A country whose shoes leak: Ahmet Uluçay

Ahmet Uluçay wrote the following in his diary dated December 23, 2000:

“I was afraid to go out in the snow after dinner because my shoes leak. I don't have any proper shoes. I only have a pair of Denizli-made shoes that I bought for 2.5 million.”

While writing these lines, he was in the midst of preparations for his film, Boats Made of Watermelon Rinds, which would be released three years later. In those days, he was traveling back and forth to Istanbul, meeting “famous” names, and receiving awards; CNN Türk was interviewing him at his home in Tepecik. While all this was happening, he was poor enough to be afraid of going out in the snow in the evening. If he hadn't had boots to wear, he probably wouldn't have been able to go out at all.

Ahmet Uluçay was born on December 2, 1954, in the town of Tepecik, in the Tavşanlı district of Kütahya. 55 years passed; he passed away on the last day of November 2009. He had been passionately attached to cinema since his childhood. When he was just 12 years old, he and his friend İsmail Mutlu set out to build a film projector and succeeded. Just like in the film he would make years later, they showed films to the villagers in a barn. Afterward, they founded the Tepecik Village Friend Cinema Group. There were three of them: Ahmet Uluçay, his friend Şerif Akarsu, who was a miner, and his old friend İsmail Mutlu, who was involved in poultry farming.

Boats Made of Watermelon Rinds received full marks from the audience from the moment it was released. It was met with great acclaim. Personally, it is one of the best films I have ever watched in my life. The film won nearly forty awards in Turkey and abroad. Ahmet Uluçay was such a great value. However, lack and poverty were never absent from his life.

How do we know this? In his diary titled Is It Worth So Much Pain for Cinema?, he recorded what he experienced day by day. I will share some of those notes in a moment. But first, I must say this: while names who couldn't even come close to Ahmet Uluçay were gaining fame, celebrity, and money, he somehow remained alone. Poverty never left his life. Because this society surrendered not to what is valuable, deep, and accumulated; but to vulgarity, mediocrity, and the cheap. It bought the cheap. Perhaps Uluçay was too expensive.

This is a matter deep enough to be a subject of social analysis on its own. While society turns toward the cheap and makes it visible, it could not be expected that the political, cultural, and sociological landscape it ultimately encounters would be any different. If you want to see a garden consisting of various flowers, you must give strength to the soil, not the swamp.

Let's come to the notes in the diary.

Uluçay described the relationship between poverty and shame as follows:

“Poverty also brings shame. Especially around here, the moment you lose the social race, you are excluded. People can forgive immorality, but never helplessness. Steal, rob; just don't remain poor. The poverty I live in is shameful. I am ashamed before Ayşe, the children, and the whole village. This life is not bearable. This life insults a person at every stage. So many incompetent and snotty people live in extravagant luxury with their families. I will never forgive this order.

Nuri Bilge (Ceylan) says I am always complaining. Let's see if he can manage my daily life until noon?”

A brief parenthesis needs to be opened here. The minimum wage to be applied in 2026 has been set at 28,075 TL. In big cities, you can only pay rent with this money; and that's not even in every neighborhood. What remains: Food, clothing, health, heating, transportation... None of these can be covered. Like an unspoken obituary. Moreover, this figure is below the currently announced hunger threshold.

What was Uluçay saying: “This life is not bearable. This life insults a person at every stage.”

Exactly so. This life and these figures are very far from an honorable, dignified, and fair social structure. The minimum wage is not just a number; it also reveals a society's conscience, politics, economic order, masks, and decay. If we want to see where we are going, it is enough to look at the minimum wage announced every year.

Let's close the parenthesis and continue.

As we said, Ahmet Uluçay was expensive for this society. That is why society chose the cheap. He was aware of this, and that is why he was troubled. He said in his diary:

“If I had lived in a proper country, I would have had at least five films by now, each of which had won international awards. Yet, this is a strange country where theft is wealth, dishonesty is rewarded, and success is punished.”

A person knows the truth of the place where they are wounded the most. In such moments, words turn into the person's embodied form. The pain, rebellion, and weight in Uluçay's words come from here. This note he dropped in his diary in 2001 clearly shows this:

“A country like an asylum from top to bottom, from east to west... No one realizes that we are experiencing a crisis of dignity and humanity before an economic crisis. I am ashamed.”

It is impossible to interpret these words in any other way. Uluçay is not just talking; he was crying out based on what he lived through.

In his own words, in this “treacherous and perfidious world,” Ahmet Uluçay lived a troubled but passionate life. He climbed from being a truck driver to the giant steps of cinema with quiet, silent steps. From his short films to his writings, he spoke from the very center of life. Without twisting his words; without leaning on anyone, without resting his back on anyone, he only told the truth.

And it is good that he did.

Sixteen years ago, on the last day of November, he passed away. He left behind not big words, crowded funerals, or ostentatious ceremonies; but a handful of films, a notebook full of diaries, and a wounded conscience. As a viewer who has followed his films since my university years, I did not want to see the year off without him.

Because some people speak more after they die; and some, with words that no one heard while they were alive, do not stay silent even after they die. Ahmet Uluçay is one of the latter.