Modernization and migration in Turkish cinema

The main objective of this study is to reveal the course of modernization in Turkish society by identifying and evaluating the changes and transformations of the changing production system in the living standards of the Turkish people as people started to leave their settlements with industrialization. For this purpose, this process of change and transformation experienced by the Turkish people, the phenomenon of migration within the scope of modernization, and how the migrant is constructed and reflected in Turkish cinema are examined under the identity category. The spatial construction of the immigrant identity and the traces of the changing social structure in Turkish cinema based on the themes of exclusion, marginalization, and alienation were determined as the focal point, and the processes that the Turkish social structure went through were tried to be understood in the context of the migration experience. In the sample selection of the study, migration-themed films that were first released between 1960-1990, which reflect the socio-cultural, political, economic structure and modernization policies of the period, which can carry the oppositions of west-east, traditional-modern, old-new, and which feature the life stories of individuals trying to gain a place in the regions they migrated to, were used. Research questions such as how modernization is reflected in Turkish cinema, how migration-themed films reflect their periodic descriptions, and in what shape, size, and direction the characters are constructed have guided the study. A qualitative research design was created, and the films were analyzed within the framework of the themes of spatial settlement, exclusion, marginalization, and alienation within the scope of the identity category with the content analysis method, which has an explanatory and descriptive methodology, thus deep reading of the texts was carried out. This study compared movies on internal migration between 1960 and 1990. Thus, it aims to make a cultural-political reading of the phenomenon of migration in Turkish cinema by analyzing its structure within the scope of modernization. At the same time, this study intends to contribute to the field by identifying Turkish society's changing and transforming social structure in the context of the identity category.