Burning Days (2022) Timeline Explained – Every Event in Order

Emre passes out after an evening of heavy raki, uncomfortable social rituals, and the unexpected appearance of a shy young woman named Pekmez who is pressured into dancing. Murat later reveals his suspicion that Emre was actually drugged at the dinner, since the aftermath is followed by a video of Emre behaving erratically. The blackout mirrors the memory gaps that make Emre an unreliable witness to his own actions in Yaniklar.

Foreshadowing: Murat's warning about Emre's predecessor being poisoned foreshadows the possibility that Emre is being similarly targeted.

• emre
• drugged
• dinner
• mayor
• blackout
• pekmez
• murat

Murat tells Emre that the previous state prosecutor mysteriously vanished and that he suspects someone tried to poison him. The film never confirms the fate of this predecessor, leaving his disappearance as an ominous warning about what happens to outsiders who challenge Yaniklar's power structure. It establishes early that resistance to the local elite carries real danger.

• predecessor
• vanished
• prosecutor
• poisoned
• murat
• yaniklar

Emre orders Şahin's arrest after insisting on a forensic sperm test, which links Şahin to Pekmez's brutal assault. As the mayor's son and a local power broker, Şahin had been considered untouchable, so the arrest is a direct challenge to Yaniklar's political hierarchy. The move immediately triggers backlash from the judge, the police, and other local authorities who want the case buried.

• sahin
• arrest
• pekmez
• rape
• sperm test
• prosecutor
• yaniklar

The judge implies that Pekmez may be unreliable as a witness and pushes Emre to drop the charges, siding with the local power structure rather than the victim. Her husband is also the hospital doctor who examined Pekmez, showing how tightly Yaniklar's institutions are interconnected and protect one another. With the mayoral election approaching, releasing Şahin preserves the political alliance the judge depends on.

• judge
• sahin
• release
• pressure
• patriarchy
• mayoral election
• yaniklar

Murat brings Emre geological reports showing that the sinkholes are the direct result of over-extraction of groundwater. The mayor has been allowing excessive drilling, likely tied to construction or agricultural interests, while publicly dismissing the crisis as a natural phenomenon. This cover-up becomes one of the corruption threads Emre stumbles into during his investigation.

Foreshadowing: The mayor calling the water problems a natural phenomenon during Emre's first dinner is an early hint that the crisis is being downplayed.

• sinkholes
• water crisis
• groundwater
• mayor
• corruption
• murat

The video arrives anonymously shortly after Murat suggests that Emre was drugged at the mayor's dinner. Watching it triggers fragmented flashbacks and forces Emre to confront gaps in his memory, raising the question of whether he truly acted on his own that night. The footage is also a weapon, since the rumors it fuels about an affair between Emre and Murat are used to discredit him professionally.

• video
• dancing
• murat
• drugging
• affair
• memory
• manipulation

The anonymous video of Emre dancing intimately with Murat is leaked, and the town uses it to suggest a sexual relationship between the two men. In a conservative community, these rumors function as a political weapon, threatening Emre's authority as prosecutor and isolating him from his colleagues. Whether the rumors reflect truth, drugging, or manipulation is deliberately left ambiguous by the film.

• affair
• rumors
• murat
• emre
• gay
• blackmail
• yaniklar

As the mayoral race approaches, Şahin uses free water deliveries as a populist tactic to win votes from villagers suffering from the water crisis his own family helped cause. The gesture allows him to appear generous while burying the fact that the mayor's policies created the shortages in the first place. It is a calculated move that complicates Emre's pursuit of justice, since attacking Şahin now means attacking a benefactor.

Foreshadowing: The mayor's earlier dismissal of the water issues as natural phenomena sets up the election-driven exploitation of the crisis.

• sahin
• free water
• mayoral election
• populism
• water crisis
• yaniklar

When Emre confronts Şahin about the rape allegations, Şahin flips the dynamic and implicates Emre instead, leveraging Emre's own behavior at the dinner, his drugged blackout, and his closeness to Murat. The reversal exposes how the local elite controls the narrative and can redirect blame onto outsiders. It also illustrates how Emre's compromised position makes him an easy target compared to a well-connected mayor's son.

• sahin
• accusation
• emre
• interrogation
• power
• yaniklar

Emre wakes up to find a dead rat left in his kitchen, an obvious act of intimidation meant to signal that someone has entered his home while he was unconscious. The rat mirrors the town's decay and the corruption lurking beneath its surface, echoing the larger themes of infestation and rot. It also confirms that whatever happened at the mayor's dinner did not end when he blacked out.

• dead rat
• kitchen
• intimidation
• emre
• symbolism

When questioned at the hospital, Pekmez can only stammer fearfully, producing a fragmented and incomplete account of the rape. Her inability to speak clearly is the result of trauma, but also of a lifetime of abuse within a community that has never protected her or her family. The judge exploits this hesitation to cast doubt on her reliability, which is precisely how the patriarchal system buries cases like hers.

Foreshadowing: Yavuz's revelation that Pekmez previously gave birth after an earlier assault establishes a long history of silenced abuse.

• pekmez
• testimony
• stammer
• rape
• trauma
• patriarchy
• yaniklar

The opening boar hunt, in which armed men chase an animal through the town and drag its corpse through the streets, establishes Yaniklar as a place where armed mobs act with impunity. Emre's objection to the hunt, citing gun laws, immediately marks him as an outsider who does not share the community's values. The chaos of the hunt foreshadows the violence, lawlessness, and gendered aggression that will erupt later in the story.

• boar hunt
• opening
• tradition
• gun laws
• emre
• yaniklar

After receiving the anonymous video and listening to Murat's account of caring for him, Emre realizes that large portions of the dinner night are missing from his mind. The footage shows him dancing and behaving in ways he does not remember, suggesting he was drugged and possibly manipulated into compromising situations. This loss of control becomes central to the film's ambiguity about Emre's complicity in Yaniklar's moral rot.

• emre
• memory
• drugging
• video
• murat
• manipulation
• ambiguity