Tea Seks Furyasi (boom of sex movies) years of Turkish erotic movies (1972-1985)
7,000 people attended the opening gala of Turkey’s first local sex movie …
It is not known exactly when foreign erotic films were first introduced to the Ottomans, but it is reported that a large number of foreign sex films were captured by the police in 1922 (a year before Atatürk removed the last Ottoman sultan from ‘power’ and make Turkey a democratic republic). The Istanbul police (acting on a notice from prominent citizen Dr. Besim Omer Pasa) raided and closed the Kadiköy and Odeon cinemas, which showed explicit foreign sex films – on the grounds that “films are poisoning our youth.”
Subsequently, the “legitimate” Turkish film industry (which had been formally established in 1914 during the Ottoman era) continued to grow and prosper until the early 1970s (as we have already described on our website).
But after Turkish Television (TRT) began broadcasting on a single channel in 1964, the Turkish public began to abandon movie theaters in favor of their home televisions (even though TRT programs did not start until 4 afternoon and they were all black and white). white, and even though they consisted mainly of news, Halk (Cultural Folk) music shows, Casper-style cartoons, and reruns of American mystery [The Fugitive] and detective [Colombo] shows – with Turkish dubbing).
Peri and I watched Colombo every week after we were married in December ’74. And the guy who did the dubbing of Colombo’s Turkish voice was excellent, perfectly capturing Peter Falk’s rough sound.
And in the early 1970s (as more families came to own personal televisions), the Turkish film industry was in serious financial trouble.
In a panic, movie producers looked for ways to get audiences back to movie theaters. It wasn’t long before they concluded that ‘Sex Sells’ and, in 1972, they started making erotic movies.
The idea was an instant hit … Seven thousand people attended the opening of the first Turkish erotic film “Parçala Behçet” (see the movie poster via the link below), directed by Melih Gülgen and starring Behçet Nacar in the male lead role. It opened in Konya, of all places, in the heart of Turkish religious conservatism, and it was the beginning of something great …
Next: The heyday of Turkish erotic movies
[Click following to access a fully illustrated HTML version of The Rise and Demise of Turkey’s Erotic Films Industry.]