David Denby of "New York" criticized "Midnight Express" as "merely anti-Turkish, and hardly a defense of prisoners' rights or a protest against prison conditions." Denby said also that all Turks in the film — guardian or prisoner — were portrayed as 'losers' and 'swine', and that 'without exception the Turks are presented as degenerate, stupid slobs'. Turkish Cypriot film director Derviş Zaim wrote a thesis at the University of Warwick on the representation of Turks in the film, in which he concluded that the one-dimensional portrayal of the Turks as 'terrifying' and 'brutal' served merely to reinforce the sensational outcome, and was likely influenced by such factors as Orientalism and capitalism.