoming officers in the military.

Meanwhile, the case against Pamuk has collapsed, while a Febuary trial of half a dozen senior and respected journalists was postponed to April. While the prosecutions have been brought entirely by one group of very nationalist lawyers, it would be wrong to see this as the work of an isolated minority.

What "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq" and the current rash of prosecutions under Article 301 both show is the degree of uncertainty, if not hostility, many Turks feel toward current changes. With the train toward European Union membership already chugging along the track-even if Turkey has something of a third-class ticket-major reforms in how the country is governed and in the importance of traditional institutions, both formal and informal, already are taking place.

For many, these changes so far have not meant much improvement. Indeed, unemployment remains high, while the state itself-traditionally the place many Turks looked for support-is being rolled back by market liberalization. This rollback, moreover, is supported by the IMF and World Bank, completing what some Turks see as a ring of foreign powers and organizations around the country, which these outsiders are seeking to divide and rule.

While most liberal commentators see all this paranoia through the optimistic prism of the inevitable growing pains of democratization and the move toward EU membership, others are reacting to this feeling of foreign encirclement in a much more desperate manner. The murder in early February of a Catholic priest in the Black Sea city of Trabzon and the attack on an Armenian church in the central Anatolian city of Kayseri later the same month are also warnings. Non-Muslims are seen by some nationalists as basically non-Turks, more foreigners out to undermine the country.

In the circumstances, many feel reassured by such movies as "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq" for showing their country as able to take on even the world's one superpower and beat it. At the same time, however, suggesting that Turkey is anything other than a solid, unified nation, Muslim in religion and Turkish in ethnicity, is often seen as a kind of treachery-as many in the country's courtrooms are now discovering.

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Jon Gorvett is a free-lance journalist based in Istanbul.

This article was originally published in the April 2006 edition of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It is used here with permission.