Hilal Özdemir writes: From Pir Sultan Abdal to Balzac… Justice in the spider's web

-'Laws are like spider webs; the weak get caught in the web, while the strong tear through it.' – Balzac

-'There is no sound gear in a broken system' - Pir Sultan Abdal

In recent months, our country's agenda has been increasingly shaped around the judiciary and, consequently, justice. The shocking operations carried out almost every week and the arrests that wound the public conscience shake trust in the judiciary in our country while also damaging the sense of justice.

We are searching for the judiciary within the system, and for justice and conscience within the judiciary.

With this in mind, I chose a film this week that questions the concept of justice.

Written and directed by Selman Nacar, the 2023 film Hesitation Wound (Tereddüt Çizgisi) questions the concept of "justice" in a striking way.

The film stars Tülin Özer, Erdem Şenocak, and Oğulcan Arman Uslu.

The story centers on the dilemmas faced by Canan, a lawyer practicing in Uşak, within the justice system while defending her client, Musa, who is accused of murdering his boss. Canan, who struggles with cases at the courthouse during the day, keeps watch by her mother's bedside in the hospital, who is in a vegetative state.

On the day of the verdict hearing, Canan is forced to make a difficult moral choice between her mother, the judge, the defendant, and her own conscience.

Defending her client against a powerful family, Canan hits the walls of injustice. The fact that the victim's son is not called to testify, the deletion of security camera footage from the day of the incident, and the attempt to close the case by pinning the crime on a powerless person reveal how the system operates.

Canan is a lawyer who studied abroad and returned to Uşak after working in Istanbul. However, her colleagues and the prosecution tell her that she is "trying to apply what she saw abroad here," wanting her to conform to how justice functions in Turkey.

So much so that Canan's defense of the rights of the powerless, like Musa, or even just conducting an ordinary legal process, is seen as "superheroism."

Hesitation Wound is reminiscent of 12 Angry Men, a classic of world cinema. In 12 Angry Men, the task of proving the innocence of a young man accused of murder fell to the efforts of one of the 12 jurors. The jury evaluated all possibilities to save the young man who was the "weak one caught in the web," as Balzac put it. In Hesitation Wound, this task is placed on Canan. However, Canan's struggle becomes more complex and lonely in the face of the system's decay.

One of the most striking scenes in the film is the collapse of the ceiling in the courtroom. Due to sewage problems, the pipes burst, and the ceiling, unable to bear the load, collapses, symbolizing the blockage of justice. The laws blocked by the 'hand' reaching from above drive the hearings into a dead end with the support of those who obey this hand. The blocked justice eventually falls on the head of the most powerless.

The film's title comes from the forensic term 'hesitation wound.' A hesitation wound refers to the superficial cuts left on the body by a person who is committing suicide, as they practice with a sharp object. Canan's hesitation wound is the decision she must make regarding her mother. The decision to pull the plug on her mother in a vegetative state and donate her organs is not just a personal matter. The dilemmas Canan faces at this point have the potential to affect the course of the trial.

With its open-ended finale, Hesitation Wound leaves the audience alone with their own judgments and, in fact, their own consciences. Questioning how possible justice is and how much the system can change, this film holds a mirror to the justice crisis in Turkey. Canan's struggle reminds us once again how difficult it is for the weak to escape the web.

When the film ends, the echoes of an ancient debate, stretching from Pir Sultan Abdal to Balzac, continue to resonate in our minds, our hearts, and our consciences.