'Graveyard' Netflix Recap & Ending Explained: What Does ‘Toprak’ Symbolize?

The Netflix series Graveyard, through its gripping accounts, tackles the still dispassionate treatment of the growing cases of femicide in Turkey. Everything from deeply seated patriarchal values and state and corporate collusion to the tunnel vision of the bureaucratic system has nourished the seedbed of gender-based aggression. It is at this juncture that Önem Özülkü is introduced to oversee the new Special Crimes Unit as captain. Earlier orders stemmed from a leadership that was deeply entrenched in unprogressive masculine ideals. Önem’s appointment is expected to bring some parity to the unequal balance of the state of affairs. A commentary on the dilapidated bureaucratic system of the nation, Graveyard presents a somewhat gloomy and dismal picture of law enforcement as hundreds of women passively drift into nothingness without justice.

Spoilers Ahead

What can we expect from the new unit?

At the inception of Graveyard, the Turkey National Police announces its establishment of a Special Crimes Unit to investigate cases of femicide. While Haluk Ata, Deputy Chief of Police, asks Önem Özülkü to take the center stage and address the nation as the captain of this unit, he restricts her speech and fashions it according to the standards of the masculine, thus euphemizing the extent of violence meted out to women. Önem, who is just directed to read out the speech, fumbles when she is required to present a blatant lie as truth—that the rate of crimes against women has substantially reduced over the years. Haluk, noticing her nervousness, takes the mic and completes her sentence. While the unit starts its operation, the world at large, instead of congratulating its success, tries to look for instances when it falters, on the off-chance they can shift the blame to its woman leader. Önem Özülkü appoints other women professionals as her aides—as an IT specialist, she is joined by Sofia, or Nergis, and as coroner, she finds her cousin, Feriha. 

The first episode, ‘Hotter than the Sun,’ forays into gender-based violence through the investigation of the death of one Alev Golpinar, who was burned alive in a car. Önem and her unit find out that behind Alev’s death and the exploitation of several other women is a deeply enmeshed network of workplace abuse and domestic violence. Önem, in her speech following the investigation, points out the loopholes in the system that drive women away from filing complaints safely, without any threat of being assaulted. With Önem’s introduction, we can expect the unit to overturn the previous state of the police and its nonchalant stagnation in dealing with cases involving cruelty against women. 

What New Challenges Are Thrown Towards Önem?

As Önem Özülkü becomes notable as a determined and intelligent pillar of the Special Crimes Unit, the men in the system start poking holes in her methods. The episode concerns itself with the discovery of the body of young amateur pop singer, Nefise Keskin, in a dumpster close to a bar in Kadıköy. The forensics suspect that it might be a death induced by a drug overdose. There is an old beggar, a lady with silver hair, whose sudden appearance jolts Önem and Serdar. The woman, who gives her name as Daisy, keeps referring to a ‘Blue Devil’ who hurt the girl. It is from this woman that they find the deceased’s purse, which gives them her name. When Nergis Üzmez, Önem’s trusted cyberpunk aide, lands herself into trouble for pulling a knife on a young man, even if to save a woman, her act puts her on the radar. The prosecutor is livid at Nergis’ appointment in the force, citing her murderous past. Önem tries to pacify him and strongly recommends the value of reformation over ostracization. However, Nergis’ eccentric conduct grates on Önem soon, and she blasts him.

Graveyard episode 2 also parallelly examines the growing tensions between Önem on one side and Nergis and Sude, Önem’s daughter, on the other side. Önem’s paranoia, which spills over into her leadership role, is read as overbearing by her daughter. Sude is embarrassed to deal with her mother showing up at her school to raid her friends. Through these instances, we are made to witness the forms of feminine power, which, although at odds with each other, emerge as a threat to masculine forces, as we discover later. 

What significance does Mehmet’s first conversation carry?

One important detail emerges from the exchange between Serdar and Mehmet, the brother, at the dargah. Nefise had come to meet her brother, but he refused to meet her. We later find out that Nefise had tried to reach out to him after finding that Mehmet had killed a teen boy for a drug deal gone wrong. Mehmet’s first conversation hints at the gravity of the muck he is in, as he emphasizes ‘hamdım piştim yandım’ or “I was raw, then I was cooked, and now I’m burned.” The quote, attributed to Mevlana Jalaluddin-i Rûmî, reflects Rumi’s journey into the interior of a dervish lodge through a demanding daily routine of serving in the kitchen, which metaphorically also connotes the arduous journey that is undertaken by the self. For Mehmet, with his servitude to the Almighty after his tryst with moral decadence, he finds a resonance in these words. According to the dictum of the Mevlevi order, Mehmet is not a criminal, but one who is immature and ‘raw’ and in need of experience. Like the Mevlevi dancers who are required to undergo a solitary training of 1001 days, where they are given lessons on morality and belief, Mehmet is away from the world for four long years. Through the course of these years, what is ‘raw’ becomes ‘cooked’ into a mature and informed individual. To Sufism, the act of cooking has a divine purpose and hence bears special meaning. While working in the kitchen, the atoners also burn themselves. 

In a different way, when seen within the context of the narrative, “I was raw, then I was cooked, and now I’m burned” reads as Mehmet’s hint at his involvement in the drug cartel. The words ‘raw,’ ‘cook,’ and ‘burn’ are slang terms used to identify the making and the form of narcotics.

What new form of crime against women is explored in Episode 3?

In ‘The Woman in the Lake,’ a woman’s body is found dumped in a lake, wrapped in a tarp. While all cases of femicide can be attributed to patriarchy as their main agent, this story in particular deals with a situation of ‘masculinity-in-crisis.’

A man, called Erkut, a servicing agent of an internet provider company, is first caught as the killer of the dead women in this episode. However, later, he is found out to be just an accomplice of the main killer. Önem points out that Erkut is just a creepy voyeur, the actual murderer being a sexual sadist. In the interrogation room, Erkut’s wounded masculinity is unleashed when he describes the way he lured the women into his trap. His victims are all women who discard their abusive husbands and grate on his own symbolic wounds. Erkut’s company, AD Telecom, is headed by a woman manager who is motivated by her vision of getting more educated women to work in the company and detaching those male employees who show signs of stagnation. The woman’s promotion to the managerial post reduces Erkut to a state of powerlessness and enacts his symbolic castration. This drives him to get involved with the killer who is going after women without husbands. 

What does ‘Toprak’ Symbolize?

In the final episode of the season, called ‘Bound,’ Önem is faced with the mysterious death of a journalist, Nilüfer Steen. A little below Nilüfer’s neck, a tattoo is found that reads ‘Toprak,’ the Turkish word for ‘soil’ or ‘earth.’ Perhaps none of nature’s elements appears as provocatively as the recurrence of the motif of ‘soil’ in this episode. The episodes of the series expound in painful detail the argument of the poem with which each starts, a Turkish translation of the poem ‘Empedocles on Etna’ by Matthew Arnold. Like the other women in the story whose life energy returns to the elements of fire, air, and water, respectively, Nilüfer too has a direct connection to the soil in her death. As the case progresses, we find out that one of her primary motivations was to expose the incessant cyanide toxicity from the gold cyanidation mining technique that burdens the land of Turkey. In fact, the introductory image of Nilüfer in the episode, moments away from her death, is her collecting some soil in a sample cup. As the investigation into her death is initiated, we realize the larger motive of her act.

What Does Graveyard’s Location In The Basement Symbolize?

In Graveyard’s ending, Haluk Ata meets his son, Serdar, to have a heart-to-heart chat. In this conversation, the suggestion of the differential placements of the office of the Special Crimes Unit and the Homicide Unit also implies the hierarchical treatment of the cases of both departments. The homicide unit is above ground and has the privilege of more people and better resources. The Graveyard, as the underground archive is called, is turned into Önem Özülkü’s office, and the very act bears significance. The Special Crimes Unit deals with crimes motivated by gender aggression, particularly towards women. Any case file that finds a place in the Graveyard is understood with a prospective irresolution. So, when the unit is forced to set up its base literally under the Homicide department, it mirrors how the cases of femicides are thrust downwards under the weight of investigations of the supposedly more important murder cases. Like Hasan’s daughter’s murder file, many do not see the light of justice and wait for years before they are picked up again by a dedicated, upright, and even sympathetic bureaucrat like Önem Özülkü.

In fact, there is a point in episode 3 where Haluk threatens Önem with a transference of the case to the Homicide department. In the context of the story, this can be seen as Haluk’s attempt to highlight the achievements of Homicide more as an esteemed department over the obscure SCU. However, I read it as a sign that cases under SCU are forcibly moved to its higher-up, Homicide, as a way of projecting a more convincing image of the nation’s rhetoric on women’s safety. The more gender-based cases leave the shelves, the more they are integrated into homicides that essentially have no gender motivation and direct people’s gaze away from the urgency of the crimes against women. 

How do the members of the unit individually exhibit their own trauma from patriarchy?

Captain Önem, a single mother in charge of her teen daughter, Sudem, is not the only one who exhibits the precariousness of living. Serdar, the son of the Chief of Police, is constantly at odds with his father figure, Hamluk Ata. His masculinity is constantly challenged by Hamluk and seen with utmost disregard for the profession. On the other hand, the involvement of Nergis in the unit is posed with raised eyebrows as she has a record of stabbing her father. The series will perhaps investigate this loose end in future installments. The veteran officer, Hasan, in one of the episodes, expresses how, despite being physically manhandled by his father in his childhood, he has ensured that his own children largely remained protected from the misery of the cruel world. Unfortunately, his daughter was murdered, and he has continued to seek justice for her for many years. 

The second season of Graveyard can be anticipated to initiate the investigation of the cold case on behalf of the grieving father. Berk Güleryüz, the criminalist, emerges as a force to be reckoned with in the final episode. Berk seems to be the only one who has shared a harmonious relationship with his father figure. Tragically, his father had to die, and the reason might become more clear in the future. Haluk Ata himself seems to be a puppet at the hands of the patriarchal system. In the end, the fretful chief is turned into a dejected father reconciling with his son.

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