The Ultimately Determinant Role of Economy in Yilmaz Güney's 
Movies: An Essay From the Perspective of Marxist Theory 
 

Betül Sarı Aksakal, Manisa Celal Bayar University, betulllsari@gmail.com 
 

Abstract 
The study examines a different aspect of the films of actor, screenwriter, and director Yılmaz Güney, who 
brought a new sense of reality to Turkish cinema. Güney's film Umut (The Hope), which he acted and directed 
in 1970, is a turning point for Yılmaz Güney cinema and Turkish cinema. The breath of Marxism can be felt 
in almost all of Yılmaz Güney's films after The Hope. In his films, Güney aimed to convey to the audience the 
fundamental contradictions of Turkish capitalism, the socioeconomic inequalities it created, and the resulting 
class differences. It can be argued that Güney's films discussed within the scope of the study Umut, 1970 (The 
Hope), Endişe, 1974 (The Anxiety), Sürü, 1978 (The Herd), Düşman, 1979 (The Enemy) focus on social class 
differences in the capitalist system by relying on Marxist ideology. Although the reasons for these differences 
in the movies are associated with factors such as politics, ideology, religion, culture, family, and education, it 
is thought that the most significant share of the factors that play a role in the formation of social classes is given 
to the economy. The study started with the problem of proving this claim. The films discussed within the study's 
scope revealed that the economy is the critical factor determining social class differences. 
Keywords: Yılmaz Güney; Marxism; Economy; Class Differences; Inequality 

 

 
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       94 

The Ultimately Determinant Role of Economy in Yilmaz Güney's 

Movies: An Essay From the Perspective of Marxist Theory  

Betül Sarı Aksakal 

 

Introduction 

Yılmaz Güney1 is one of the most important names of revolutionary cinema in Turkish cinema. 

The revolutionary understanding of cinema saw cinema as an action on the world and a weapon 

against the status quo. While demanding social change, it included class differences and class 

struggles. Güney's cinema presented films that reflected the lower classes and the oppressed 

society. He tried to make visible the class differences and social inequalities resulting from the 

division of labor in capitalist production relations in the cinema. Class differences and social 

inequalities in society arise from economic disparities. Starting from this, Güney's cinema has 

Marxist foundations. 

Just as Marx introduced topics and concepts such as labor, economic problems, production, 

property, and workers into philosophy, Yılmaz Güney introduced these and similar topics and 

concepts into Turkish cinema. Güney brought to the screen the people pushed back by the ruling 

classes, the people oppressed under labor exploitation, the unemployed, those who were denied 

the right to life by capitalism and made miserable, and overlooked social problems. That is why 

he was nicknamed the Ugly King in the cinema. 

Marx said that the economic structure of society forms the concrete basis on which a legal 

and political superstructure rises, corresponding to certain forms of social consciousness. This 

situation has caused Marxist thought to be criticized by many theorists for adopting an economic 

determinist method. Although Marxism is not thought to be a movement of thought with economic 



 

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determinist foundations, it is claimed that it refers to economics' ultimately determinant role in 

forming social classes. It is believed that Yılmaz Güney's films examined within the scope of this 

study act within the context of this thought. Güney's films The Hope, The Anxiety, The Herd, and 

The Enemy were examined within the study's scope. As Marx pointed out in all these films, the 

contradictory social relations between the owners of the means of production and those who have 

to work for a wage, in other words, the economic elements that form the basis of social class 

differences in the capitalist system, are conveyed to the audience. 

In all these contexts, the method of the study was mentioned first. In line with the determined 

method, how Marxism deals with the dialectical relationship between social classes and the 

economy was first discussed. Whether Marxism is based on economic determinism or the 

ultimately determining role of the economy has been stated. Then, the crucial events that led to the 

emergence of political cinema in Turkey and the revolutionary cinema approach that Yılmaz 

Güney built on the understanding of political cinema are included. It is thought that understanding 

Yılmaz Güney's cinema depends on understanding the economic, political, and sociological factors 

that Turkey faced in the 1960s and 1970s. In this context, some data from Turkey at the time were 

presented. Then, it was debated how the films discussed in the study reflected the aspect of 

Marxism as the ultimately determining role of the economy in forming social classes, and all these 

discussions were concluded. 

The study contributes to the existing literature by attempting to understand the dimension of 

Yılmaz Güney cinema, which depicts any social reality, and the social power relations that 

determine this reality. It also aims to contribute to the literature on constructing political discourse, 

based mainly on Marxist thought, in Yılmaz Güney films. 

 



 

 

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Theoretical Framework 

Films are cultural, discursive products that construct social reality and function as part of the 

cultural representation system (Ryan and Kellner, 1997, p. 17). As Ryan and Kellner underline 

when defining the ideological role and function of cinema that goes beyond being a simple means 

of entertainment: “Movies are a battleground where various forms of representation compete with 

each other to determine how social reality is to be understood and what it will be” (1997, pp. 37-

38). With the contribution of mainstream movies, the dominant theses of the dominant system and 

ideology (capitalism) are internalized by the citizen audience through representations. To shed 

light on the relationship between cinema and dominant ideology (capitalism), it is necessary first 

to include Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and Louis Althusser’s views on ideology and 

the state's ideological apparatuses. Hegemony is, in short, the worldview of the class that directs 

society (bourgeoisie). The worldview of the dominant class is spread to society by organic 

intellectuals. Gramsci considers mass media to be organic intellectuals. Cinema, one of the tools 

that Althusser calls the state's ideological apparatus, directs society by serving the dominant 

ideology (2006, pp. 30-40). In this respect, it is possible to state that cinema, as a mass media tool, 

also spreads the dominant ideology (Yaylagül, 2016, pp. 113-114). From the first scene, when the 

film is shot, reality is filtered through the dominant ideology and reproduced. Thus, the dominant 

ideology is reconstructed at every stage of the film production process. The dominant ideology is 

reproduced at many stages, including the films' subjects, styles, and narrative structure. 

Yılmaz Güney movies have shone and continue to shine with their structure that opposes 

mainstream movies that reproduce the dominant ideology. To be clear, when we think of Turkish 

cinema of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, in other words, Yeşilçam films, what comes to mind is 



 

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mostly love stories of rich girls and poor boys or crowded family comedies where the famous 

actors of the period always take part. In these stories, no economic, social, or political dimension 

is sought; most of the time, they are not observed. 

In this study, Yılmaz Güney films are discussed within their ideological functions. The 

preferred research method is ideological film criticism. The main field of study of ideological 

criticism is class contradictions and revealing these contradictions (Ryan and Kellner, 2016, p. 37). 

In the ideological film criticism approach, films are considered a reflection of the society and the 

period in which they were produced, and it is investigated how infrastructure relations with 

socioeconomic foundations determine films as superstructure products (Özden, 2004, pp. 165-

166). Regarding an ideological critical approach, it is essential to examine movies in terms of the 

most basic class contradictions within society (Ryan, 2013, p. 86). Ideological criticism concerns 

how movies handle economic inequality, class inequality, or the oppression of the powerful over 

the weak (Ryan, 2013, p. 88). In this context, ideological criticism examines the reflections of the 

tensions and contradictions inherent in capitalist society in movies, emphasizing the unjust 

foundations of social class differences. Marxist theory and the understanding of political cinema 

are shaped accordingly and form the basis of the ideological film criticism approach. 

Güney is one of Turkey's first representatives of the political cinema concept. Political films 

generally deal with concrete social and historical events, with their ambiguity, and take a stance 

that questions the hegemonic ideology in the face of these events2 (Suner, 2006, p. 253). Answers 

to the following questions were sought in the study: What are the effects of Marxist ideology on 

established narrative forms in Yılmaz Güney cinema? Does the film support one side of the social 

struggle? What do the argument or arguments in the movie mean in terms of political discourse? 

Does the film focus on exploitation, or is it constructed within the framework of a manipulative 



 

 

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approach to hide the injustices and exploitation relationships in the system? Is a critical attitude 

displayed if the film directly or indirectly focuses on social inequality or injustice? If the film is 

vital, does it offer or suggest an explicit or implicit alternative to the negative situation, system, or 

world being criticized? 

In line with the purpose of the study, the films examined were determined using the 

purposeful sampling method. The movies The Hope, The Anxiety, The Herd, and The Enemy were 

reviewed for the study. The films were also analyzed using the sociological film criticism method. 

Sociological film criticism refers to the criticism of films as products of art and culture based on 

social sciences and sociological criteria. In sociological film criticism, the social conditions of the 

period in which the film was set or produced are also evaluated (Özden, 2004, pp. 153-154). 

Although Güney, who was nourished by Marxist ideology while transferring his films to the 

big screen, associates the factors that determine social classes with political, social, cultural, 

ideological, and educational aspects in his movies, he seems to have given the most significant 

weight to the economy. The proposed theoretical framework that constructs the interaction 

between the economic and the non-economic is based on the hypothesis that the economic 

infrastructure will ultimately determine the social superstructure. The study aims not to criticize 

Yılmaz Güney's films comprehensively. One of the purposes of writing this article is to contribute 

to the literature on the construction of political discourse in films by tracing the traces of Marxism 

in Yılmaz Güney's cinema. There are reflections of the anti-capitalist economic discourse in 

Yılmaz Güney's films, which problematizes the origins of capital and private property around class 

differences and inequalities. 



 

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Marxism as a Movement of Thought Explaining the Unchanging Characteristics and Fundamental 

Contradictions of the Capitalist System on the Historical Materialist Axis 

Before starting the article, it is thought that making a few critical warnings about the subject 

would be helpful. Considering Marxism as a movement with only political qualities can make it 

difficult to understand. Marxism has influenced a wide range of literature, ranging from aesthetics 

to literature, from metaphysical debates to epistemology, from sociology to history, from 

anthropology to economics, from archeology to art, from education to geography, from film theory 

to historiography, from philosophy to political science, psychology, scientific research, and even 

theatre. 

Marxism is a philosophical, economic, political, and social approach based on the works of 

German economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, and revolutionary Karl Marx (1818-

1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) in the second half of the 19th century. More formally, 

Marxism is a socioeconomic analysis method that examines social class relations, social conflicts, 

and social transformation and interprets historical development from a historical materialist 

perspective. Historical materialism, in the most general sense, is based on the assertion that "the 

production and reproduction of the material basis of society is the antecedent and determinant in 

historical development" (Topakkaya, 2009, p. 65). The German Ideology, written by Marx and 

Engels, is the work in which the historical materialist method is most systematically embodied. 

Throughout history, authors have expressed societies in material production relations as primitive 

communal, enslaved persons, feudal, capitalist societies, and finally, the communist society that 

history must necessarily reach. In explaining these distinctions in societies, the property relations 

that belong to each society and differ from each other, the ownership of the means of production, 

and the mode of production are taken as the basis. 



 

 

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Karl Marx wrote the introductory theoretical text Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto in 

1848. With this work, Marx pioneered the term capitalism in the modern sense and spread it to the 

social and scientific fields at the beginning of the 20th century (Obsorne, 2023, p. 10). The 

emergence of classes with private property rights protected by law and the fact that the state could 

not easily confiscate their capital accumulation laid the foundations of the capitalist system. The 

system became dominant in England at the beginning of the 19th century, and in a short time, it 

began to manifest itself as a production system in almost all countries of the world. As the system 

increased its influence, labor, land, real estate, and capital were freely bought and sold by 

individuals in the market, and all kinds of phenomena began to be evaluated as commodities in the 

system. It is possible to say that capitalism has a materialist functioning in this context. 

Capitalism is the modus operandi and accumulation regime of societies that enable the 

accumulation of profit and the tool (capital) used to obtain this profit by using goods for the 

production of goods, purchasing and selling goods, or supplying and selling service-based labor 

force (Fülberth, 2018, p. 17). The capitalist system continues to exist within the framework of the 

antagonistic relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, in other words, on the axis 

of the conflict between labor (proletariat) and capital (bourgeoisie) (Marx and Engels, 2014, pp. 

116-117). In Marxist terminology, the bourgeoisie is the class that owns the means of production 

in the capitalist system and seizes the workers' surplus value. The proletariat is the class definition 

of a particular group regarding their position in production. It emerged when people became 

dispossessed with the dissolution of feudalism and had no choice other than selling their labor 

power for a specific wage. Proletariat means the dispossessed. The proletariat is part of the 

irreconcilable structural antagonism of capitalist society due to its necessary subordination to the 

bourgeoisie. Marx and Engels used the concept to mean people who had to sell their labor to 



 

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survive. In Marxist thought, the working class (proletariat) is society's primary productive force 

and the main subject of capitalist exploitation. The working class comprises the industrial 

proletariat, the commercial proletariat, and the administrative services proletariat. Marx expressed 

the same view when describing the birth of the proletariat in The Poverty of Philosophy: 

“Economic conditions first transformed the mass of the people into workers. Capital dominance 

created this class's common position and common interests. Then, this mass has become a class 

regarding its relationship with capital” (Bottomore, 2002, pp. 496-498). 

In this context, classes are specifically considered, in Marx's words, as the socio-historical 

relationship between exploiters and producers in which surplus labor is absorbed from the producer 

(Wood, 2008: 95). What determines the emergence of classes is the development of the social 

division of labor and the emergence of private property (Marx, 1976, pp. 275-277). The most 

fundamental element that distinguishes Marxist class analysis from other class analyses is the 

mechanism of exploitation, and an exploitation-centered class analysis offers theoretically 

powerful tools for examining many issues in contemporary capitalist society (Wright, 2014, p. 17). 

exploitation can be defined as a social relationship achieved through the domination of surplus 

labor over labor and the capture of surplus product (Marx, 1976, p. 279). Class is essentially a 

relationship, a social collective representation of the phenomenon of exploitation. 

Capitalist order within the framework of Marxism is seen as a class conflict between the 

"oppressor" and the "oppressed" in both theoretical and practical frameworks. Marx and Engels 

stated in the Communist Manifesto that "the history of all societies up to the present is the history 

of class struggles and conflicts" (Marx and Engels, 1848, p. 8). Marx aimed to liberate the working 

class, the proletariat, who had to sell their labor for wages to survive, from the capitalist order.  



 

 

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On the Dialectical Relationship Between Marxism, Social Classes and the Economy: Economic 

Determinism or the Ultimately Determinant Role of the Economy? 

It is a fact that in Marxist thought, there is a dialectical relationship between social classes and 

the economy. Marxism defined the capitalist system and its functioning in terms of social classes. 

It also argued that the system was based on the antagonistic relationship between the bourgeoisie 

and the proletariat and continued its existence within this framework. What distinguishes the 

bourgeoisie and the proletariat is whether they own the means of production. Production relations 

are also determined within this framework. However, this characterization of Marxism has caused 

it to be criticized for attributing a decisive role only to the economy, and various theorists have 

chosen to define Marxist thought as economic deterministic. While accepting that Marxism 

attributes a significant role to the economy, some critics argue that it also considers political, 

ideological, institutional, social, and cultural factors other than the economy but attributes the role 

of ultimately determining the economy. Including these discussions in more detail will be guiding 

for the study. 

Economic determinism, or economism, is a term widely used. In other words, it is a concept 

that argues that market forces determine all these phenomena. Simply put, it refers to the belief 

that economics determines all other areas of society, such as culture, ideology, morality, 

philosophy, institutions, art, law, politics, and historical development. Based on the discourse that 

infrastructure determines the superstructure, Karl Marx seems to have argued that economic 

relations determine all other political, social, cultural, and institutional societal developments 

(1979, p. 25). The infrastructure of society is the relationship between production and the material 

environment. Property relations determine economic infrastructure. The infrastructure and the 



 

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economy determine the superstructure, such as the social, cultural, and institutional areas and areas 

such as thought, art, and ideology. Here, the superstructure seems to be accepted as a simple 

infrastructure extension. The economic sphere is the main determining factor of social class 

differences (Jessop, 1982, p. 9). In a critical passage in the preface to Marx's Critique of Political 

Economy, Marx revealed his awareness of this issue: 

“While producing their lives socially, people are involved in certain relationships that they 

cannot give up and are independent of their will. These production relations correspond to a certain 

stage of the material productive forces of people. The totality of production relations constitutes 

society's economic structure and real basis. A legal and political superstructure rises on this 

ground, finding its counterpart in definitive forms of social consciousness. How material life is 

produced conditions general social, political, and intellectual life.” (Marx, 1970, p. 6). 

According to thinkers who have adopted the post-Marxist approach, the biggest theoretical 

weakness of traditional Marxism is economic determinism (Mouzelis, 1990, p. 1). Samuel Bowles, 

one of the economists who has come to the fore in the last few decades with his essential studies 

on Marxism, has argued that traditional Marxism places excessive emphasis on economics and, 

within this framework, subordinates social and cultural practices. In this context, Bowles (1985) 

defined Post-Marxism as "an idea that aims to build a non-economist economic theory in which 

culture and politics play as important a role as economic factors in directing human action, as 

opposed to a limited subset of practices determined by Classical Marxism." However, the idea of 

economic determinism was rejected by Engels very early on: 

“According to the materialist understanding of history, the decisive point (moment) in history 

is ultimately the production and reproduction of material life. Neither Marx nor I claimed anything 

further than this. Therefore, if someone turns this into the point that economics is the only 



 

 

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determinant, he will turn our claim into a meaningless, abstract, and absurd proposition” (Engels, 

1978, pp. 760-761). 

The French philosopher Louis Althusser, who left his mark on the 20th century with his 

significant contributions to Marxist thought, disagrees with the criticisms about Marxist thought 

being economic determinist in the theory he tried to develop. He says that in Marxist thought, 

politics and ideology have relative autonomy from the economic structure. Althusser emphasized 

that, according to Marx, the infrastructure always affects the superstructure. However, Althusser 

stated that Marx did not discard the determination relationship between infrastructure and 

superstructure and attributed the feature of being the ultimate determinant to the economic field. 

In other words, ideology, law, and religion, which appear to be other superstructure institutions, 

cannot be reduced to pure economy because the relationship between these institutions depends 

on a structural causality, not a linear causality. Althusser quotes Engels right here: 

“Production is the determining factor, but only in the last instance. Neither Marx nor I asserted 

anything more. To distort this sentence would turn it into an empty, abstract, absurd sentence. The 

economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure, the political forms 

and consequences of the class struggle, other institutions, and even political, legal, philosophical 

theories, religious conceptions, and dogmatic systems influence and, in many cases, dominate, the 

subsequent developments of life and historical struggles. They determine the form of life and 

struggle” (Quoted by Althusser, 2002, p. 137). 

The fact that the economy is ultimately determinant does not mean that the economy determines 

everything, but that what is determined by what depends on the economic situation of the society, 



 

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and Althusser adds another sentence to this: "Neither at the first moment nor at the last moment, 

the clock of the last instance never strikes alone." (Althusser, 2002, p.139). 

Marx also clarified the issue of the sequence of instances in his work titled Grundrisse 

Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, which he prepared in 1857: 

“It is impossible and wrong to consider economic categories in the order in which they played 

a historically decisive role. What determines the order in which they are treated, on the contrary, 

is their relations in modern bourgeois society, and here, the order is the opposite of the natural 

order and does not correspond to the order in which they followed each other throughout historical 

evolution. What is in question is not the historically established relationship between economic 

relations in the succession of different forms of society” (Marx, 2004, p. 44). 

Here, Marx emphasized the articulation of infrastructure and superstructure levels. In Marx's 

works and the Marxist tradition, attention is drawn to the interaction between different layers of 

the social whole rather than economic determinism. Marx does not differentiate the economic field 

into social/cultural/political/ideological/institutional fields but states that these fields are 

interconnected and that historical conditions change this whole. At the same time, he pointed out 

the importance of structures and conditions by saying that people make their history within the 

conditions that are directly certain and come from the past. However, he wanted to emphasize that 

the determination between the structure and the subject is two-way by stating that people can also 

change the conditions. 

The Birth of the Concept of Political Cinema in Turkey within the Framework of the Dialectical 

Interaction between Art, Politics, and Economy 

To understand the foundations of Yılmaz Güney cinema, it is necessary first to include the birth 

of political cinema in Turkey and the factors that determine this birth. The birth of political cinema 



 

 

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in Turkey can be understood by looking at the picture of Turkey's ideological climate in the 1960s 

and the revolutionary spurt that took place during this period. All of these brought about a 

revolution in Turkish cinema and a change in the face of Turkish cinema. 

First, to understand the 1960s, let us summarize the 1950s-1960s period, when the Democratic 

Party was in power, both cinematically and politically. These ten years can be defined as the period 

in which rapid changes were experienced in Turkey's social life, capital accumulation accelerated, 

and the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie became stronger and entered the monopolization 

phase. In the 1960s, economic and political changes affected Turkish society's class structure, and 

stratification between social classes increased. However, it is difficult to find films containing class 

issues in Turkish cinema in this period. During this period, movies were shot in which examples 

of the melodrama genre, known as Yeşilçam films, were predominantly used. Until the 1960s, 

directors such as Osman Fahir Seden and Atıf Yılmaz made films under Yeşilçam market 

conditions. Directors who created cinematic language, such as Ömer Lüfi Akad and Metin Erksan, 

did not include social criticism in their movies due to concerns about censorship. Classes were not 

truly represented in Turkish cinema between 1950 and 1960 (Topçu, 2006, pp. 118-123). 

The May 27 Coup left its mark on Turkey's economic, social, and political life in the 1960s. 

The administration's policy before May 27 prevented the emergence of many intellectual 

discourses through censorship. With the liberal environment brought by the 1961 Constitution, 

some differences were observed in terms of themes in the films. The social realism movement 

enables this difference to be seen (Tugen, 2014, p. 161). 

Marxist thought first influenced cinema through the social realism movement in the 1960s. The 

movement is a small-scale picture of Turkey's general ideological climate. It is possible to count 



 

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nine essential films at the center of the movement: Metin Erksan Gecelerin Ötesi (Beyond the 

Nights (1960)), Yılanların Öcü (Revenge of the Snakes (1962)), Susuz Yaz (Dry Summer (1963)), 

Suçlular Aramızda (The Criminals Are Among Us (1964)), Halit Refiğ Şehirdeki Yabancı 

(Stranger in the City (1962)), Gurbet Kuşları (Birds of Exile (1964)); Ertem Göreç Otobüs 

Yolcuları (The Bus Passengers (1961)), Karanlıkta Uyananlar (Those Awakening in the Dark 

(1964)) and Duygu Sağıroğlu Bitmeyen Yol (Endless Road (1965)) (Daldal, 2021). All these films 

are films that look at the class relations and dynamics and the social dimensions of the conflict, 

influenced by the winds of liberation of the period, the achievements of democratic rights, and the 

political revolutionary spring. Social realism ended with the coming to power of the Justice Party, 

which can be considered an extension of the Democrat Party, in the 1965 elections. After this date, 

some of the movement's representatives turned to a national understanding of cinema. The other 

part adopted a revolutionary understanding of cinema that was fundamentally committed to 

Marxist ideology (Ucakan, 1977, p. 11). As mentioned in detail in the next section, Yılmaz Güney 

will be one of the screenwriters, actors, and directors who adopted a revolutionary approach to 

cinema that was fundamentally committed to Marxist ideology. With Güney, the step-by-step 

transition from socially realistic cinema to revolutionary cinema began. This transition occurred 

within the framework of the dialectical relationship between economy, politics, society, and art in 

Turkey. 

In the Context of Yılmaz Güney's World of Thought and Political Attitude: Revolutionary Cinema 

Dedicated to Marxist Ideology and the Struggle to Change the World 

Yılmaz Güney's real name is Yılmaz Pütün. He is one of seven children of a Kurdish family 

living in Adana. Born in Adana's Yenice district in 1937, as the son of a poor agricultural worker 

from Urfa and a mother from Muş, Güney moved to Adana with his family at the age of 11, after 



 

 

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spending his childhood working as a farmhand, vineyard guard, and cotton picker in the village. 

Güney completed his primary, secondary, and high school education in Adana. He grew up as a 

cinema-enthusiastic young man who became interested in literature, wrote stories, and had them 

published in the Adana and Istanbul media (Onaran, 1994, p. 133). He later entered the cinema 

and rose rapidly there, directing more than 20 films between 1967 and 1971 and making eight 

films in 1971 alone. He was imprisoned twice, once for aiding a leftist organization and once for 

being involved in a murder. In 1981, he escaped from prison and sought asylum in France, where 

he died in 1984. 

Güney spent his childhood in a period when the struggle for life intensified, and the burden on 

the back of people experiencing poverty became more and more apparent with the impact of the 

Second World War. In an interview, he explains the foundations that laid the foundations for the 

formation of his world of thought as follows: “I was born in a rural area. My family was poor 

peasants. They were also Kurds. Therefore, I was conditioned by rural ideology, peasant ideology, 

which was essentially a bourgeois ideology. However, being born and raised among poor peasants, 

especially part of an oppressed Kurdish nation, influenced my views” (Güney, 2004, p. 9). 

However, it should also be noted that, before his Kurdish identity, Güney is thought to have 

focused his political sensitivities heavily on socialism, which he would begin to consider as a 

solution to inequality and injustice. Yılmaz Güney tried to earn his living when he started to come 

to his senses and realized that there was an injustice. However, he could not define it: "No one was 

talking about the working class, no one was talking about Marxism-Leninism, dialectical 

materialism." (Güney, 2004, p. 9). 



 

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Like many young people, Güney learned Marxism-Leninism and dialectical materialism from 

Nazım Hikmet, who became a legend when the Democratic Party tried to suppress intellectuals, 

writers, and scientists. He meets people who associate with left-wing ideology, reads all the books 

he can find, and attempts original writing. He wrote his story Üç Bilinmeyenli Eşitsizlik 

Denklemleri (Inequality Equations with Three Unknowns-1955), which would cause him trouble 

in the following years, during his high school years: 

“Nobody was explaining who we would fight against, how we would fight, what ideology we 

would fight with, none of these. Under these influences, I started writing short stories and talking 

to myself, which is how I encountered the political police (Guney, 2004, p. 9). 

Because of this story, he was imprisoned for nearly two years on charges of making communist 

propaganda. Literature excites him so much that he makes his final decision: he will become a 

writer. Güney, who came to Istanbul in 1957 with this enthusiasm and tried to establish relations 

with literary figures, soon found himself in cinema, which he saw as a source of income. He meets 

with his fellow citizens from Çukurova, Atıf Yılmaz, and Yaşar Kemal and tells them what he 

wants to do. The duo, which made joint films then, included Güney in their team. Güney worked 

as a set worker in studios and was involved in figuration, but he would rise to the role of leading 

actor, screenwriter, and director step by step. Güney started working in screenplay because of his 

connection with literature and began to take part in films as a screenwriter, director assistant, and 

actor. Yılmaz Güney was first known as the Ugly King of Yeşilçam action films. 

Yılmaz Güney was not included in the social realist movement that was influential in Turkish 

cinema between 1960 and 1965. Güney, still living the ugly king period then, was an indispensable 

actor in the grindhouse Yeşilçam films (Daldal, 2021, p. 126). However, Yılmaz Güney wants to 

make films about the socioeconomic environment in which he lives and the class contradictions it 



 

 

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creates, and he will soon adopt a cinema approach in this direction. In the historical context, 

Yılmaz Güney explains the process of politicization with the following words, confirming the 

words expressed by Karl Marx that people do not live as they think but think as they live: 

“In those days, I had no idea what Marxism was. I did not know about class struggle, working 

class, or revolution. I did not set a goal to become a political man. However, after a while, the 

events I encountered and my attitude towards the events outside turned me into a real political 

person. "For any politician to set himself the goal of becoming a politician and develop himself in 

this direction, and for me to become a political man as a result of natural development are two 

different things" (Güney, 2004, p. 14). 

Güney began to take advantage of the opportunities to draw more realistic characters and 

present social problems more realistically by acting in films with more substantial social aspects 

and cinema aesthetics (Maktav, 2013: 166). In films such as Kızılırmak-Karakoyun (Ömer Lütfi 

Akad, 1967), İnce Cumali (Yılmaz Duru, 1967), Law of the Border (Hudutların Kanunu) (1966), 

Kozanoğlu (Atıf Yılmaz, 1967), Seyyit Han (1968), he shows the power of the ruling circles, the 

lords, and the bad guys who rob the people. He is a social bandit who opposes bandits and fights 

them to the death: 

“With these films, I opposed the lords of the semi-feudal Turkey of the 60s and saluted Mehmet 

Ali Aybar's Turkish Workers' Party, which called the peasants' land. After 1966, I got behind the 

camera to realize my main goals. “I made my first attempt called Seyyit Han in 1968” (Güney, 

2004, p. 10). 

The film Seyyit-Han (1968) heralds the birth of Güney as a new director. The film can be 

considered the first film in which Yılmaz Güney looks at political issues from a more concrete 



 

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perspective and tries to tell a story. Over time, Yılmaz Güney learned about Marxism-Leninism, 

the Soviet Union, and Mao: "I learned the leading role of the working class and transformed my 

attitudes in my life into a revolutionary attitude" (Güney, 2004, p. 11). Thus, Yılmaz Güney began 

to approach events and developments from a class perspective and began to evaluate the events 

through the filter of scientific socialism. As a product of this perspective, his approach to cinema 

began to show itself in the films he acted in, wrote the script for, and directed. 

Yılmaz Güney cinema is based on Marxist economics. Güney tried to analyze Marxism 

carefully by meticulously examining the infrastructure and superstructure. Because there is a 

dominant economic basis in his films, he called it a social cause. This economic foundation guided 

the story. Characters depend on these economic conditions. People's movements are guided by 

their economic situation: 

“Whether it is a true story, a fairy tale, an adventure or a love story, I tried to give a cross-

section of people's efforts to live on an economic plane (Güney, 2004, p. 10)”. 

Although Güney did not rely on economic determinism, he attributed the role of being 

ultimately determinant to the economy. He based the content of his films on the theme of 

economic-based class inequalities. In Yılmaz Güney's films, he has taken a stand in favor of a style 

of cinema that explains the economic order that determines the social class differences in Turkey, 

the backwardness of this order in Turkey, and teaches the ways of liberation from this order. 

In the Context of Turkey's Political and Economic Panorama in the 1960s and 1970s: Tensions 

Based on the Proletariat-Bourgeoisie Contradiction 

Before discussing Yılmaz Güney's films inspired by Marxist thought, it would be helpful to 

include the political and economic panorama of Turkey in the years when the movies were shot, 



 

 

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the social classes formed within this panorama, the tensions based on the proletariat-bourgeoisie 

contradiction, and the sources of these tensions. 

Türkiye snowballed from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s. The growth of the industrial sector 

has accelerated (the annual average is close to 10%, and the average of the agricultural industry is 

approximately 4%). However, urbanization is ahead of industrialization (Boratav, 2006, p. 130). 

Many villagers migrated to the city, found work in the services sector, and settled in slums without 

breaking their economic and social ties with the village, thus entering the urbanization process. 

When the phenomenon of migration from village to city is tried to be explained based on the data 

analyzed by social scientists of the period, the following conclusions are reached: 

“Since the 1950s, with machines in agriculture, an intense migration from rural to urban areas 

began. Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Eskişehir, and Adana were the main cities that received 

immigration. However, this migration was much higher than the employment of workers in the 

industry concentrated in the cities. Industrialization in the cities came long after mechanization in 

the countryside. While the urbanization rate reached 18% between 1960 and 1970, the 

industrialization rate was around 7%. The population of the slums created by people migrating 

from villages to cities in the mentioned large provinces had reached rates of 40-60 percent of the 

cities" (Algan, 2011, p. 208). 

All these developments would escalate the tension based on the proletariat-bourgeoisie 

contradiction. Yılmaz Güney chose the subjects of all his films in this context and treated them 

with a socialist perspective. It brought to the screen the people pushed back by the ruling classes 

and the segments oppressed under labor exploitation (Armes, 1987, pp. 269-276). 



 

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As underlined in the previous chapters, Yılmaz Güney researched and embraced Marxist 

thought and tried to evaluate Turkey's economic, social, and political history through his films 

based on this thought. Again, as mentioned in the previous sections, Marxism has been distorted 

as an economic determinist understanding that explains almost every phenomenon or process with 

economics. With this distortion, various comments have been made that it is not scientific. 

However, Marxist thought suggests that the economy is not the only but the fundamental and 

ultimately determinant of class differences. Of course, there are many factors other than economic 

relations (law, philosophy, institutions, politics, ideology, culture, religion) in the formation or 

development of social classes, but what is ultimately determinant is the basis of the material life 

of the society, in other words, production relations, the economic field. Yılmaz Güney has also 

managed to draw attention to the ultimately determinant role of the economy in the formation of 

social classes, especially in some of his films. The Hope is undoubtedly one of them.  

In the Context of Production Relations, Economic Inequalities and Class Conflicts Created by the 

Capitalist System: The Hope 

The Hope is a masterpiece that interprets the social inequalities and class contradictions created 

by the capitalist system based on Marxist ideology. It can be said that the film emphasizes that 

social classes are determined by many political, social, cultural, institutional, and ideological 

factors. However, economic and economic inequalities ultimately determine the classes. The film 

also represents the turning point in Güney's cinema career. Yılmaz Güney wrote the script and 

directed this movie. Actors such as Yılmaz Güney, Tuncel Kurtiz, and Osman Alyanak shared the 

leading roles in the film. In the words of Ömer Lütfi Akad: "This is our first realistic film." Nijat 

Özön wrote about The Hope: "Without a doubt, it is the most realistic movie our cinema has ever 

produced" (1995, p. 206). Güney, who signaled that he had turned to social realist films with the 



 

 

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film Umut, began to be known as one of the representatives of the revolutionary cinema film 

concept (Onaran, 1999, pp. 199-200). He was also accepted as the first representative of this 

cinema movement, also called the third cinema, in Turkey (Armes, 1987). Sadık Battal (2006, pp. 

191-198) also claimed that Güney, who had been inseparable from horses, women, and guns in the 

films he had appeared in until that day, underwent a significant change with his role in the movie 

Umut. 

The film Hope was hailed as the first and primary work of revolutionary cinema and became a 

pioneer for future works. Its central nodes revolved around economic and social inequality and 

bore intense influences from Italian Neorealism3. 

The main hero of the plot, Cabbar, is a poor carriage driver living in Adana. He lives in a 

makeshift house with his wife, five children, and elderly mother (Figure 1). Cabbar is trying to 

support his wife, mother, and children with his shabby phaeton pulled by two tired, old horses. 

The only hope he relies on in these negativities is the lottery tickets he constantly buys. However, 

for Cabbar, disasters come one after another. One day, a luxury car crashes into a phaeton, killing 

each of Cabbar's horses. Cabbar is innocent, but he is also economically weak. In such a case, he 

would be the one to blame. Desperately, he sells a few items at home, finds them together, and has 

enough money to buy a horse. Nevertheless, Cabbar's creditors sold the car and the remaining 

horse and confiscated the money he collected. All of these will create an irreversible hole in 

Cabbar's life, and from now on, Cabbar's descent into madness will accelerate. 



 

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Figure 1: The slum where Cabbar lives with his wife, children, and mother. 

Source: https://www.peramuzesi.org.tr/film/umut/935/169 (Date of Access: September 12, 2024). 

In his despair, Cabbar is carried away by the ideas of his friend named Hasan, who initially 

suggests that he search for treasure by consulting a powerful so-called hodja, and then they set off 

on the road. The hope symbolized by a lottery ticket in the first half, the hope of escaping this 

vicious circle, this miserable, unlivable life, is continued with a search for treasure in the second 

half (Figure 2). At the movie's end, the treasure will not be found, and it will be impossible for 

Cabbar to lose his mind. 



 

 

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Figure 2: While searching for treasure, Cabbar, his friend, and the hodja. 

Source: https://www.cinerituel.com/bir-umut-figuru-olarak-yilmaz-guney/(Date of Access: 

September 12, 2024). 

Traces of Yılmaz Güney's life story and family can be seen in most of his political films after 

1970. The most striking of these films is Umut. Güney's father, just like Cabbar, one day brings 

an older adult home. Together, they dig down the house's foundations to seek treasure (Soner, 

2005, p. 100). Güney responded to a question about the ban on the screening of the movie The 

Hope as follows: “The movie was described as an enemy of the state. However, this movie was 

vital for me. When I was a child, my father also went on a treasure hunt, and I was a carriage driver 

for a while” (Dorsay, 2005, p. 339). 

In the very first frames of the film, we encounter striking economic and social 

underdevelopment and the urban landscapes that can occur in such areas. It is possible to notice 

the motifs and urban images that can become traditional due to the crisis the city entered with 



 

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industrialization and urbanization experienced for a long time without being dependent on 

industry. It has been revealed that there are car drivers, meatball sellers, street vendors, and 

farmhands in every part of the city. The scenes of dual structure, inequality and injustice, wealth 

and poverty, cultural lag, and how poverty is reflected in a slum or slum of Adana have been 

successfully reflected. Even though the slums are so bad, the beauty and signs of the staged 

apartments reveal another truth about Turkey: the injustice in the distribution of equality; what 

determines this injustice is the social class differences that arise from economic differences. These 

scenes show that people do not live the life they want but rather live a life they are dragged to. Life 

has not been fair to everyone, and everyone is forced to live their lives according to the conditions 

they live in and the class they belong to. Due to societal inequalities, some things are the dreams 

of the poor while they are already in the palm of the rich. 

There are scenes in the film that almost summarize the scenes in which the class differences 

arising from the ultimately determinant role of the economy are revealed. One of these is the scene 

where Cabbar drives a horse-drawn carriage and sees bank and housing advertisements. One of 

the movie's first scenes, where Cabbar wakes up in his horse carriage and goes to the toilet, is also 

thought-provoking. Because the place where Cabbar goes to the bathroom is a billboard with the 

Sümerbank advertisement and the slogan "Your savings are the guarantee of your money" 

(Yıldırım, 2018, p. 203). In this scene, the capitalist system, which has the most significant share 

in forming this order in society, is criticized through a bank advertisement where rich people can 

invest their money. In this respect, it is possible to see in the movie The Hope the contradiction 

between bourgeoisie and proletariat within the capitalist system, in other words, capital and labor, 

and the determining power of money and economy on social classes (Yıldırım, 2018, p. 205). 



 

 

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Class inequality is also clearly shown in the police station scene. Cabbar complained about the 

person who hit his horse, but the person who hit his horse was rich. While Cabbar is standing bent 

over at the police station with his hands folded, the rich man is sitting and giving his statement 

comfortably. Although Cabbar is in a rightful position, he is not even considered because he is 

from the lower class. 

Additionally, in this scene, the commissioner shows the carriage drivers as the source of all the 

negativities in the city. Carriage drivers do not pay taxes to the state and do not use fuel. 

Meanwhile, while the owner of the car is sitting on the chair and drinking the tea offered to him, 

Cabbar, who is standing, is trying to say something and explain his problem with his hands clasped 

together (Figure 3). However, Cabbar is not given the right to speak and is humiliated. The 

dialogues in the scene develop as follows: 

“Commissioner: I know the people of carriage drivers; they cause all accidents. 

Cabbar: Wait a minute, Mr. Commissioner. 

Commissioner: Stop! It is not your fault; it is the municipality's. The accident is on you; the dirt 
is on you. They could not handle it, so that we could get rid of it. 

Cabbar: But, Mr. Commissioner, my horse is dead. 

Commissioner: If you leave your car empty, of course he will die. Was that a parking lot? The 
gentleman took pity on you and dropped the case. 

Cabbar: I am the plaintiff. 

Commissioner: Stop, it will not do you any good anyway." 



 

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Figure 3: Conversations between the car owner that hit Cabbar's horse, the commissioner, and 

Cabbar. 

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQvVmF08Cbg (Scene: 26 min. 40 sec-(Scene: 26 

min. 50 sec.) (Date of Access: September 12, 2024). 

While the loss of his livelihood saddens Cabbar, the driver of the car that hit his horse is upset 

about the paintwork of his car. The commissioner, who appears as the state's representative in the 

police station scene, is not on the side of the oppressed but on the side of the powerful criminal. 

In this scene, Yılmaz Güney showed the privileges of the rich and that even the state applies 

class privileges. These are scenes of the state as an organ subjected to a particular mode of 

production and to the dominant class or classes in that mode. In the famous phrase of the 

Communist Manifesto, the state is “the committee for managing the common affairs of the 

bourgeoisie” (Marx and Engels, 1848: 486). According to the Marxist view, the capitalist state has 

become the guardian of the interests of the capitalist class and has undertaken the task of protecting 

the property of the capitalist class. It was unthinkable for this to be otherwise. According to this 

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approach, the state represented the class that dominated the economy or its interests. Engels 

explained the Marxist view of the state as follows: "Since the state arose from the need to restrain 

class antagonisms but also emerged in the context of the conflict between these classes, it is, as a 

rule, the state of the strongest class, the class that dominates economically, and thanks to this has 

become the politically dominant class, and thus has acquired new means of keeping the oppressed 

class under control and exploiting it" (Engels, 1962, pp. 320-321). Political power reflects 

economic power, which shows that the capitalist state and its law side with the bourgeoisie. On 

the other hand, the capitalist state is, as a rule, the state of the most vigorous class, the class that 

dominates economically, thus becoming the dominant class politically and acquiring new tools to 

keep the oppressed class under oppression and exploit it. 

The scenes where Cabbar goes to the people he used to work for in the hope of getting a loan 

after his horse dies are also noteworthy regarding the structure mentioned above in the film. One 

of these people lives in a large house with a pool. The children of the house go into the pool and 

drink Coca-Cola, and the scene where they drink Coke is not included in the movie by chance. 

This scene emphasizes Turkey's turning direction of emulation towards America, especially in the 

1950s, and its internalization of the consumption phenomenon. This narrative in the film is 

compatible with Turkey's liberal-capitalist policies that supported the petty bourgeoisie at that 

time, in other words, its dominant ideology. Not only can Cabbar not get a loan but he is humiliated 

again by one of the men representing the bourgeoisie, saying, "Did I tell you to come to the city?" 

The following line from Cabbar's friend Hasan reveals the determining aspect of the economy 

on social class differences in the capitalist system (Figure 4): 



 

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“Everything is good when you have money. When you have money, eat a kebab, have a dessert, 

and drink wine. You sleep in good beds. When he has money, a man becomes strong; when he has 

money, he has money to live in, a pot of boiling water at home, and children. Didn't you have 

money? There is no one worse than you in the world. They will chase you from everywhere. The 

face of the poor is cold. Why is it cold, brother Cabbar? For example, you will feel cold on a 

summer day if you do not have money. Why? Because money keeps a man warm.” 

 

Figure 4: The scene between Cabbar and Hasan, where they talk about economic power 

determining social class differences. 

Source: https://mubi.com/tr/tr/films/hope (Date of Access: September 12, 2024). 

According to Yılmaz Güney, art is one of the most critical elements of the struggle to change 

the world and the class struggle. Art and artistry challenge society's official narratives, ideological 

patterns, and traditional definitions (Güney, 2004, p. 14). The movie The Hope effectively reflects 

class struggle and the challenge to official ideology. Moreover, through that movie, Turkish 

cinema achieved a new form of realism (Dorsay, 1989, p. 48). Although the film is about the poor 

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segments of society, it uses documentary-like language. Moreover, it uses very realistic language 

because the audience leaves the cinema wondering what happened to those characters after the 

movies are over. In the words of Elia Kazan: 

“I started to worry about the man on the screen, the family on the screen, their future. I 

continued to worry after the movie ended. I thought, what will happen to this man? What about 

children? What will happen to their children? To our children, to all of our children? There was 

nothing even remotely like social criticism here. The film itself was society” (Quoted in Dorsay, 

1988, p. 49). 

The film successfully depicts the social class differences on the economic axis in Turkey and 

the poverty and despair arising from these differences, with the theme and ideas spread throughout 

the film. It is seen as one of the first realistic films of Turkish cinema. In this respect, it is crucial 

both in Yılmaz Güney's filmography and Turkish cinema. It can be argued that Umut is the first 

film in Turkish cinema to break away from all popular stereotypes and tell the story of poverty. 

Umut is also the turning point of Yılmaz Güney's film career. It is a genuinely hopeful beginning. 

Agricultural Capitalism, Agricultural Proletariat and the Reality of Exploited Workers: The 

Anxiety (1974) 

The Anxiety (1974), written and directed by Yılmaz Güney and directed by Şerif Gören after 

Güney went to prison, focuses on the agricultural workers in Çukurova. In the movie, seasonal 

workers leave their villages and come to the fields to pick cotton, working to make ends meet 

without the slightest social security or minimum health conditions. From a documentary 

perspective, the film begins with images of workers on the highway coming to Adana to pick 



 

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cotton in trucks (Figure 5). The scriptwriter and director remind us that this place has become a 

Sabancı city. Even the Adana sign at the city entrance was changed to AdaSA (Figure 6). 

 

Figure 5: The truck bringing cheap cotton workers to Adana while entering the Adana border. 

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrQnhxf9zJk (Scene: 5 min. 40 sec.-6 min. 10 

sec.) (Date of Access: September 12, 2024). 

 

Figure 6: Adana, which turned into Sabancı city. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrQnhxf9zJk


 

 

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrQnhxf9zJk (Scene: 7 min. 16 sec.-7 min. 20 

sec.) (Date of Access: September 12, 2024). 

Again, the film was motivated by the intention to show sections about the brutality of capitalism 

on the axis of Marxist ideology, this time through the agricultural sector. In this context, the film's 

central themes are agricultural capitalism, the agricultural proletariat, and the reality of exploited 

workers. The film also aims to criticize the ongoing feudal order in Turkey's Eastern Anatolia and 

Southeastern Anatolia regions. In this context, light is also shed on the issue of blood feuds. 

In the film, a slice of the life of cotton workers in the Adana region is given, and their exposure 

to large-scale exploitation, like almost all agricultural workers in Turkey, is examined. With the 

phenomenon of mechanization in agriculture, which has become increasingly prominent in 

Turkey, especially since the 1950s, landlord-peasant relations have also begun to evolve. With the 

disintegration of feudal relations and the transition to capitalist production relations, the number 

of landless peasants gradually increased, causing the large mass of people in the countryside to 

become unemployable4. Those who were employed were made to work in an inhumane manner 

for meager wages and in poor working conditions. It would be appropriate to include Marx's views 

on the subject: 

“In modern agriculture, as in urban industries, the increase in labor productivity and the mass 

of labor mobilized comes at the expense of waste and consuming the labor power itself. Moreover, 

every advance in capitalist agriculture is an advance not only in the art of robbing the laborer but 

also in the art of robbing the soil. Every step in increasing soil fertility for a given period also 

progresses towards destroying this infinite source of fertility. Production, therefore, develops 



 

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technology and unites the various processes into a social whole only by draining the real source of 

wealth, namely the land and the laborer” (Marx, 1976, p. 638). 

The film sheds light on the fact that landless workers in the village are forced to work under the 

command of the landowner, hungry, thirsty, and under extreme heat. It is shown that these people, 

whom the lords do not give food, cook their meals and eat foods such as bread, tea, bulgur, and 

the wild purslane that grows among the cotton in the fields. Yılmaz Güney has made it his mission 

to create a narrative that summarizes this situation, which is also experienced in real life in many 

parts of Turkey, in a realistic context:  

“Now, tens of thousands of hands are reaching for cotton in this huge plain and picking it up. 

Looking at them, I think: What will these people eat and drink? Where will they go? What will 

they do? What will these people become? "I want to make a film of this feeling of anxiety" (Güney, 

2004, p. 10). 

The movie tells the story of Cevher, who tries to save the blood money he will pay to his enemy 

to escape from the blood feud. In the film's background, there are essential movements such as 

harsh working conditions, terrible labor exploitation, and agricultural workers going on strike. The 

farmhands who work cheaply and under dire conditions in the cotton fields quit their jobs to oppose 

labor exploitation, but Cevher has to work, and he sells his daughter to one of the boss's men in 

exchange for money. However, when the girl runs away to the young man she loves, Cevher is left 

stranded, unable to save any money, and left alone, face to face with death. The movie ends with 

Cevher being chased by the bloodies. Şükran Kuyucak Esen has effectively summarized the film's 

main points and all the messages it wants to convey to the audience: 

“The film explains in great detail the working system in the cotton fields and the relationships 

between the farmhands at the bottom of this system and the landlords at the top. The contradictions 



 

 

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between this wealth in the fertile lands of Çukurova and the visible poverty and despair of the 

farmhands are displayed masterfully. The ideological function of radio, a communication tool that 

reaches the masses and ensures the continuation of the status quo, is revealed. Changes in society 

such as spraying planes, cotton picking machines, mobile cinema screenings, and invariances such 

as blood feuds, girls being married to men they do not want with bride price, and clothes being 

placed on married women... Those who accept this order as it is and try to adapt to it, and those 

who think it should be changed. Those who are trying to change… In short, Angry, with its 

masterfully constructed images, suggests its viewers to think about the Çukurova of the 1970s and 

the future Çukurova” (Kuyucak Esen, 2020, p. 122). 

According to 1966 statistics, 40% of the workers who came to Çukurova that year did not know 

Turkish, 70% had never gone to school, 48% were children, 92% were unemployed in the city they 

came from, and 60% ate meat on average every three months. 30% of them do not have a school 

in their village. 1% have a blood feud (Algan, 2011: 198). Every year, on average, 1500 children 

die in Çukurova from disease or malnutrition. In 1972, 100 thousand workers came to work in 

Çukurova, 75% of which were women and children (Algan, 2011: 198). In addition, in the 

interview with the President of the Farmers' Union, İzzettin Özgiray, it is stated that, according to 

1972 data, five hundred thousand of the eight hundred thousand agricultural workers in cotton 

agriculture in Turkey work in Çukurova (Algan, 2011, p. 198). 

The Anxiety (1974) is a political film that portrays the exploitation of agricultural workers, who 

constitute a significant part of the Turkish people, on the big screen, relying on Marxist ideology. 

In this movie, the economic factor ultimately determines social class differences. Although the 

role of phenomena such as feudal order and lack of education in forming social class differences 



 

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is mentioned in the film, the economy is conveyed as the final determining factor. Class differences 

and the antagonistic relationship between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in other words, capital and 

labor, are abundantly underlined in the film. On the one hand, there is the bourgeois class 

(landlords) who own the means of production. On the other hand, the agricultural proletariat 

(agricultural workers) have no choice but to sell their labor to survive and are, therefore, doomed 

to be exploited more and more, stuck under the grip of the capitalist and feudal order. 

One of the fundamental problems that the film draws attention to is that the phenomenon of 

exploitation and the resulting social class differences are not just a result of the capitalist system. 

Feudal relations have not ended. The newly emerging capitalist relations of production, the 

remnants of feudal relations, and the lifestyles imposed by traditional norms such as blood feuds 

and bride prices are taking workers under guardianship. Therefore, although the problems of 

workers and people with low incomes are ultimately related to economic factors, they can also be 

linked to many inherited historical, cultural, and structural issues. 

Exploitation is Everywhere and in Every System: The Herd 

With the movie The Herd, Yılmaz Güney aimed to prove the inevitable collapse of the feudal 

order brought about by the capitalist transformation of Turkey, but that the crumbs of the feudal 

structure will not disappear quickly, that exploitation is not specific to capitalism. That exploitation 

can also exist in feudalism. 

Güney said, “I told the history of the Kurdish people” (Quoted in Arslan, 2009, p. 132) when 

talking about his film Sürü. The film caused a great sensation upon its release, received praise at 

festivals abroad, and became Güney’s most talked-about film after Umut (1970), which he shot 

about eight years earlier. 



 

 

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Actors such as Tarık Akan, Melike Demirağ, and Tuncel Kurtiz took part in the film; Zeki 

Ökten directed the movie, and Yılmaz Güney wrote the script. The tragedy of the inevitable and 

thunderous dissolution of feudalism and the tribal system is depicted in the film. In this movie, 

Güney describes feudalism as being doomed to be left behind, a state of decay, extinction, and 

disintegration, just as the heroes leave the feudal system behind and get lost in the city. With its 

entire culture and positive and negative aspects, feudalism will survive in Turkey's rural areas and 

towns for a long time, fragmented and crumbled (Algan, 2011, p. 201). Güney explained the 

picture of Turkey of that day as follows: 

“Imperialism, capitalism, and feudal remnants. Feudal ruins are among the most important 

targets of our struggle for democracy today. Democratization of the country is possible by 

eliminating these ruins. Feudalism is dissolving somewhat, but the feudal structure and capitalism 

live side by side. Furthermore, this is reflected in everything: economic life, social life, political 

life, cultural life” (Quoted in Dorsay, 2005: 203). 

Starting from the first scenes of the film, which begins in a hamlet near Pervari, we witness 

signs of disintegration of the Veysikan tribe, which is in danger of losing its livelihood as a result 

of the mechanization of agricultural production and the loss of importance of animal husbandry in 

the region, and which has become weaker in terms of population as many of its members have 

sacrificed themselves to blood feuds. The story of a family that was followed by a herd and was 

destroyed is told with the metaphor of the defeat of feudalism and feudal relations in the face of 

capitalism. 

The basis of the story is the extinction of a tribe in the face of capitalism, as well as the stories 

of Şivan and his wife, who oppose the customs, ending in Ankara. Hamo Agha, the conservative 



 

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and stubborn leader of the Veysikans, to cover up the gradual weakening of his tribe and to 

maintain his authority, holds his daughter-in-law Berivan, whom he insults at every opportunity 

as lousy luck and calls the enemy among us, and his son Şivan, who takes care of her, responsible 

for the deterioration. Most of the sheep that Şivan and his father brought to Ankara to sell have 

perished. When he takes his wife on his back and falls into the streets of Ankara to get her treated, 

he repeats the words of the anthem he learned in the military service: "Ankara, Ankara is beautiful 

Ankara" (Maktav, 2013, p. 171) (Figure 7). He believes that the cure for all troubles lies there, but 

his hopes are in vain, and his wife dies. All that remains of a great tribe is poverty and despair, 

which hits them like a slap in the face in the capital of the Republic. 

 

Figure 7: The first day Berivan and Şivan came to Ankara. 

Source: https://mubi.com/tr/tr/films/the-herd-1979 (Date of Access: September 12, 2024). 

Towards the film's finale, a character who conveys Güney's voice to the audience is included 

in the story. The hope in the movie is reserved for the revolutionary young man who questions 

poverty by going against his father, who dreams of turning corners again. This young man is the 

still very young son of Şivan's hometown, Sıddık, with whom he and Berivan took shelter in 



 

 

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Ankara. In the first shot, where the young man appears, Marx's posters hang behind him. Although 

the young man tries to enlighten his father and Şivan by saying that salvation is only possible 

through class struggle at every opportunity, he cannot attract them to such a political 

consciousness. The film was motivated by this young man's speeches to embody the logical 

extensions of the process that Marx called the genuine yoke of capital over labor. In this context, 

it is necessary to include the young man's speech, which seriously criticizes capitalism and gives 

important political messages: 

“This is not the way you say, Dad. Now you have no home, no job, no doctor. You do not have 

money to keep me studying for years. Neither does Brother Şivan. So, what is the basis of this 

poverty? Millions of honest working people have nothing. Three or five people have millions, 

billions. Where are millions of workers going? Who set up this business like this? “The rich here 

and the lord there are all the same.” 

This character, included in the story to suggest a solution to the country's impasse, draws 

attention to the fact that there is no escape in the city from the order that Şivan escaped from; in 

other words, he emphasizes that exploitation is everywhere, in every system. Exploitation in the 

feudal order has been replaced by capitalist exploitation: "The rich here and the lord there are all 

the same," said this young man (Maktav, 2013, p. 171). It is a sentence that perfectly summarizes 

the situation. Exploitation is everywhere. Unlike the feudal system, which is effective in rural 

areas, in the capitalist system, which is effective in the city, bosses replace the landlord. Labor 

exploitation is at the root of deprivation and poverty. Therefore, the film draws attention to 

exploitation due to economic class differences in feudal and capitalist systems. Here, Güney's 

views on realizing a socialist revolution against the capitalist order can be observed. However, it 



 

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can also be understood that Güney believes that it will not be enough to transfer the means of 

production from private ownership to shared ownership and that a holistic struggle is necessary 

against all institutions and ideas that have become ideological, political, cultural, and lifestyles of 

the ruling classes. As Roy Armes underlines, “Herd reflects two evils that exist simultaneously, 

capitalism and feudalism. The violence they create contradicts human love and compassion. So 

much so that the tyranny of the social system is reflected in people’s lives” (Armes, 1987, pp. 269-

276). The word Sürü, which is the title of the film, has also been used to emphasize the fact that 

the Sürü is a tribal community under the control of the landowners in feudal living conditions or 

refers to the working/laboring poor class under the power of the urban rich in the capitalist 

economy. In this context, the ultimately determining role of the economy also winks at us in this 

film. The film shows how the feudal conditions and tribal structure are dragged towards a dead 

end as they lose their economic foundations. It can be observed that the basis of Hamo Agha's 

unquestionable power lies in the fact that the tribe is economically strong, that even the strictest 

rules within the tribe can be relaxed when faced with economic impasses, that, when necessary, 

the agha can even make a business deal with his son, and that his class power is declining. 

However, it should also be underlined that, in addition to the great emphasis on economy in the 

film, it can be perceived that social dynamics that cannot be reduced to economics, such as 

tradition, custom, behavior, and daily life, are also intertwined from time to time. On the other 

hand, it is possible to notice various aspects of daily life in the film, such as crime, migration, 

strikes, ethnicity, literacy, and family history. 

In short, in the movie Sürü, Yılmaz Güney successfully narrated the feudal order's inability to 

resist the capitalist order in the Kurdish region, other rural areas of Turkey, and the cities and its 



 

 

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inevitable gradual collapse and disintegration. He presented the tragedy of this significant, 

thunderous disintegration to the audience with epic richness and multidimensionality. 

A Panorama of Capitalism's Monsterization of Humans: The Enemy (1979) 

Following the success of Yılmaz Güney The Herd (1978), he wrote the script for the film The 

Enemy (1979), using similar aesthetics and narrative methods. The film was directed by Zeki 

Ökten and featured actors of the film such as Aytaç Arman and Güngör Bayrak. The movie aims 

to portray a panorama of Türkiye's working class. 

In the movie Enemy, İsmail and his family, struggling with unemployment and poverty in 

Çanakkale, are spotlighted. İsmail lives in a makeshift slum with his daughter, who is about to 

start school, his wife, Naciye, who is bored with poverty and wants to live in better conditions, 

dress well, and own a tape recorder, and his elderly mother-in-law, who complains of toothlessness 

and the need for glasses. If İsmail had a regular job to support his family, everything would be 

fine, but there is no secure job in sight in Eceabat, which resembles a provincial town at that time. 

İsmail attempts to find daily employment in the labor market. The movie begins with Ismail 

coming to the labor market. Ismail comes here for the first time. Because he was ashamed, he went 

to the market where foreign workers, not locals, gathered. However, the bread is in the lion's mouth 

in this market, and hundreds of unemployed people are waiting for jobs like Ismail. Ismail observes 

how fierce a struggle is going on among the people waiting for work here. The scenes of people in 

the labor market are among the most striking images depicting poverty and class differences in 

Turkish cinema (Maktav, 2013, p. 171). There are workers in the market who fight together to go 

to work and lose their lives by jumping into the truck carrying workers. Finally, out of desperation, 



 

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İsmail has to do the dog culling job given by the municipality to poison stray dogs for a few days, 

reluctantly, with great regret, and having nightmares at night (Algan, 2011, p. 202). 

İsmail's wife, Naciye, cannot find any other way out other than being a prostitute. This decision 

will bring the end of low-income families together. When his wife leaves his house, İsmail reveals 

his heart to Cemil, the worker representative at the workplace where he works in Istanbul, and 

mentions that he plans to kill his wife, as expected from his anger and disappointment. On the 

other hand, Cemil and his wife tell him that he can build another life as an organic representative 

of the working class, that they can find him a job in a factory in Istanbul, and that this can positively 

change his whole life (Algan, 2011, p. 203) (Figure 8). The film ends with Ismail, who sets out for 

Istanbul, looking hopefully at the road ahead. There is a way out for the hero of the movie Enemy. 

That is, to go to the big city, become a factory worker, and join the industrial proletariat's ranks; 

this truly means hope for the Turkey of that day. 

 

Figure 8: Cemil and his wife telling İsmail that it is possible to build a different life. 



 

 

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFHuHE86KRM (Scene: 1 hour. 48 min. 16 sec.) 

(Date of Access: September 12, 2024). 

In the film, poverty and social class differences and the capitalist system that creates poverty 

and class differences are criticized. Most importantly, it has been explained very strikingly that 

economic differences primarily determine the reason for poverty and social class differences. On 

the other hand, the way in which the capitalist system changes and corrupts people and human 

relations is also conveyed in the movie. It is reflected that poverty, which is an inevitable product 

of the system, does not hesitate to destroy spouse, family, and friendship relationships. Since the 

source of these expenditures is also economic, the ultimately determining role of the economy is 

highlighted in this film. On the other hand, Turkey's changing socioeconomic and cultural climate 

can also be observed intensely in the film. The impression that the economic difficulties, class 

differences, and social crises discussed in the film result from the capitalist system is reflected by 

the high-rise buildings, banks, and global trademarks that the camera focuses on from time to time. 

CONCLUSION 

It can be said about Yılmaz Güney's artistic productions or political existence as a screenwriter, 

actor, director, producer, and political figure that the element that determines his cinematic practice 

is life itself. Güney, who never gave up trying and searching for the truth and beauty with the 

sensitivity of an artist, always knew how to surpass himself and dared to speak about what was 

new and current, thanks to the bond he established between life and art. 

It is thought that Yılmaz Güney is an artistic and political personality who captures the most 

basic link of the correct approach to problems and approaches the solution of the issues based on 

Marxism. Güney approached the events and developments from a class perspective and handled 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFHuHE86KRM


 

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them through the filter of scientific socialism. Yılmaz Güney's cinema is considered a realistic and 

revolutionary cinema approach that explains the social realities of its period in all their nakedness. 

Therefore, for Güney, cinema is both a tool and an end, and the aim of making good cinema is a 

tool to change societies and the world. It is a tool that can shed light on class differences in culture 

and raise public awareness on this issue. Yılmaz Güney reflected social realities and conflicts, 

inequality, and injustice caused by the feudal order, ruptures caused by economic, political, or 

cultural transformations, and contradictions in social relations in the characters he portrayed in the 

films, with the film scripts he wrote on the big screen. For Yılmaz Güney, cinema was a tool to 

raise public awareness beyond its commercial function. 

Following the Marxist ideology he adopted, Yılmaz Güney emphasized the critique of the 

capitalist system and the concept of inequality that this system brings with it in his films. He 

touched upon social class differences and evaluated these differences in the context of the 

bourgeoisie-proletariat conflict. While Güney explains social class differences in the movie 

discussed within the scope of the study (The Hope, The Anxiety, The Herd, The Enemy), he is 

thought to primarily associate the reasons for these differences with economic factors. The South, 

of course, associated class differences with political, social, cultural, ideological, feudal, 

education, religion, and family, but Güney attributed an ultimately determinant role to the 

economy. In other words, in his films, he aimed to convey to the audience that social class 

differences are related to having or not having economic power. However, the movie also takes a 

stance against the problems of patriarchy, bureaucracy, customs, smuggling, banditry, and blood 

feuds, and it is emphasized that these phenomena also fuel social class differences. 

In his film The Hope (1970), a turning point both for his cinematic career and Turkish cinema, 

he was greatly influenced by New Realistic Italian Cinema, especially Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle 



 

 

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Thieves (1949). In the movie, he tells a universal story about unemployment, just like in Bicycle 

Thieves. Cabbar also struggles, just like in De Sica's movie. In the film The Hope, it is possible to 

see the resistance to capitalism, the contradiction between capital and labor, and the power of the 

economy and money. In the film, the economic predicament that a poor car driver is dragged into 

with the introduction of motor vehicles into daily life and the ways he uses to escape this 

predicament are successfully displayed. While Güney continues the car driver's adventure, he 

reflects the reality of the little person in all its dimensions in his personality. The movie Hope 

conveyed Marx's metaphor of infrastructure determining superstructure to the audience. Class 

differences and distortions determined in the context of economic inequalities in society are 

expressed on a socially realistic basis and in striking detail. 

Güney's film The Anxiety (1974) focuses on cotton workers from Çukurova. On the other hand, 

with the increase in mechanization in agriculture, which is the determinant of Turkey's rapid 

evolution to the capitalist mode of production in agriculture, the sharpness of the social structure 

and class distinctions in the context of the working class, which is further condemned to 

exploitation, and the landlords who exploit them, has been emphasized. In the film's background, 

important movements include harsh working conditions, terrible labor exploitation, and 

agricultural workers going on strike. While it is underlined that workers do not have any concepts 

such as union, right to strike, or social security, the awareness process of agricultural workers on 

these issues is also mentioned. Based on Marxist ideology, the story of the change that lies behind 

the social change that caused the villagers to become poor is presented. In the formation of social 

class differences, the ultimately determining role of the economy is again brought to the fore. 



 

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The movie The Herd (1978) is about how a nomadic tribe whose livelihood is based on animal 

husbandry disappears due to developing technology and new economic conditions; as Akbulut 

(2012, p. 63) states, nomadism, settled life, animal husbandry, industry, and the service sector in 

Eastern Anatolia can be considered as the film of the defeat of feudalism in the face of capitalist 

production relations (Akbulut, 2012, p. 63). Despite the socio-cultural fragments of feudalism and 

the existence of the patriarchal structure, the shaking of nomadic life and tradition with the change 

in economic structure has been successfully addressed. As Kuyucak Esen (2018, pp. 146-147) 

states, the train that takes the herd to Ankara drags us from the feudal structure to the capitalist 

structure. Behaviors, relationships, and situations change as the journey progresses. In short, the 

film generally describes social change under the influence of capitalist ideology, new relations 

built from top to bottom, the collapse of the remnants of feudalism in the most remote corners of 

Turkey, and the pains of integrating into capitalism. In this film, Yılmaz Güney argued that social 

classes cannot be considered independently of the local conditions, beliefs, and value systems in 

which people who are thought to belong to that class live. He also told the stories of small people 

caught between the ongoing and still strong feudal organizational relations while the South was 

integrating with capitalism. In addition, he acted to convey to the audience that exploitation is not 

specific to the capitalist system, that exploitation also plays a leading role in the feudal system, 

and that it only changes shape. The most determining factor enabling one class to exploit another 

is the economy. 

The Enemy (1979) is a film that depicts class differences, poverty, and inequality arising from 

differences in economic power. In this film, Güney penetrated the world of people with no way 

out with a sharp observation power and wanted to document the living conditions of unemployed 

and poor people in every detail. The film conveyed to the audience the unbearability and brutality 

of economic oppression in all its nakedness. It is a fact that social class differences are determined 



 

 

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by many educational, social, political, ideological, and cultural factors. However, the movie The 

Enemy, created based on a Marxist ideology, primarily associated the reason for social class 

differences with economic factors and attributed an ultimately determinant role to the economy. 

In the words of Roy Armes (2011, p. 236), the person who created a turning point in Turkish 

cinema is Yılmaz Güney. Güney's film The Hope was a beginning in this context, and in almost 

all the films he shot or wrote after The Hope, he aimed to convey the contradictions of the capitalist 

system and the social class differences it brought with it to the audience. In other words, he 

described the tragedies of oppressed and exploited people resulting from the class society structure. 

Although he associated the fundamental determinants of this class society structure with factors 

such as politics, ideology, education, family, religion, and culture, he attributed the ultimate 

determinant role to the economy consistent with his adopted Marxist ideology. It can be argued 

that Yılmaz Güney is a director and screenwriter who remembers Marxism as a guiding map to 

explain the deprivation and inequalities in Turkish geography. While doing this, he understands 

that aesthetics cannot be considered separately from the story told and tries to wrap the way of 

describing this map as much as the issue he tells. For this reason, it is thought that he changed the 

way cinema was made in Turkey in the 1970s and left a cinematic legacy in Turkey that has not 

lost any political influence. 

Güney is remembered as a pioneer of creativity in Turkish cinema and as someone who 

managed to represent Turkish cinema abroad (Gevgilili, 1989, p. 157). Sadık Battal's highly 

accurate observation that Güney is the only filmmaker who disturbs the status quo and creates a 

different cinema language and world than the imposed status quo language (2006, p. 55). Only the 

films examined within the scope of the study prove this observation as films that the status quo 



 

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139 

can never accept. While many contemporary filmmakers make films with love, history, sexuality, 

and melodrama themes that repeat each other, Güney has managed to make films that convey 

social class differences and problems that are primarily based on economic axis but also political, 

cultural, religious, and family foundations by following a Marxist framework. 

 

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ENDNOTES: 

 
1 [Editor’s Note] Though one of the greatest film directors in world cinema, there is scarce analyses of Guney’s cinema in English. There have 

been recent attempts like Giles & Sahin (1982), Kaftan (2002), Akser (2009), de Brujn (2012), Carruthers (2021), Daldal (2023) and Köksal 

(2023) and this new addition tis welcome by the author.  

2 Even famous and commercial films that do not ostensibly have a political point of view are considered to have a specific political discourse, as 

they assume and reproduce the existing hegemony as usual and legitimate. Therefore, as Mike Wayne (2001, p. 1) emphasizes, all films are 

political. However, some films are more explicitly and directly political, questioning the unfair distribution of cultural and economic resources 

among people or the legitimacy of rulers. With these films, filmmakers aim to create a particular political consciousness in the audience by 

expressing their discourse on various social problems. 

3 Italian Neorealism is a significant cinema movement that emerged in Italy after the Second World War (1945-1952) and adopted principles such 

as using amateur actors, on-location shooting, and minimal scenarios. The movement began to disappear after 1952, when the Cold War 

atmosphere, the Truman Doctrine, and anti-Communist propaganda increased their dominance in Italy. Among the best-known representatives 

of the movement are Roberto Rosellini, Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica, and Fellini. Rosellini's films Rome Open City 1945, Peasant 

Woman Paisa Paisa 1946, Germany Year Zero Germania Anno Zero 1947, Visconti's The Earth Shakes La Terra Trema 1947, De Sica's 

Pavement Children, Sciuscia 1946, Bicycle Thieves Ladri Di Biciclette 1948, The Miracle of Milan Miracolo a Milano 1950, and Umberto 

D 1951, as well as Fellini's Vagabonds I Vitelloni 1953, Endless Streets La Strada 1954, and Nights of Cabiria Le Notti Di Cabiria 1956, are 

among the leading films of the movement (Diken Yücel, 2021, p. 83). Fascism, which broke out during and after the Second World War, was 

essential to the movement's formation. New Realists turned their cameras to people in post-war poverty. The struggle of poor people to hold 

on to life has been the film's central theme. Importance was given to the stories of the working class and peasants. Italian Neorealism, which 

greatly influenced world cinemas, also set an example for Turkey (Daldal, 2021, p. 123). Although The Hope carries intense influences from 

Italian neo-realism, on the one hand, it took its inspiration from people experiencing poverty, the crowded, underdeveloped Adana rural area 

from which Güney came and managed to construct the actor-space relationship in realistic ways. Like the character Ricci in the movie Bicycle 

Thieves, Cabbar in The Hope loses his only means of earning a living. Despite all their realism, the economy is the determining factor in both 

films: Ricci, although belittled at first, later falls for the words of the fortune teller he relied on, while Cabbar goes out to search for treasure 

with the suggestions of a deceitful man. 

4 The film also sheds light on phenomena such as primitive capital accumulation and dispossession, which are essential concepts of Marxist thought. 

As a result of the loss of small land ownership, dispossession, and access to the means of production, life can only be sustained by selling 

labor. The agricultural workers in the movie The Anxiety represent a class that has lost their land due to mechanization in agriculture and has 

nothing left but their labor to sell. Direct quotes from Marx on the subject will make it easier to understand this process. “The process of 

disintegration of a nation that transforms a certain mass of people into potentially free wage workers—individuals forced to work and sell 
 



 

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their labor simply because of their propertylessness” (Marx, 1967, p. 617) is the subject in question. Ways that involve intense labor 

exploitation, such as the liquidation of small land ownership, confiscation of labor, and colonization of nature, serve the accumulation of 

primitive capital (Marx, 1967, pp. 617-618).