Turkey — pirates

This article is about the country. You may be looking for "Turkey" the bird.

"I've never even heard of Ammand the Corsair. So he can't be too bad. My—I mean, I've heard, uh, Spanish noblemen complaining about the Barbary pirates for years, and his name never came up."
"He's new. They say he murdered the last Pirate Lord and his entire crew by himself, using only his scimitar and deadly skill. He took the title with violence, and ever since he has been wreaking havoc from Morocco to Turkey."

―Carolina and a sailor about Ammand^[src]

Turkey was a country mainly located in West Asia, with a smaller part in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Iran to the east; the Mediterranean Sea to the south; as well as the Aegean Sea and Greece to the west. Although Turkey was inhabited by various ancient peoples and humans, notably during the Roman and Byzantine eras, the Ottomans united the principalities and expanded, beginning in the late 1200s. Turkey had coastal plains, a high central plateau, and various mountain ranges; its climate was temperate with harsher conditions in the interior.

History

By the Age of Piracy, Turkey became the location of an unnamed Turkish Prison, a huge, monolithic stone structure wedged into a dramatic cliff face above the Mediterranean Sea.^[2]

In Captain Edward Teague's cabin, notably aboard his pirate ship, the Troubadour, an expensive wool rug from Turkey on the floor was occasionally used as a sleeping place by Teague's prison dog.^[4]

Ever since Ammand, the Pirate Lord of the Black Sea,^[5] took the title by murdering the previous Pirate Lord and his entire crew by himself, he and Barbary Corsairs wreaked havoc from Morocco to Turkey. Ammand combined his forces with the Ottoman Empire to control the region from Morocco to Turkey and sometimes beyond.^[6]

At the beginning of the search for the Dead Man's Chest, Captain Jack Sparrow purposely allowed himself to be captured by the corsairs off the Canary Islands and was taken to the Turkish Prison on the Mediterranean Sea.^[2] Sparrow acquired a drawing of the key to Dead Man's Chest, the very container that held Davy Jones' still-beating heart, and escaped by sneaking inside a coffin to get out. The Turkish prison guards dropped the dead prisoners from a clifftop and the falling tide carried the caskets out to Sea, where the Black Pearl rescued Sparrow.^[3]

Behind the scenes

Turkey first appeared, albeit unidentified, through the Turkish Prison's appearance in media relating to the 2006 film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest,^[7]^[3] notably the official Disney website,^[2] the reference book Pirates of the Caribbean: The Visual Guide,^[8] and Irene Trimble's junior novelization.^[9] The name "Turkey" was first mentioned in media relating to the 2007 film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End through Ammand the Corsair, notably the official website,^[2] as well as the "Inside the Brethren Court" special feature on various home video releases.^[5]

According to the films' presskits, the very last scene to be filmed for Dead Man’s Chest, on February 7, 2006, was Johnny Depp's very first appearance in the film as Captain Jack Sparrow, popping out of a casket which has just been hurled into the Turkish sea. By At World's End, while discussing the story and character developments with their costume changes, costume designer Penny Rose detailed how Captain Jack's sash was made by a hill tribe in Turkey, and had to send someone to persuade the tribe to weave about one hundred yards of the sash material.^[10]