{"id":62752,"date":"2013-01-12T11:39:58","date_gmt":"2013-01-12T09:39:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=62752"},"modified":"2013-01-12T11:40:04","modified_gmt":"2013-01-12T09:40:04","slug":"turkey-television-drama-generates-official-angst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/01\/12\/turkey-television-drama-generates-official-angst\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey: Television Drama Generates Official Angst"},"content":{"rendered":"

In most countries, it\u2019s unusual for the looming death of a television character to become a source of official anxiety. In Turkey, however, a hit television series chronicling the 16th century reign of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent has riled officials, who are looking to that era to help shape their own conservative message.<\/p>\n

\"A
A soap opera or Turkey’s true history? A TV series about the 16th century reign of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent has riled up the country’s conservative politicians. (Still: Muhte\u015fem Y\u00fczy\u0131l\/The Magnificent Century)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For decades, Turkey\u2019s Ottoman heritage was downplayed by a secular governing elite that wanted to make a definitive break from the country\u2019s Islamic, eastern-oriented past. Now, with the country\u2019s star rising internationally, stories that lavishly recall a grand imperial past dovetail well with modern Turkey\u2019s greater self-confidence.<\/p>\n

But not all of these tales necessarily reflect the image of the country that the government wishes to project.<\/p>\n

The television drama Muhte\u015fem Y\u00fczy\u0131l (The Magnificent Century) offers a case in point. The sweeping historical saga has already enthralled legions of Turkish viewers for two years. But now the story is reaching an especially riveting point, the pending execution of Ibrahim Pasha, the sultan\u2019s grand vizier.<\/p>\n

The path to Ibrahim Pasha\u2019s demise was filled with intrigue. And the prospect of reexamining this complicated chapter in the Ottoman past makes Turkey\u2019s incumbent culture minister, Ertu\u011frul G\u00fcnay, uneasy. \u201cAs there are good aspects in history worth praising, there are also bad sides, which are not tolerable with our consciousness of today,\u201d G\u00fcnay commented on national television earlier this month.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, The Magnificent Century has angered many prominent government politicians, who have denounced it for depicting entanglements between the Ottoman Empire\u2019s most illustrious sultan and the scheming women of his harem.<\/p>\n

\u201cImposed on Suleiman the Magnificent, a person who spent his life on horseback serving his country and his nation, is a life entirely composed of the bedroom and based on twisted relationships,\u201d Oktay Saral, an MP for the governing, Islamist-oriented Justice and Development Party (AKP), commented in December, the Sabah newspaper reported.<\/p>\n

Oktay threatened to introduce a bill in parliament that would outlaw the \u201cmisrepresentation of historical figures,\u201d but when EurasiaNet.org contacted his office, a spokesperson said the issue was \u201cno longer a priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

The MP seemed to take his cue from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, who assailed the show in similar terms in November.<\/p>\n

Analysts believe that the anger over the drama is rooted in clashing priorities between a burgeoning TV and movie industry riding a wave of so-called \u201cOttomania,\u201d and a government that wants retroactively to stamp that era with its own political and social values.<\/p>\n

Today, the series reportedly attracts one-third of Turkey\u2019s primetime audience on Wednesday nights, as well as 150 million viewers across Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Balkans. It has also paved the way for a string of other movies and television shows hoping to emulate its success by feeding viewers\u2019 hunger for tales of the Ottoman past.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou would think that the AKP would totally embrace this because it reflects their notion of the new founding moment of Turkey,\u201d said Jenny White, a professor of social anthropology at Boston University, and a self-confessed addict of The Magnificent Century.<\/p>\n

The cause of Erdo\u011fan\u2019s anger, White believes, may lie in characters like H\u00fcrrem, also known to history as Roxelana, who was born in what is now western Ukraine. As Suleiman\u2019s concubine and, later, his wife, H\u00fcrrem played a central role in the corridors of power. Her enormous political influence, which has been documented by scholars, runs counter to the AKP\u2019s own conservative ideas about the role of women in society.<\/p>\n

As many historians claim was the case in real life, H\u00fcrrem\u2019s machinations, as portrayed in The Magnificent Century, are expected to lead to the on-screen death of Ibrahim Pasha.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the image of scantily-clad women cavorting with these men and having power, even if it\u2019s in this limited sphere, is just too much for them,\u201d said White, in reference to the AKP.<\/p>\n

Prevailing attitudes in Turkish politics hold that women \u201cshouldn\u2019t be in [the] public space whatsoever because they should be at home having children.\u201d<\/p>\n

Social taboos have governed Turkey\u2019s television industry since private television first got its start in the 1990s, noted Julien Paris, a researcher studying the Turkish soap opera industry at the French Institute of Anatolian Studies in Istanbul.<\/p>\n

As the Ottoman history regains a role in Turkey\u2019s political discourse, \u201cit\u2019s important for the government to create a kind of unspoken jurisprudence for how to represent that era,\u201d Paris said.<\/p>\n

The controversy may also reflect a debate over how to represent figures from Turkey\u2019s past \u2013 whether as flesh-and-blood characters, complete with human weaknesses and, sometimes, sex drives, or as semi-mythical heroes.<\/p>\n

The Magnificent Century, and the 2008 biopic Mustafa, which sought to humanize the Turkish Republic\u2019s founder, Mustafa Atat\u00fcrk, spark angry reactions not because they challenge official positions, but \u201cbecause they depict their hero as a person who falls in love, who has sex as any ordinary person would,\u201d commented Esin Pa\u00e7a Cengiz, a doctoral candidate studying the depiction of history in Turkish cinema at London\u2019s Royal Holloway University.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government and lots of nationalist people object to this kind of representation,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Some fans say that The Magnificent Century\u2019s scene settings have begun to change in response to official criticism. \u201cThere are \u2026 noticeably more religious scenes both in the harem \u2026 and [of] the sultan and his entourage going to the mosque,\u201d observed Boston University\u2019s White.<\/p>\n

Despite its objections to The Magnificent Century, Turkey\u2019s government appears committed to expanding the international reach of the country\u2019s soap-opera industry, seeing it as an effective way to project soft power.<\/p>\n

The Ministry of Economy hopes to expand exports of Turkish TV programs to $100 million per year, up from $70 million in 2012.<\/p>\n

The largely state-financed public broadcaster TRT has even come up with its own contribution to the Ottoman craze — Cinar, a cartoon that, according to producer Varol Yasaro\u011flu, aims to educate children about the Ottoman era\u2019s \u201cmoral and humanitarian values\u201d of \u201cpeace and hospitality and tolerance.\u201d<\/p>\n

But with romance and intrigue still the mainstays of Turkey\u2019s thriving soap opera industry, more programming like The Magnificent Century seems destined to go into production, said White, the social anthropologist.<\/p>\n

\n
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Editor’s note:<\/div>\n

Alexander Christie-Miller is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In most countries, it\u2019s unusual for the looming death of a television character to become a source of official anxiety. In Turkey, however, a hit television series chronicling the 16th century reign of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent has riled officials, who are looking to that era to help shape their own conservative message. For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":62753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2939],"tags":[7534],"class_list":["post-62752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultureart","tag-magnificent-century"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}