Effects of the eurimages fund on the content of Turkish cinema after 1990s

Turkish Cinema almost came to a standstill in the early 1990s. At this point, important substantial economic aids which Turkish directors basically received was from Eurimages fund of the Council of Europe. Directors who benefited from this fund had the opportunity to make their films and qualified for participating in film screenings held in numerous international festivals. With USA gaining control over the distribution network in Turkey as of 1990s through international film distribution companies and coming to the fore with Hollywood movies in the world's film market, independent films had to unite in a sense and tried to survive. At this juncture, the financial aid Turkish cinema received from Eurimages, which was established to preserve the European culture, to survive brought along a practically substantial price in cultural and political aspects. Assuming that the non-Western wanted to be integrated to the West based upon its Eurocentrism (or Western-centrism in a wider context today), Europe would use the non-Western intellectuals who would exhibit a self-orientalist approach and indirectly otherize the non-West. Thus, directors who became alienated from their own societies in a different sense of aesthetics, started to adopt the orientalist approach whether consciously or not in order to receive fund aids for the films they wanted to make. This study will analyze the Western-centric approach in detail in the perspective of historicity of the modernity, reveal the myths, and try to make sense of the role given to the non-Western cinema in terms of cultural policy. Later on, the content of the Turkish cinema, which is an example to the non-Western cinema to have changed after 1990, following the support from European Union's Eurimages Fund will be analyzed, and this fact will be studied in terms of films within the conceptual framework.