Turtles Can Fly (2004) : Evaluation of Sociological Issues Zeynep Betul Bagsiz #1071606 Social Service Worker Program, Fanshawe College SOCI-1006-(41)-23F – Sociology for Social Service Workers Professor Alexandra Siberry 10/10/2023 Turtles Can Fly is a movie about Kurdish refugees’, especially Kurdish refugee children’s life refugee camps under the ongoing war. The main issues in that movie are children who grow up with war, being refugee in their ancestors’ lands, facing discrimination and human rights violences such as education rights or child labor, dealing with poverty and economic difficulties, Psychologic traumas, disabilities, and gender-base discrimination. The other issues related to movie can considered value of technology and how our life shapes because of our religious beliefs, and traditions and education problems. The movie mainly go around Kurdish refugees lives in the camp and shows how they struggling to survive. Children must take care of their siblings and even their families. Poverty is so deep so children must work and even they don’t have any right to think about their traumas. The personal issues on children’s perspective are a hope to live as a normal kid like their peers live in their warmth family house, get educated and live away from traumas and abuses. The life of people disabled by mines also shown as another personal issue by pointing mine problems and disability life. Gender roles and social expectations are also examined, especially through the character ‘Soran’. All the public issues are caused by war. Because of war, a deep poverty starts, people get disability, children part apart from their parents and must take their roles and have to work as a refugee with no basic human right. That movie invites people to out of their social world and shows how Kurdish ( of course not only a group of people but also all refugees around the world) refugees especially Kurdish refugee kids and individuals deal with the war and that hard conditions but still have a hope a better future and tie with their culture and traditions. The main stakeholders are Kurdish refugee children and individuals who live in the refugee camp in a unhumanitarian conditions and international communities and media that take a serious part on their lives which we can see through dialect between Soran and Agrin (even they have extremely impressive traumas, they still have hope for rise again and survive and will have a better lives), all costumes, mimics, and their way to play together. On individuals and journalists, we observe their more realistic and life oriented, survival-based behavior in the face of the situation. Generally, the movie trying to show that personal and public issues that I discussed above, but in addition that movie become weak about not showing that historical background and political reasons and how international nations blind that situation. On that perspective, that movie more focused on people who faced with war is not only take their lives but also change their lives entirely, but they still have faith to keep continue although film talks about past that problem still exists.
