Manufacturing the national ‘we’: constitutive opposition and phantasmatic violence through Yeşilçam’s ‘Russian type’ (1968–1971)

This article analyses Russian characters across three Turkish historical adventure and war-drama films: Kafkas Kartalı (1968), Osmanlı Kartalı (1969), and Kaf Dağını Terk Edenler (1971). Through comparative scene analysis, it argues that the ‘Russian type’ functions as a constitutive opposition that stabilises a national ‘we’ by granting the Turkish side ethical primacy. It traces three operations: legality-based legitimation drifting into phantasmatic violence, resistance through mimicry and appropriation of authority’s signs, and closure reallocating moral value through gendered incorporation and communal survival. Drawing on Hall, Bhabha, Žižek, and Spivak, it situates these patterns within Türkiye’s 1965–1976 conjuncture as compensatory victory fantasy.