OLIVER STONE - STONE TO MAKE AMENDS WITH TURKS

Director and screenwriter OLIVER STONE has arrived in Turkey today (13DEC04) to make amends with the European nation, 26 years after he offended them with his controversial movie MIDNIGHT EXPRESS.

Turks were furious when the 1978 film depicted their prisons as cruel, barbaric establishments by featuring scenes of rape and torture in the ALAN PARKER-directed movie.

This morning, Stone will breakfast with Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister ERKAN MUMCU in the capital Istanbul, before meeting the media to make his peace and promote his latest film ALEXANDER.

PAMIR DEMIRTAS, the Turkish distributor of Alexander, says, "The main reason for which Oliver Stone is coming here is to make peace with Turkey. As he has already said he wants to forget about Midnight Express and let it be forgotten."

Stone adapted the film from young American BILLY HAYES' true story of how he was treated in a Turkish prison after he was arrested attempting to smuggle marijuana out of the country in 1970.

Despite torture being commonplace in Turkish jails at the time, Stone was criticised for exaggerating the violence in his OSCAR-winning screenplay, adapted from Hayes' tale.

Mumcu explains, "Stone has already apologised and there is no sense in fanning again this Midnight Express syndrome. What we are going to discuss is what joint projects we can undertake in the future."

Midnight Express was banned in Turkey in the 1970s and was only shown on TV in the late 1990s.