The much-anticipated “Reis” ("The Chief") — a biopic tracing the life of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from childhood to the pinnacle of political power — premieres in Turkish cinemas March 3. Excerpts posted online leave no doubt that the protagonist is a larger-than-life hero. The timing of the launch is likely not inconsequential, coming as it does just weeks before the referendum on constitutional amendments whose sole purpose, in the eyes of many, is the consolidation and prolongation of "one-man rule" in the hands of Erdogan. In the bigger picture, “The Chief” is a film about the history of not just Erdogan, but of the Turkish Republic itself.

An early scene involves one of the most controversial prohibitions in Turkey's history — the ban on reciting the Islamic call to prayer in the original Arabic that was imposed in 1932 by the one-party, Kemalist regime and lasted until 1950, when the first free elections brought the opposition Democrat Party to power. “The Chief” covers the ban, abhorred for decades by Turkey’s religious conservatives, in a dramatic fictional fashion.

As the unpopular Turkish-language call to prayer is delivered from a minaret, a bold imam walks into the courtyard of a mosque and dares to recite the Arabic call to prayer. A soldier under strict orders to stop such “reactionaries” forces the imam to cease and beats him with his rifle. The man’s young grandson, however, proves his bravery and continues with the recitation, despite the menacing presence of the soldiers with their guns.

Another dramatic scene is set in the year 1961. Turkey is under the rule of a secularist military junta that has overthrown the democratically elected Democrat Party government. The young boy who bravely recited the Arabic call to prayer is now a pious Islamist with a “cause.” A truck full of soldiers heads into his modest neighborhood, where they break down his door and arrest him as he is praying. For added drama, the man's aged parents try to stop the soldiers and save their son. They are viciously thrown to the ground, in a scene reminiscent of Nazis in Holocaust films.