New movie aiming to create an Erdogan cult?

The Chief, a feature film that traces the early rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, opens in cinemas just weeks before Turks vote on more power for the president. The portrayal follows a formula used to invest Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the secularist founder of the Turkish Republic, with cult status.

Ataturk introduced Western legal codes, dress, calendar and alphabet during his regime, which lasted from 1923 almost without interruption until 1945.

Al Monitor, the regional publication that reported the movie release, notes that the early Turkish Republic that Erdogan supporters so despise was characterized by a cult of personality around Kemal Ataturk, and that Turkey now has another cult of personality in the making, at the hands of the very people who for decades ridiculed the Ataturk cult.

There are already stadiums and institutions named after Erdogan, according to Agence France-Presse, which reported plans for the movie in 2016.