Turkish diaspora 3rd generation cinematography in Europe: The case of Tevfik Başer

Cinema, maintaining its interaction with society throughout history, has adapted to changing conditions of each era, ensuring its continuity. The issue of migration, which persists today, has been approached and portrayed through cinema as a reflection of societal dynamics. The phenomenon of migration in Turkey, beginning in the 1950s, is rooted in economic factors and has caused various changes in cultural and social domains. In tandem with these transformations, migration has become a prominent theme in Turkish Cinema since the 1960s, focusing on societal issues. Subsequently, starting in the 1960s, international migration from Turkey aimed at economic development, increasing foreign currency inflow, and contributing to the national economy. Particularly, Germany aimed to enhance its industry and workforce, leading to a Turkish labor migration through a diplomatic agreement in 1961. However, this spatial mobility has brought about a series of challenges. The attention to the cultural and identity issues faced by individuals obliged to live in a foreign country led Turkish directors to explore the phenomenon of external migration from the 1970s onwards. An increase in films focusing on the representation of individuals of migrant origin has been observed. In the context of this study, Turkish director Tevfik Başer, who went to Germany for educational purposes and filmed the first feature-length movie in Germany as a German-Turkish co-production, portrays the cultures brought by migrants and the experiences lived under the foreign identity. The 'Yalıtılmış Yaşam Üçlemesi,' consisting of the films '40m² Deutschland' (1986), 'Abschied Vom Falschen Paradies' (1989), and 'Lebewohl, Fremde' (1991), focuses on the theme of external migration, representing characters' isolated lives through different scaled spaces. Beyond the physical act of displacement, these works explore the encounter of migration with the individual's ethnic, societal, and class issues, along with the experience of a new culture, space, and social structure. The films depict characters struggling with identity issues such as marginalization, identity conflict, and alienation, emphasizing the tension between the individual's spatial acquisitions and the new space. In this context, the study aims to examine the effects of the migration phenomenon on individuals and the relationship between the characters' identity issues in limited spaces, taking into account the spatial elements of the selected films, using content analysis methodology.