The film Turkish Passport was criticized for "attempts to whitewash a perpetrator of the Armenian genocide by painting him as a rescuer in the Holocaust".

[4][page needed] Mustafa Kemal and Colonel Behiç Bey (Erkin) played crucial roles in the success of the battles at the Dardanelles front, where both men commanded during World War I. Erkin earned a high reputation and the German Iron Cross 1st Class military decoration, which served him when he needed to impress Germans during the Occupation.

His surname "Erkin," which means "free man" was personally suggested by Atatürk in honor of his ability to make objective decisions in the face of outside pressure.

Baer describes this book as "hagiography", and notes it was implicitly marketed for its utility in furthering Turkey's Armenian genocide denial.

[2] In The Road to the Front (Cepheye Giden Yol) (2008), Kıvırcık covered his grandfather Erkin's World War I years.

[7][2] In April 2007, an Israeli association of Jews with origins in Turkey applied to have Erkin included among the "Righteous Among the Nations" in Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.