Turkey: Director to make movie on July 15 defeated coup

By Hilal Ustuk

ISTANBUL (AA) - Director, producer, scriptwriter and author Mohydeen Izzat Quandour said preparations are ready to adapt his book on the defeated July 15 coup attempt into a movie.

“’Night of the Generals’ is a very exciting story. I have written the script. It is being translated to Turkish now. If we're lucky we will get support to do it,” Quandour, 80, said.

"[The book has] been published in the U.K., Australia, the United States. Now it is being translated in German and Spanish.”

The Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) and its U.S.-based leader Fetullah Gulen orchestrated the defeated coup, which martyred 250 people and injured nearly 2,200.

Quandour, 80, said he was in Istanbul the night of July 15 and “was shocked”.

His book "Night of the Generals", published in English, first came out in 2017. It was translated in Turkish this past February.

“Obviously, this event was big news around the world. Even those who had never heard of Turkey knew about Turkey now. People who don’t know Turkey and then discover Turkey are usually very surprised [by] how big it is. Turkey is not a small Middle East country,” he said.

“After this event [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan became very popular everywhere,” the Jordanian director said. “He became a very well known leader in the world.”

“I was in Malaysia last year. They know Erdogan. They really think very highly of him because of, I think, what happened on July 15. It was an international incident. Trying a coup d’etat on a government. A military trying to take over again. It was a big story. He displayed great courage whether you like him or not.”

Quandour was born in Amman, Jordan, in 1938, and did his schooling in the United States. His father was born in Sivas, Turkey, so he has “a family connection to Turkey, not only business or travel”.

The first and “most profitable” film he produced, in Hollywood, was “The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe” in 1974, which he said was very popular in U.S. drive-in theaters for many years.