Ertuğrul 1890 – a dramatic depiction of the historical relationship between Turkey and Japan – premiered in Tokyo on Tuesday. The film is about the rescue of 69 Ottoman sailors returning to Japan from a charity trip aboard an Ottoman frigate that sank on an island near Kushimoto.
It also shows that 95 years later, during the 1985 Iran-Iraq War, 215 Japanese were rescued from Tehran on the orders of Turkish President Turgut Zal. Director Mitsutoshi Tanaka and Turkish actors Alikan Yusesoy and Melissa attended the film’s premiere. Some Baba Dag, Murat Elesli, Kenan Ase, Turkish officials and more than 1000 Japanese spectators.
Prior to the screening, viewers read messages from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdoğan congratulated the film’s participants and recalled that Ertuğrul had sent a message of friendship from Sultan Abdulhamid II, the 34th and last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, to bid farewell to the Meiji Emperor of Japan. Yes More than 580 sailors died when the frigate was hit by a typhoon off the coast of Wakayama Prefecture, stranded and sank.
The whole story is a milestone in the history of friendship between Turkey and Japan. Director Tanaka told Anadolu Agency last month that he visited Turkey many times during the project phase and exchanged views with local residents in Kushimoto to mark the 120th anniversary of the frigate disaster.
Emphasizing that the film strengthens the friendship between the two countries, Tanaka said: On Monday, before the premiere, a replica of the Turkish Airlines plane named after Kushimoto and the Turkish Airlines plane flying at the airport near Tokyo flew to the airport near Tokyo. used in the 1985 Ertuğrul 1890 rescue opened in Japanese theaters on Saturday and in Turkey on 25 December.
