Television in Turkey: Local Production, Transnational Expansion and Political Aspirations [1st ed.] 9783030460501, 9783030460518

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Television in Turkey Local Production, Transnational Expansion and Political Aspirations Edited by Yeşim Kaptan · Ece Algan

Television in Turkey “Television in Turkey, as a well-researched book full of compelling ideas,appeals to any reader interested in the institutional, industrial, generic and narrative structures of Turkish television. The chapters provide a deeper understanding of how national audiences, diasporic communities and expanding transnational societies use Turkish television output. A must-read book for anyone wishing to go historically and theoretically further into the vast Turkish televisual landscape.” —Sevilay Çelenk, Academics for Peace scholar dismissed from Ankara University and the author of Televizyon, Temsil, Kültür (Television, Representation, Culture) “Despite various cybertarian prophets, television is becoming more and more powerful and international with each passing year. Old shibboleths about the imbalance of textual trade between Global North and Global South are compromised in the process. Yesim Kaptan and Ece Algan have produced a marvelous collection that places Turkey at the center of these developments. Their pathbreaking volume showcases television studies at its best, combing textual analysis, ethnography, and political economy in a powerful, arresting blend. Bravo!’” —Toby Miller, Stuart Hall Professor of Cultural Studies, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana—Cuajimalpa “Television in Turkey is a brilliantly conceived book for this moment in the growth and expansion of national television into a powerful transnational force. Turkey, like Korea, is one of the latest powerful forces as television becomes increasingly transnational and global. Extremely well conceived and organized, the book covers the growth of Turkish television, its political and social impacts at home, in the Middle East, and increasingly throughout the globe, both through direct placement in schedules in places like Latin America but increasingly also in truly global actors like Netflix. The editors are very well versed in the issues and have selected an outstanding set of authors. Read it now only to better understand a major new force in transnational television, but also to see how our theories hold up as it is carefully examined.” —Joe Straubhaar, Professor, University of Texas, Austin, USA, Author of World Television

Yeşim Kaptan  •  Ece Algan Editors

Television in Turkey Local Production, Transnational Expansion and Political Aspirations

Editors Yeşim Kaptan The School of Communication Studies Kent State University Kent, OH, USA

Ece Algan Institute for Media & Creative Industries Loughborough University London, CA, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-46050-1    ISBN 978-3-030-46051-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46051-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: KieselUndStein / gettyimages Cover design: eStudioCalamar This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Television in Turkey: Local Production, Transnational Expansion, and Political Aspirations  1 Yeşim Kaptan and Ece Algan Part I Turkish Television in Context: Political Economy, Policy Making, Production, and Reception  25 2 The Regulation of Television Content in Turkey: From State Monopoly to Commercial Broadcasting and Beyond 27 Burcu Sümer and Oğuzhan Taş 3 Televised Journalistic Documentaries of the 1990s: The Form, Content, and Historical Juncture 47 Burçe Çelik 4 Revisiting the Unplugged Margins: Rural Television Audiences and Mediatization 67 Nurçay Türkoğlu

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Part II What’s on TV?: Debates over Identity Politics and Gender  83 5 Debating Women’s Issues on Turkish Television: Exploring the Role of Political Power in Women’s Talk 85 Esra Özcan 6 Women’s Fragile Trust: Safety, Familiarity, and Secrecy in the Marriage Show103 Feyza Akınerdem 7 Representing Female Detectives in Turkish Police Procedurals125 Ayşegül Kesirli Unur Part III On the Long Journey: The Transnationalization and Expansion of Turkish TV Industry 149 8 Continuities and Changes in the Transnational Broadcasts of TRT151 Gökçen Karanfil 9 Mediatisation and Hyper-commodification of Sport in Post-1980 Turkey173 Dağhan Irak 10 From TRT to Netflix: Implications of Convergence for Television Dramas in Turkey189 Eylem Yanardağoğlu and Neval Turhallı Part IV Diasporic and Transnational Audiences of Turkish Television 205 11 Mediatised Culturalisation Through Television: Second-­Generation Alevi Kurds in London207 Kumru Berfin Emre Cetin

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12 Turkish Drama Serials and Arab Audiences: Why Turkish Serials Are Successful in the Arab World223 Miriam Berg 13 Consuming Halal Turkish Television in Indonesia: A Closer Look at the Social Responses Towards Muhteşem Yüzyıl245 Inaya Rakhmani and Adinda Zakiah Index267

Notes on Contributors

Feyza Akınerdem  holds a PhD in Cultural Policy and Management from City, University of London. Her articles on television serials, reality television, and the politics of representation in Turkey have been published in various journals and edited volumes. She specializes in ethnographic media research and has developed empirical perspectives on mediated intimacies, hegemonic and resistive representations, truth-making, and post-truth. She teaches media and communication studies at Boğaziçi University. Ece  Algan  is a senior lecturer at the Institute for Media & Creative Industries at Loughborough University, London. She has conducted longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork research for over a decade in Southeast Turkey and has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on global communication, local radio and television, ethnic broadcasting, media activism, new media use, media ethnography, and youth cultures. Miriam  Berg  is an assistant professor in the journalism and strategic communication program at Northwestern University in Qatar. Her research focuses on Arab, refugee, migrant, and diasporic audiences and their viewing habits, a field in which she has numerous journal publications and media references citing her ongoing work. In addition, she also holds a strong interest in research pertaining to the popularity and influence of Turkish cultural products in foreign markets. Prior to her transition to academia, Berg worked extensively in broadcasting including stints at both Bloomberg (London) and Al Jazeera Media Network (Qatar)

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including directing news coverage during the Beijing Olympics, 2008 US elections, and the 2008 Gaza-­Israel War. Burçe  Çelik holds a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University. She has taught in Istanbul for a number of years. She is a senior lecturer in the Institute for Media and Creative Industries, Loughborough University, London. Her articles have appeared in numerous journals, including European Journal of Communication, Cultural Studies, and Media History. She writes on politics and history of communications, gender, labor, social movements, and media. She is leading a project on “Women’s Media and Memory in Turkey” and is writing a book titled Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire (University of Illinois Press). Kumru Berfin Emre Cetin  is Senior Lecturer in the Communications and Media Programme at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. Her articles have appeared in leading peer-review journals such as International Journal of Communication and Media, Culture & Society. She is the author of the book titled The Paramilitary Hero in Turkish Television. Her recent research on Alevi television and transnationalism has been awarded Newton International Fellowship by the British Academy. Berfin’s research interests are nationalism, gender, migration, and audience in the context of media. Dağhan Irak  holds a PhD and is a lecturer-researcher and former sports journalist from Istanbul, Turkey. He is based in Yorkshire, UK. He received his undergraduate degree in journalism and master’s degree in modern Turkish history before completing his doctoral research in sports sociology at the University of Strasbourg in France. He has also worked at Eurosport TV channel for ten years as a live commentator. Between 2018 and 2020, he taught geopolitics, history, media, and popular culture at Aix-Marseille University while he was a research fellow at MédiaLab of Sciences Po Paris. Since 2020 he has been teaching journalism and screen production in the Department of Media, Journalism and Film at the University of Huddersfield, UK.  He has authored three books on the sociopolitics of football and the political use of social media in Turkey, the latest of which is entitled Football Fandom, Protest and Democracy: Supporter Activism in Turkey (2019).

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Yeşim Kaptan  is an assistant professor at the School of Communication Studies at Kent State University, Ohio, USA.  She holds a PhD in Communication and Culture and Folklore/Anthropology (double major) from Indiana University, Bloomington. She also holds an MA and a BA in Political Science from Middle East Technical University in Turkey. She was a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research interests are transnational media, global communication, culture industries, identity politics, and consumer culture. She has published research in various English and Turkish media journals and books. Gökçen  Karanfil  holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from the Australian National University (2007). He is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the Faculty of Communication in Izmir University of Economics. He teaches courses on undergraduate and graduate levels at the Department of Media and Communication. Karanfil’s research interests revolve around issues such as media sociology, media globalization, media theory, transnational media flows, and migration. Ayşegül  Kesirli  Unur studied advertising and film at Istanbul Bilgi University. She holds an MA degree from the Department of Cultural Studies, Istanbul Bilgi University. She completed her joint PhD at Bahçeşehir University and University of Antwerp. Her PhD dissertation concentrates on Turkish police procedural TV series and how police procedural genre is formed in the Turkish context. She works as an assistant professor at the Department of Film and Television, Istanbul Bilgi University. Esra Özcan  is a scholar in communication studies at the Department of Communication, Tulane University, New Orleans. She holds a PhD in Communication Science from Jacobs University Bremen in Germany. Her research focuses on the representations of gender in news media, feminist and anti-feminist women’s movements, and postcolonial feminism. She is interested in right-wing women’s movements and women’s role in carrying authoritarian men to power. She is the author of Mainstreaming the Headscarf: Islamist Politics and Women in the Turkish Media (2019).

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Inaya  Rakhmani is an assistant professor at the Department of Communication, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Indonesia, and the head of the International Undergraduate Programme. She is also communication director and member of the Indonesian Young Academy of Sciences (ALMI). Rakhmani has an interest in the cultural political economy of knowledge, information, and entertainment as well as the role of media in processes of democratization. She is the author of Mainstreaming Islam in Indonesia: Television, Identity and the Middle Class (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Burcu Sümer  is an associate professor at the Faculty of Communication, Ankara University, Turkey. She holds an MA in Media Studies from the same university and an MSc in Gender and Women’s Studies from Middle East Technical University. She also holds a PhD from the University of Westminster, Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), UK (2007). Sümer specializes in research on globalization and media regulation, broadcast journalism, broadcasting law and policy in Turkey, Europeanization of audio-visual policy in the EU. Her published PhD The Impact of Europeanisation on Policy-Making in Turkey: Controversies, Uncertainties and Misfits in Broadcasting Policy, 1999–2009 looks into to what extent Europeanization had an effect on the areas of media ownership regulation, regulation of content, public service broadcasting, and minority language programming in Turkey. Oğuzhan Taş  is an associate professor at the Faculty of Communication, Ankara University, Turkey. He is the author of Occupational Limits to Journalistic Ethics: Professionalism, Responsibility and the Market (2012) and Communication, Media and Culture: Key Concepts (2017), both published in Turkish. He has also published articles and book chapters widely on theories of media and various aspects of journalism. He has translated John Downing’s Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements into Turkish with Ü. Doğanay and I.̇ Özdemir Taştan (2017) and has edited a special issue for Moment Journal on media and participation (2019) with E. Canpolat. Neval Turhallı  is a research assistant in the Media and Communication Department at Istanbul Bilgi University. She holds a BA in Psychology and in Film and Television Studies from Bahcesehir University, and an MA in the New Media Program from the School of Graduate Studies at Kadir Has University, Istanbul. Her research interests include convergence of television series, internet distributed television, and video-on-demand platforms in Turkey.

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̇ Nurçay Türkoğlu  is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Istanbul Arel University. Formerly she was a professor at Çukurova University (2012–2016) and Marmara University (1984–2012), as well as a visiting professor and researcher at CARISM-Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas (2014), European University of Lefke, Cyprus (2006), and University of Kent at Canterbury, UK (1992). She holds a PhD in Television and Social Change. She has organized ECC—European Communication ̇ Conference—Istanbul 2012, and other international conferences such as Media and Culture (2009) and Media Literacy (2005) in Turkey. Her research interests are social communications, television studies, audience studies, media literacy, critical media, and cultural studies. Eylem  Yanardağoğlu  is an associate professor and head of the New Media Department at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. She holds a PhD from City, University of London Sociology Department. She has taught courses on introduction to new media, new media theories, social media, sociology of news, international communication, and online journalism at various undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Having published extensively on the state of Turkish media, her research interests include digital citizenship, digital transformation of news consumption, digital media production and distribution, and transnational expansion of Turkish TV series. Adinda  Zakiah  is a professional researcher for a multinational market research agency. She has a keen interest in media studies, and has conducted academic research on Muslim fashion as a post-Islamist phenomenon, by studying magazine and social media. Her research interest is on audience and/or consumer perspective, pop culture, market insight, and the intersection between secularism and Islamism. She also regularly writes film reviews and is an active member of Jakarta’s film community.

List of Tables

Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3

Participants and their political positions Overall talk time of pro-AKP women and women critical of AKP Participants by intrusive interruptions and talk time

89 93 94

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CHAPTER 1

Television in Turkey: Local Production, Transnational Expansion, and Political Aspirations Yeşim Kaptan and Ece Algan

Since the 1980s, television (TV) has been one of the most dominant mediums for global audiences (Chakravartty and Roy 2013; Miller and Kraidy 2016; Punathambekar and Sundar 2016; Straubhaar 2007; Kraidy 2002). Recently, with the addition of new TV industry actors—Korean, Indian, Danish, and Turkish TV industries—and the increase in the demand and access to TV programs due to the readily availability of multiple platforms, the 2000s have been popularly named the “second Golden Age of TV” (Lawson 2013). We believe that all these transformations necessitate a theoretical rethinking of the role and dilemmas of emerging television industries within global media flows that have increasingly been characterized by the fluidity of content due to global TV formats, adaptations of popular literature, remakes, and the ease of sharing via new media

Y. Kaptan (*) The School of Communication Studies, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA E. Algan Institute for Media & Creative Industries, Loughborough University London, London, UK © The Author(s) 2020 Y. Kaptan, E. Algan (eds.), Television in Turkey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46051-8_1

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across countries and regions multidirectionally. By focusing on the rise of Turkish television in the global sphere, our book aims to critically examine a lesser-known emerging industry but one that has a rich history as a result of its complex sociocultural and political landscape formed partly through centuries-long interactions with both the Eastern and Western worlds and a turbulent relationship with modernity and Westernization. By situating Turkish television within the contemporary global developments of international TV markets and its own national sociopolitical, economic, and cultural dynamics, our goal is to explore both the ripple effects of emerging industries’ entrance into global markets and the political implications in the domestic realm of its transformation into a global growth industry. Although it has been less than two decades since Turkish TV exports first met transnational audiences, they have already enjoyed unprecedented global success with no signs of slowing. Since 2014, the Turkish TV industry has maintained its status as the second highest exporter of scripted TV dramas in the world (Turkey World’s Second 2014; Vivarelli 2018) and since 2016 as the fifth largest TV program exporter worldwide (France and Turkey 2016), bringing over US $350 million in revenue and reaching over 500 million viewers (Sofuoğlu 2017). With their popularity soaring to such surprising heights, TV dramas produced in Turkey have caused tremendous excitement and awe among global audiences, TV executives, advertisers, and related media industries, as well as government officials and businesspeople who have been eager to take advantage of the curiosity and demand created by the Turkish TV dramas. Big mainstream dailies and trade magazines have offered numerous stories asking “what explains their global success” (Bhutto 2019), with enthusiastic titles such as “How Turkish TV is taking over the World” (Bhutto 2019) and “Turkish TV travels far as craze for dramas goes global” (Del Barco 2015), to name a few. These pieces attempt to grapple with various aspects of Turkish soaps’ rise to global popularity by focusing on the novelty of the productions, especially the characters struggling to negotiate conservative family values with the dilemmas of modern life, the presence of strong women characters and emphasis on women’s issues, the high production quality, the attractive actors, the fashionable costumes, the historic sites like the Topkapı Palace, and the exotic Istanbul locations, all of which appeal to diverse global audiences who, according to a number of distributors, are bored with American content (Cabrera 2015, p. 94). Undoubtedly these factors are significant in the Turkish TV industry’s success, but what is at the core of the issue, we believe, is the question of

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how to evaluate its transnational expansion within both national and global media developments taking into consideration the various economic, cultural, and political implications of Turkey’s global televisual presence in and outside the country. The content at the center of the hype—Turkish TV series (dizi in Turkish)—did not develop in a vacuum and is first and foremost a product of a larger national televisual history with a distinct past that reflects the sociocultural and political dynamics of the country. We believe that in order to evaluate Turkish TV exports’ place in transnational markets, we first need to closely examine how TV broadcasting has been shaped, developed, and transformed in Turkey as a result of socioeconomic and political changes in both national and global contexts that have impacted the production and distribution of media, and reception processes. Instead of attempting to offer a simple prescriptive formula to explain Turkish TV exports’ global popularity and Turkish television’s transnational success, our book aims to ferret out the national socioeconomic and political relationships and structures that have shaped the Turkish TV industry on its competitive journey through the international markets. We believe that studying the Turkish case can help us understand how national culture industries in the developing world, which had to integrate into a neoliberal media environment after the 1980s due to market- and state-­ driven policies propelled mostly by US-based global media giants, negotiate being the new players in the transnational media environment. The essays in our collection detail how the transformation of Turkish television from a domestic industry to a major transnational player was influenced by numerous supportive and disruptive local and global forces. They also underline various domestic challenges posed by the highly unstable political and economic environment of the country, deepening crony capitalism, and strong governmental control of the media in an increasingly authoritarian regime that the change from a parliamentarian to a presidential system has further accelerated. In this introduction, we offer a brief overview of the sociopolitical, cultural, and economic struggles surrounding TV production, distribution, and reception in Turkey since the beginning of TV broadcasting. The changing dynamics of the cultural and political economy of Turkey’s television industry, including its structural and ideological transformation, the transnational aspirations of Turkish media, and the implications of its transnationalization will be discussed via examples that indicate key turning points in its history. We will also illustrate how societal debates around

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television content have ignited the question of representation and caused a struggle over official narratives, resulting in TV production processes and the industry becoming intertwined with politics. While under fierce competition for popular TV content and integrating its production processes with those of the global markets, the Turkish TV industry’s tactics for managing the ideological rifts in society that occur along its ethnic, religious, and political fault lines will also be explored, offering clues into the dilemmas that emerging TV industries face.

A Brief History of Television in Turkey Contrary to common understanding, the history of television in Turkey did not start with the launch of the Turkish Radio and the Television Corporation (TRT) in the 1960s. Regular TV broadcasting was initiated in 1952 in the studios of the public Istanbul Technical University (ITU TV). However, due to its restricted reach (it was broadcast only in and around Istanbul), it is not ITU but the state-initiated Turkish Radio and the Television Corporation (TRT)—the one and only public broadcaster in Turkey—that is considered the first professional television (and radio) broadcaster in the country. After the establishment of the General Directorate of Turkish Radio and Television Corporation in 1964, state-­ controlled national broadcasting for the general public officially began on January 31, 1968. Between 1964 and 1972, TRT was an autonomous public institution. However, with the initiation of a 1973 law, TRT lost its autonomy but gained more financial freedom (see Sümer and Taş, Chap. 2, this book). The early content of TRT was news, weather forecasts, documentaries, and music programs (Kale 2019). The first television drama on TRT was an adaptation of a theatrical work, Şair Evlenmesi (The Wedding of a Poet) by Ottoman playwright and journalist Şinasi, that was broadcast live in February 1968 (Kale 2019, p. 127). However, the first television series in the traditional sense was a local sitcom called Kaynanalar (The Mothers In-Law) released in 1974. Kaynanalar lasted 30 years until 2004 and is considered the longest running TV show in Turkish television history. A year later, a Turkish novel adaptation, Aşk-ı Memnu (Forbidden Love), was broadcast as the first TV miniseries on TRT. Since its early years, TRT commissioned local television programming. According to Christine Ogan (1992), “the programming on the TRT stations has never been considered of very high quality, some of the best programs have been

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produced for TRT by a private company” (p. 572). The transnationalization of television content began during the 1970s and 1980s with the import of globally popular American and Latin American TV shows such as Charlie’s Angels (1977–1981), Dallas (1980), Falcon Crest (1981), and Isaura: The Slave Girl (1985–1986). The first crime dramas were imported from the West in the 1970s. Globally circulated American crime series such as The Fugitive (Kaçak [1974–1977]), Columbo (Komiser Columbo [1975–1976]), The Avengers (Tatlı Sert [1975–1978]), Magnum P.I. (Magnum [1986]), and Moonlighting (Mavi Ay [1985–1989])1 were welcomed and loved by Turkish audiences (Kaptan 2018). Despite a relatively long history of state-sponsored public broadcasting, the advent of TV broadcasting in Turkey was quite recent. TRT dominated broadcasting and remained the only national TV channel in Turkey until 1986. During the late 1980s, TRT underwent a great transformation. First, TRT 2 started broadcasting as the second channel of TRT in 1986. Unlike the serious tone of TRT 1, TRT 2 was intended as an entertainment channel. In 1989, TRT 3 joined the TRT family as an educational channel whose programs consist of education, culture, and sports. Later, TRT GAP, a channel for the predominantly Kurdish and Arab southeast region of Turkey, began broadcasting only in Turkish for those regionally targeted audiences. Yet, the multiplicity of the TRT channels did not bring diversity on the screen. This is because during the 1980s, private television and radio broadcastingwas still deemed unconstitutional in Turkey (Algan 2003). Therefore, the state monopoly on broadcasting continued to dominate the Turkish television landscape after the 1980 coup d’état. The 1982 constitution granted the state and the military government strict control over the media in general and television in particular during the 1980s. In addition, TRT transnationalized to engage with the Turkish diaspora and former hinterland of the Ottoman Empire beginning in the 1990s and early 2000s with the establishment of TRT-INT, TRT-AVRASYA, and TRT TÜRK (see Karanfil, Chap. 8). By the 1990s, neoliberal economic policies sought to marketize public broadcasting and commodify public service television, which resulted in big changes to broadcasting policies and affected television content. In 1990, Turkey became the first country in the Middle East to reconcile itself to domestic private broadcasting, which allowed broadcasting in Turkish via satellite from Germany (Öncü 1995, p. 51) when a satellite media company based in Switzerland called Magic Box Inc., owned by businessman Cem Uzan and the elder son of then President Turgut Özal,

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Ahmet Özal, launched an illegal TV channel in Turkey called Star 1 (see Sümer and Taş, Chap. 2; and Irak, Chap. 9, for more on its political and economic implications). The channel became so popular in Turkey that soon after its launch in 1990 there were “four million dishes in Turkey and Star 1 was rebroadcasting terrestrially on several 1000  kW stations to viewers in 17 Turkish cities” (Ogan 1992, p.  572). In the early 1990s, both TRT and state officials ignored Magic Box and Star 1 even though TRT lost its de facto monopoly on broadcasting. However, when Magic Box acquired the distribution rights of national soccer games, TRT faced the risk of losing advertising revenue (see Irak, Chap. 9). Haluk Şahin and Asu Aksoy (1993) contend that “it took the three major American networks a whole decade to lose one-third of their audience; TRT suffered much heavier losses in a matter of a few months” (p. 32). Despite its illegal status, after the huge success of Star 1, Magic Box launched its second entertainment channel, Teleon, to appeal to Turkish-speaking audiences in Turkey and Europe. Therefore, the first private TV stations in Turkey, widely referred to as “pirate channels” by the public, sparked a public debate about “piracy in broadcasting” (Şahin and Aksoy 1993; Ogan 1992). In 1992, following in the footsteps of Magic Box, Turkish businessmen and entrepreneurs launched other Turkish TV channels such as HBB TV, Kanal 6 (Channel 6), and Show TV, which broadcast from France. The same year, private radio stations broke the state radio monopoly and began to broadcast illegally. In July 1993, Parliament changed the constitution in order to give broadcasting permission to private radio and television stations. This was a turning point in the development of television in Turkey. Soon after the dissolution of the state monopoly on broadcasting, Cine5—the first pay television provider in Turkey—was launched in 1994. In 2011, Cine5 was sold to the Qatari state-funded Al Jazeera Media Network. After the acquisition, the channel was named Al Jazeera Türk and started publishing a Turkish news website in 2014, but never began broadcasting on TV. The digital operations of Al Jazeera Türk were shut down on May 3, 2017 (Al Jazeera Türk goes 2017). As a result of the decentralization of broadcasting and the wave of neoliberalism, the big holding companies like Doğan Holding, Çalık Holding, Doğuş Group, and Demirören Group that have investments in banking, finance, tourism, the automotive industry, construction, and the energy sector dominated the Turkish media landscape and owned big mainstream television stations

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like Kanal D, Show TV, and ATV among dozens of others (Kurban and Sözeri 2012; Saran 2014).2 After private broadcasting channels became legal in Turkey, not only big conglomerates but also holding companies owned by businesspeople known for Islamist ideologies and/or integrating Islamic practices into their businesses began investing in the media sector and television industry. For instance, Türkiye Gazetesi Radyo ve Televizyonu (TGRT) became the first Islamist-conservative TV channel in Turkey in 1993. It continued broadcasting until it was acquired in 2006 by News Corporation and Ahmet Ertegun, the co-founder and chairman of Atlantic Records. TGRT was then restructured and relaunched as FOX TV Turkey. Following TGRT, in 1994 Samanyolu TV (STV) was launched as another Islamic television channel, this one affiliated with the self-exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen and the Gülen community (cemaat in Turkish). By 2010, although the Gülen community had 6 TV channels reaching 114 countries, terrestrially in Turkey and through cable and satellite abroad, STV remained their main channel (Campbell 2010, p. 99). After the 2016 coup d’état attempt, the channel was closed by the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK). Other Islamic channels, such as Kanal 7 and Mesaj TV, were also launched back-to-back in the early 1990s. The programming content of these Islamic channels was distinctly conservative and Islamic, including Quran recitations, religious talk shows and conversations, and traditional sermons (Öncü 2000; Kocamaner 2017). Even the television dramas on these channels indicated an increasing piety and Islamic worldview (Emre Cetin 2014). However, the Islamic channels struggled with some problems during the 2000s. Kanal 7, owned by pro-business group Yeni Dünya Medya Grubu, was associated with a fraud and corruption scandal in Germany (Soyaltın 2017). Although German prosecutors demonstrated that the executive board and chairman of Kanal 7 had a leading role in the aggravated fraud and corruption and close connections with the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) elite, the Turkish authorities acquitted them and dismissed the charges (Esen and Gümüşçü 2016; Sami 2010). The channel continues to broadcast on cable and satellite platforms and on the web. Another Islamist television station, Mesaj TV, experienced a different type of hardship due to false advertisements. In 2017, RTÜK shut down Mesaj TV for disseminating deceptive advertising and misleading consumers. Currently, the channel is broadcasting only on YouTube and on a website (http://www.mesajtv.com.tr/).

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Since its establishment, RTÜK has been a hot topic in the Turkish media world mostly because of its broadcasting bans and controversial decisions (Kejanlıoğlu et al. 2001). The state institution was established as a regulatory authority in 1994 to regulate radio and television broadcasts in Turkey. It also sets the rules and regulations for running radio stations and television systems, supervises broadcasting companies, distributes licenses and grants permits for private radio and TV stations, monitors broadcasters, and regulates broadcasting activities, including broadcasting bans (Kaptan and Karanfil 2013). RTÜK has exercised its power to ban broadcasts and issue fines quite heavily on local ethnic broadcasting channels, especially those of Kurdish groups, for violating Article 4 of RTÜK Law no. 3984, which allows RTÜK to issue temporary or permanent closure fines on ethnic broadcast stations for “disseminating separatist propaganda” and “inciting hatred and enmity” (for more on Article 4, see Sümer and Taş, Chap. 2). In line with the state’s nationalistic and discriminatory policies against the Kurdish minority, which are based on the assimilation of Kurdish identity and the erasure of Kurdish language, RTÜK enforced state policies and prohibited broadcasting in languages other than Turkish and “those that have been globally accepted” until 2001, which made it impossible for local ethnic broadcasting stations, which were built in regions populated mostly by Kurds and catered to them by broadcasting in Kurdish. With the help of pressure from the Kurdish diaspora in Europe and the popularity of the Kurdish satellite network MEDTV, which broadcasts across the entire Kurdish region in the Middle East from Europe, the European Union insisted that Turkey pass reforms to improve its Kurdish citizens’ cultural and political rights (Ayata 2011). As a result, Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union led it to legalize music, radio, and television broadcasts in Kurdish in 2001. However, implementation of the reform, which began slowly in 2003 with the allowance of Kurdish songs that were pre-approved for airing, required the radio and TV channels to apply for a Kurdish language license from RTÜK (Algan 2019). In 2006, there were only two television stations in Turkey (Gün TV and Söz TV in Diyarbakır) that were given a Kurdish broadcasting license (Üç kuruluşa Kürtçe 2006). According to the new regulations, local TV stations were not allowed to broadcast more than two hours of Kurdish language programming per week, and each show had to be broadcast in dubbed Turkish immediately following the original broadcast (Haftada 4 saat Kürtçe yayın

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izni 2003). According to Algan (2019), these restrictions prevented live, interactive programming and made broadcasting in Kurdish difficult and costly for the three licensed stations (p. 226). In addition, the reforms did not help to prevent closures or fines because the content of the songs or “the personal opinions of the guests featured in their programs were often suspected of holding separatist views and delivering threatening messages” (Algan 2019, p. 226). When the government adopted a new policy aimed at addressing the Kurdish-Turkish conflict, which is referred to in Turkey as the “Kurdish Initiative,” local media channels in the predominantly Kurdish provinces enjoyed relative freedom starting in 2007. As a part of this “Kurdish Initiative,” TRT established a Kurdish language station called TRT 6 (also known as TRT Kurdî) in 2009. All the local media stations in Diyarbakır, considered the cultural and political capital of the Kurdish population in eastern Turkey, were issued a Kurdish language broadcasting license that enabled bilingual broadcasts to begin in 2010. Subsequently, Article 4 was revoked in 2011. However, when the two-year ceasefire between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Turkish government collapsed and the four-decade long ethnic conflict was reignited in July 2015, local media outlets in the region, including broadcast channels, were issued fines, and Kurdish journalists and broadcasters faced arrest and incarceration on charges of “terror” and “espionage.” After the failed 2016 coup d’état attempt, the government shut down 180 media organizations in accordance with the state of emergency decrees (Shaheen 2017), including pro-Kurdish television stations such as IMC TV, Gün TV, and Kurdish television channel Zarok TV over “terror propaganda.”

Turkish TV’s Transnational Expansion The Turkish TV industry began exporting its dramas and other TV formats in the late 1990s but considerable regional and global success did not come until the early 2000s when dramas such as Gümüş (Silver), Binbir  Gece (1001 Nights), and Muhteşem Yüzyıl (Magnificent Century) were sold to more than 100 countries (Bhutto 2019). The first exported Turkish TV drama, Deli Yürek (Crazy Heart), was sold to Kazakhstan for $30 per episode in 1997 with the goals of overcoming piracy and creating an environment where foreign markets could purchase Turkish content legally (Algan 2020). Finding audiences outside Turkey for its content was

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initially a surprise for Turkish TV executives because they were solely focused on producing television for the domestic market (Algan 2020). In fact, the majority of the content is still produced for the competitive domestic market, in which more than half of TV series are canceled for poor ratings before the end of their first season (Deloitte 2014). In addition, Turkish audiences watch an average of four hours of television per day and they mostly prefer romantic series (Deloitte 2014), which generates a lot of domestic competition. As a result, the industry sees foreign markets as an alternative source of profit for shows with disappointing nationwide ratings and high production costs. With production costs as high as $800,000 per episode and some actors demanding six-­ figure salaries (Vivarelli 2017), the pressure to stay on air or find alternative revenues is high. The industry’s focus on producing for the domestic market is also evident in the fact that only a small percentage of the content produced is seen by international viewers. In 2017, only 10 of 70 different dramas were sold to international markets and only half of them became international hits (Vivarelli 2017). It took until the mid-2000s, with the success of Gümüş (Silver), 1001 Gece (1001 Nights), and later Muhteşem Yüzyıl (Magnificent Century), for the Turkish TV industry to start becoming a visible global player. While it may seem that it took over half a century for the domestic industry to have a transnational presence, considering that broadcasting was a state monopoly until the early 1990s with only the state-owned and controlled network TRT dominating the airwaves (see Sümer and Taş, Chap. 2), this achievement is certainly worthy of as much attention as the robust growth in the domestic market, as 196 new TV channels, 19 of which are national, 165 of which are local, and 12 of which are regional (Radyo Televizyon Yayıncıları Meslek Birliği 2018), and around 85 new TV production companies (Deloitte 2014) sprouted in less than three decades. Explaining the Popularity of Content Among Transnational Audiences When Turkish exports first became a sensation in the Middle East and Balkans, many thought that audiences’ cultural affinity with the content and characters explained their popularity. While some transnational audiences like those in the Middle East, as Berg’s research on Arab audiences

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in Qatar (see Berg, Chap. 12) has shown, find the stories, traditions, and family relations similar to their own reality, Turkish TV exports’ popularity also extends to Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. For that reason, like many others (Alankuş and Yanardağoğlu 2016; Kaptan 2013; Özalpman 2017; Tunç 2012; Yanardağoğlu and Karam 2013; Yesil 2015; Yörük and Vatikiotis 2013), we believe that the proximity thesis alone fails to explain Turkish dramas’ success in the global market, though the generic proximity concept partially helps explain why the soap opera structure of these series presents a familiar format for audiences to consume novel content. Similarly, in her study of Turkish TV dramas’ positive reception by Iranians in Vienna, Özalpman (2017) attributed it to “the series’ melodramatic, humorous and Cinderella storyline” (p. 38) that is typical of the soap opera and telenovela genres. However, proximity is not the only phenomenon that explains the global success of Turkish television products. National and global television market dynamics (Yesil 2015), entrepreneurial initiatives (Tunç 2012), the capitalist power structure of the global TV industry (Chalaby 2015), and a number of contingent factors like the region’s glocal flexibility and the market articulations overarching Turkey’s soft power ambitions (Alankuş and Yanardağoğlu 2016) all play a significant role in this success. For instance, in her study of the Greek television industry, Tunç (2012) concludes that larger economic dynamics, such as the Greek economic crisis, play a significant role in the purchase and broadcast of Turkish dramas, which are cheaper than those made in Greece. Therefore, the rise of the Turkish TV industry in global markets ought to be analyzed with a consideration of recent developments in the global television business, including but not limited to the cross-border media flows starting in the 1990s (Kraidy 2005; Chalaby 2015), the state-supported growth of the television sector via targeted cultural policies as in the South Korean case3 (Ryoo and Jin 2020), the deregulation and regulation of national culture industries (Ogan 2001; Kaptan and Karanfil 2013), the novel opportunities for producers in small-market nations to sell their programs globally (Tinic 2015), and the rise of streaming technology (Burroughs 2018). However, as stated by Algan (2020), “the global TV business is operating increasingly as a ‘series of interlocking international production networks’ (Chalaby 2016, p.  38) does not necessarily make the role that nation-­ states play irrelevant” (p. 448).

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Transnational Marketing of a National Industry: Producers’ Perspectives As discussed above, not only the popular press and academic scholars but also industry executives have weighed in on the various reasons behind the Turkish TV industry’s global success. Television executives believe that the high production values and universal themes of Turkish soaps, along with audiences’ boredom with American programming, are the main reasons their content appeals to audiences around the world (Algan 2020). Similarly, as Berg learned in her survey and fieldwork, Arab audiences of various nationalities in Qatar have “acknowledged that Turkish serials appear to have surpassed local and regional television content in terms of production value and were more comparable with US content” (see Berg, Chap. 12). While the transformation of the Turkish TV industry into a transnational one might have started as a stopgap measure to curb content theft abroad, after seeing their products succeed in the international markets, the TV executives did everything they could to encourage further growth and global expansion. Participating in international TV fairs, working with global distributors, spending large amounts on marketing and promotion, doing marketing research to learn which actors and plotlines are successful, and teaming up with multiple content carriers like Netflix to make their products accessible and available to a larger audience within and outside the country are some of the ways that the Turkish industry sought to stay competitive. In addition, as Algan (2020) has argued, in order to mediate between the political economy of the larger domestic television production industry and global market imperatives, Turkey’s TV industry resorted to a number of tactics that can help curb both global and domestic pressures in order to continue their production growth and global sales numbers. She identifies the three main tactics employed by Turkey’s TV industry to combat the socioeconomic and political challenges they face as: “(1) carefully managing the content to skirt government restrictions; (2) adopting the government’s soft power discourse and public diplomacy aspirations by cooperating with government officials and businesses in their cultural promotion and nation-branding efforts; and (3) adapting to global TV trends by undertaking rigorous marketing and branding campaigns” (p. 446). The high revenues the industry generates give industry executives some leverage to demand certain immunities from the government. For instance,

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when the Broadcasters Association of Turkey complained to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism that despite the role Turkish TV series play in promoting Turkey and bringing in export revenue, it had become impossible for them to continue producing TV series to global standards due to RTÜK’s increased and arbitrary censorship, fines, and favoritism, and RTÜK’s then president resigned the day following his meeting with the Minister (Algan 2020). However, the industry’s enormous success has not always mitigated the various challenges outlined above. On the contrary, on many occasions it put incredible pressure on industry executives and production companies to imagine themselves as representatives of the country and to pay attention to how they represent the nation’s history, traditions, and cultural sensibilities, as voiced numerous times by the AKP government and President Erdoğan (Algan 2020). The global success of the Turkish TV industry has also created enormous excitement within the country. Various groups in Turkey, from business people to politicians, claimed that television exports play an important role in promoting Turkey’s image in the world and thus, strengthen its soft power (Yörük and Vatikiotis 2013) by attracting tourists, developing diplomatic relations, and expanding business opportunities. However, the industry’s competitive struggle to create cutting-edge and high-quality content also necessitated engagement with culturally and politically sensitive topics, causing unease among certain factions of society, including government officials and among global audiences (see Rakhmani and Zakiah, Chap. 13).

New Platforms and New Players in the Turkish Television Landscape This book also focuses on the changes that took place in the last decade as television broadcasting shifted to new media platforms, the implications of transformations and convergences in the production industry, and the distribution and consumption of Turkish television products both in Turkey and abroad. Today, with the helping hand of digitalization, the introduction of more screens, and increasingly faster network technologies, traditional television screens have lost their monopoly on television content (Baccarne et al. 2013). Turkish television is no exception. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the big conglomerates began to launch digital platforms to increase their profit, to dominate the multi-­ channel market, and to gain a competitive advantage. One of the most

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prominent digital platforms in Turkey was Digitürk, which was launched in 1999 by Çukurova Holding and offered sports (e.g. Lig TV), documentaries (e.g. National Geographic), and movies (e.g. MovieMax HD; Büyükbaykal 2011). In 2016, it was acquired by beIN Media Group based in Qatar, which also owns Al Jazeera. Another widely used digital platform, Doğan Holding’s D-Smart, was founded in 1999 and offered new television channels such as Discovery HD, Kanal D HD, Star TV HD, and EuroSports HD (Büyükbaykal 2011). Cable broadcasting system began in 1991 by Türk Telekom, a formerly state-owned Turkish telecommunications company. The infrastructure of cable TV broadcasting was contracted out to Siemens, Ericsson, and ̇ ̇ Teletaş (Türkiye’nin Iletisimde Ikinci Baharı 2016). With the proliferation of television services in addition to digital television, Turkey has a substantial cable subscription base. In 2005, due to the privatization of Türk Telekom, cable broadcasting system was transferred to the state-owned company Türksat. Türksat, a monopoly in the cable television industry, is “the first and the only cable digital TV Platform system of Turkey operating through the Cable TV network, where the signals of the system are compressed and encoded and watched through a decoder module and a smartcard or a set top box and a smartcard connected to a TV set” (Türksat Kablo TV n.d.). Cable TV broadcasting offers analog and digital broadcasting to television audiences. The digital cable TV system, Teledünya, has been in service since 2008. By 2015, there were 1.2  million cable subscribers in Turkey (Cable TV subscribers in Turkey 2017). In 2016, Teledünya was rebranded as Kablo TV. Today, the largest number of cable ̇ ̇ television subscribers live in big cities such as Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara, and ̇ ̇ Antalya (Türkiye’nin Iletisimde Ikinci Baharı 2016). Netflix entered the Turkish television market as a game-changing player in 2016. Later, streaming video-on-demand (SVOD) suppliers such as Blu TV and Puhu TV introduced their own programming to Turkish audiences (see Yanardağoğlu and Turhallı, Chap. 10). With the digitization of television, video-on-demand (VOD) platforms began to offer original content to national and international audiences. First, Blu TV and Puhu TV launched their Turkish television series in 2017. A year later, Netflix released its first-ever Turkish TV drama, Hakan Muhafız (The Protector), which was produced in Turkey. Currently, 27 Turkish series are streaming on Netflix, including Muhteşem Yüzyıl (Magnificent Century [2011–2014]), Ezel (2009–2011), Kaçak (Fugitive [2013–2015]), Diriliş: Ertuğrul (Resurrection: Ertugrul [2014–2019]), and recently Atiye (The Gift

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[2019–2020]). By 2019, Netflix was serving 1.5  million subscribers in Turkey—only around 10% of the country’s broadband households (Küçükgöçmen and Li 2019). Therefore, due to high potential, competition to acquire Turkish digital television market share is fierce, but it forces the Turkish TV industry to produce varied content for both mainstream TV networks and streaming television platforms.

Content of the Book In addition to providing a comprehensive introduction to the Turkish television, our collection encompasses distinct and significant aspects of television production and consumption in Turkey: the context, including regulation, production, and mediatization; the content, including the different genres of programming on television; the transnationalization and expansion of the Turkish television industry; and the reception of diasporic and transnational audiences of Turkish TV exports. The contributing chapters are both methodologically and theoretically critical, interdisciplinary, and diverse. After the introduction, Part I titled “Turkish Television in Context: Political Economy, Policy Making, Production, and Reception” takes a broader approach to television and focuses on public and private production and distribution systems, the implications of policy making in the current political economy of television, and an empirical reception study of audiences in Turkey. Part II, “What’s on TV?: Debates Over Identity Politics and Gender,” explores the media content from feminist perspectives, including local TV shows, political talk shows, format adaptations, and co-production of dramas. The authors scrutinize mediated representations of gender, political affiliations, and class identities via textual analyses of various television programs. Part III of the book, “On the Long Journey: The Transnationalization and Expansion of Turkish TV Industry,” explores the transnationalization of Turkish public and private television broadcasting services. The final part (Part IV), “Diasporic and Transnational Audiences of Turkish Television,” considers the reception of television content in national and international contexts and provides an overview of Turkish and global audiences’ viewing habits while analyzing their national, religious, and other cultural identities. In Chap. 2, “The Regulation of Television Content in Turkey: From State Monopoly to Commercial Broadcasting and Beyond,” Burcu Sümer and Oğuzhan Taş investigate the history of television regulation in Turkey by focusing on the continuities and interruptions in Turkish broadcasting. The authors take a political economy perspective and critical historical

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approach to the regulatory debates, media ownership changes, and state control over television since the establishment of TRT in the 1960s. Their chapter provides the backdrop to the strict regulatory framework that governs the industry today through a censorship regime and direct interference from government officials that compel the industry to produce universalistic love stories based on Turkish classical novels and anonymous stories, as well as nationalistic period dramas. Chapter 3, “Televised Journalistic Documentaries of the 1990s: The Form, Content, and Historical Juncture,” examines Turkey’s historical and journalistic televised documentaries and their role in the making of political television culture and the production of popular history and memory in Turkey. Burçe Çelik states that the form and discourse of these documentary series can be understood within the historical juncture of globalization and the neoliberalization of television, as well as the country’s political economy. In Chap. 4, Nurçay Türkoğlu examines the social transformation of rural television audiences in Turkey based on her longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 1987 and 2019 in two villages of Istanbul province. Her chapter, “Revisiting the Unplugged Margins: Rural Television Audiences and Mediatization,” reflexively discusses audiences’ engagement with television, including continuities and changes in the viewing habits of rural communities. The author explores the limited role of television in mediating social change in the rural context while giving us clues about the television viewing habits of rural Turkish audiences and how television has been incorporated into their everyday lives. In Part II, “What’s on TV?,” the authors focus on Turkish TV dramas’ treatment of women’s issues and the inclusion of relatable strong female lead characters who stand up against patriarchal societal and state structures. This has been found to be one of the reasons women in the developing world like Turkish dramas (Salamandra 2012). Chapter 5, “Debating Women’s Issues on Turkish Television: Exploring the Role of Political Power in Women’s Talk,” frames a popular “women-­ only” television debate program broadcast on a mainstream TV news channel in Turkey that brings together women with different political affiliations, including Kemalist, Islamist, leftist, feminist, and Kurdish. Relying on in-depth rhetorical and textual analysis, Esra Özcan looks at how the program’s moderator and the women participants define “women’s issues” in an increasingly authoritarian and conflicted political climate in which women are divided in their support for or opposition to the

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ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP). The author concludes that “sisterhood” does not provide a common ground for women in a politically polarized environment and women with more political power dominate the conversation on the screen. In Chap. 6, “Getting Married on TV: Women’s Fragile Trust in the Marriage Show,” Feyza Akınerdem examines one of the most prevalent formats of reality television: marriage shows. Based on observations and interviews with the participants of a popular marriage show, Esra Erol’da Evlen Benimle (Marry me on Esra Erol’s Show), Akınerdem explores female participants’ investment of their trust in the show, which is built upon a fragile agreement among the female participants, the host, and the formatting of the program. Television enables public witness and enhances familiarity, secrecy, and safety. Ayşegül Kesirli Unur’s piece (Chap. 7) in this collection, “Representing Female Detectives in Turkish Police Procedurals,” investigates female police detectives in three contemporary Turkish police procedurals, Kanıt (The Evidence, 2010–2013), Cinayet (The Killing, 2014), and Şahsiyet (Personality, 2018) by building connections between the police procedural genre in feminist debates in the global context, and the influence of this interest on local remakes. The author employs critical textual analysis and investigates the ambivalent position of female detectives as relatively independent, strong characters who conform to the traditional norms of womanhood in a male-dominated TV genre. The first chapter (Chap. 8) of Part III, “Continuities and Changes in the Transnational Broadcasts of TRT,” explores how the Turkish Public Service Broadcaster (TRT) has transnationalized its broadcasts through a number of regional satellite channels from a political economy perspective that takes into consideration the Turkish state’s foreign policy aspirations. Gökçen Karanfil evaluates TRT’s transnational broadcasting endeavors since the 1990s by scrutinizing its two distinct policy goals: (1) engaging with the Turkish diaspora; and (2) strengthening the Turkish cultural presence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Chapter 9, “Mediatisation and Hyper-Commodification of Sports in the Post-1980 Turkey,” illustrates the symbiotic relationship between sports and television, particularly football, and the significant role televised sports played in Turkey’s sociopolitical transformation via a historical analysis. Dağhan Irak argues that globalization and new technologies such as satellite television have altered this relationship greatly toward the hyper-commodification of football under the new neoliberal order.

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In Chap. 10, “From TRT to Netflix: Implications of Convergence for Television Dramas in Turkey,” Eylem Yanardagoglu and Neval Turhallı illustrate how on-demand services such as Netflix and YouTube have transformed audiences’ expectations of the TV series. By analyzing Turkish video-on-demand suppliers like Blu TV and Puhu TV, Yanardağoğlu and Turhallı examine the implications of convergence for the production and distribution of TV dramas while television broadcasting has shifted to new media platforms. In Part IV, “Diasporic and Transnational Audiences of Turkish Television,” authors discuss the reception of Turkish television products by global audiences over a vast geography from the Arab Peninsula to East Asia. Chapter 11, “Mediatised Culturalisation Through Television: Second-Generation Alevi Kurds in London” by Kumru Berfin Emre Cetin, covers the impact of Turkish television on the making of the transnational identity of the “twice minority” Alevi Kurds living in London. Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted with second-generation members of the Alevi Kurdish community, the author investigates how Turkish television contests the boundaries of their transnational social imaginaries. In Chap. 12, “Turkish Drama Serials and Arab Audiences: Why Turkish Serials Are Successful in the Arab World,” Miriam Berg examines the social and cultural factors that have contributed to the success of Turkish programs in the Arab World via audience research and reception analysis of female Arab audiences. By using the Gulf State of Qatar as a departure point, Berg asks why the Turkish content resonates so much with Arab viewers and investigates their viewing motivations and how Turkish serials have managed to fill a need that Arab media has failed to satisfy. In Chap. 13, “Consuming Halal Turkish Television in Indonesia: A Closer Look at the Social Responses Towards Muhteşem Yüzyıl,” Inaya Rakhmani and Adinda Zakiah examine audience reception of the popular Turkish television drama The Magnificent Century (Muhteşem Yüzyıl/ Abad Kejayaan) in order to analyze the tension between secular, modern, and conservative Islamic interpretations of global cultural products in Indonesia. Based on the audiences’ criticism of the “un-Islamic” portrayal of the epoch and Muslim clerics’ censure of it, they argue that religious authorities’ attempt to rectify or justify the misrepresentation of historical facts paves the way for Muslim clerics to influence television content and use Islamic authority to legitimize the halal consumption of Turkish drama among Indonesian Muslim audiences at the expense of program diversity.

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As evident from the chapters’ diverse theoretical and methodological contributions, our collection takes a broad and well-rounded perspective on studying Turkish television while critically reconsidering its geopolitics within both national and transnational contexts. The book unpacks Turkish television as a transnational phenomenon and contextualizes the Turkish TV industry, its audiences, and content in light of the sociohistorical developments of global neoliberalism, transnational flows, the rise of authoritarianism, nationalism, and Islamism in Turkey. We comprehensively examine understudied yet important concepts and processes by considering the local dynamics and sociocultural contexts distinctive and unique to Turkey, such as its ethnic and gender identity politics, media policies and regulations, and television consumption practices in everyday life. As the relationship between the national and transnational has become increasingly complicated, which was further exacerbated by the rise of new platforms and digital television, the case of Turkish television illustrates the intricate and complex role that emerging industries play in global television flows. There is no question that the worldwide distribution of Turkish dizis, the expansion of national format trade, the increase in transnational coproductions, the global ties of private and public broadcasting institutions, and the recent changes in the political-economic structure of neoliberal Turkey have transformed a national industry into a transnational TV market. However, considering that national television networks, local consumption, and culturally specific content still dominate the Turkish television landscape, in this book we argue that it is important to investigate emerging culture industries like Turkish television by paying close attention to the specific historical developments of that industry in conjunction with the sociopolitical frameworks and cultural formations in society.

Notes 1. All the years indicate when those TV programs ran in Turkey. 2. By 2011, Çalık Holding (Turkuaz Media Group) was the owner of one of the biggest television channels in Turkey, ATV; Doğan Holding owned 25 television channels, including the well-watched Kanal D, CNN Turk, cable TV channels, and one digital media platform (D-Smart); Çukurova Holding had 23 television channels, such as Show TV and SKY TV, and one digital platform (Digiturk); Doğuş Group acquired 7 television channels (NTV, Star TV, NTV Spor, CNBC-e, e2, NBA TV, and KRAL TV).

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3. It is important to note that according to Algan (2020), there is no systematic set of Turkish government policies aimed at the international growth of the private television sector abroad, other than some financial aid for the promotion of Turkish TV series at international trade fairs and festivals.

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Kocamaner, H. (2017). Strengthening the Family Through Television: Islamic Broadcasting, Secularism, and the Politics of Responsibility in Turkey. Anthropological Quarterly, 90(3), 675–714. Kraidy, M.  M. (2002). Arab Satellite Television Between Regionalization and Globalization. Global Media Journal, 1(1). Retrieved from http://www.globalmediajournal.com/open-access/arab-satellite-television-between-regionalization-and-globalization-.php?aid=35056. Kraidy, M.  M. (2005). Hybridity, Or the Cultural Logic of Globalization. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Kucukgocmen, A., & Li, K. (2019, September 3). Netflix Applies for License Under New Turkish Broadcasting Rules. Reuters. Retrieved from https:// www.reuters.com/article/us-netflix-turkey/netflix-applies-for-licenseunder-new-turkish-broadcasting-rules-idUSKCN1VO14R. Kurban, D., & Sözeri, C. (2012). Caught in the Wheels of Power: The Political, Legal and Economic Constraints on Independent Media and Freedom of the Press in Turkey. Istanbul: TESEV Publications. Lawson, M. (2013, May 23). Are We Really in a ‘Second Golden Age for Television’? The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/tvand-radio/tvandradioblog/2013/may/23/second-golden-age-televisionsoderbergh. Miller, T., & Kraidy, M. M. (2016). Global Media Studies. Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press. Ogan, C. (1992). Communications Policy Option in an Era of Rapid Technological Change. Telecommunications Policy, 16(7), 565–575. Ogan, C. (2001). Communication and Identity in the Diaspora: Turkish Migrants in Amsterdam and Their Use of Media. Lanham: Lexington Books. Öncü, A. (1995) Packaging Islam: Cultural Politics on the Landscape of Turkish Commercial Television. Public Culture, 8(1), 51–71. Öncü, A. (2000). The Banal and the Subversive: Politics of Language on Turkish Television. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 3(3), 296–318. Özalpman, D. (2017). Transnational Consumers of Turkish Television Drama Series. Transnational Marketing Journal, 5(1), 25–43. Punathambekar, A., & Sundar, P. (2016). The Time of Television: Broadcasting, Daily Life, and the New Indian Middle Class. Communication, Culture and Critique, 10(3), 401–421. Radyo Televizyon Yayıncıları Meslek Birliği. (2018). Türkiye radyo ve televizyon yayıncılığı sektör raporu. RATEM. Retrieved from https://www.ratem.org/ h99sektor-raporu Ryoo, W. & Jin, D.  Y. (2020). Cultural politics in the South Korean cultural industries: confrontations between state-developmentalism and neoliberalism. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 26(1), 31–45.

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Şahin, H., & Aksoy, A. (1993). Global Media and Cultural Identity in Turkey. Journal of Communication, 43(2), 31–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1460-2466.1993.tb01260. Salamandra, C. (2012). The Muhannad Effect: Media Panic, Melodrama, and the Arab Female Gaze. Anthropological Quarterly, 85(1), 45–77. Sami, S. (2010). The Agony of the Kemalist Republic and the Rise of a Fascist Brotherhood. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, Corp. ̇ kileri: AKP Döneminde Medya Saran, C. (2014). Medyada Mülkiyet Iliş Sahipliğinde Yaşanan Değişimler [Media Ownership in Turkey: The Changes in Media Ownership During AKP Period]. 1st International Communication Science & Media Studies Congress Proceeding Book, pp. 355–373. Shaheen, K. (2017, March 23). Revealed: The Terror and Torment of Turkey’s Jailed Journalists. The Guardian. Retrieved from  https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2017/mar/23/turkish-journalists-solitary-confinement-maltreatment-jail. Sofuoğlu, M. (2017). The Giddying Rise of Turkish Television Series. TRT World. Retrieved from https://medium.com/trt-world/the-giddying-rise-of-turkishtelevision-series-5f6c5b456a0c. Soyaltın, D. (2017). Europeanisation, Good Governance and Corruption in the Public Sector: The Case of Turkey. London: Routledge. Straubhaar, J. (2007). World Television: From Global to Local. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Tinic, S. (2015). Where in the World Is Orphan Black? Change and Continuity in Global TV Production and Distribution. Media Industries Journal 1(3), 54-59. http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mij.15031809.0001.310 Tunç, A. (2012). Missing Byzantium: Explaining Greeks’ Love for Turkish TV Serials. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, 8 (2/3), 335–341. Turkey World’s Second Highest TV Series Exporter After US. (2014, October 26). Hürriyet Daily News. Retrieved from www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ turkey-worlds-second-highest-tv-series-exporter-after-us-73478. ̇ ̇ Türkiye’nin I letiş imde I kinci Baharı: Kablo TV Şebekesi. (2016). Telkoder. Retrieved from https://telkoder.org.tr/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/ T%C3%BCrkiye%E2%80%99nin-%C4%B0leti%C5%9Fimde-%C4%B0kinciBahar%C4%B1.pdf. Türksat Kablo TV. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.turksat.com.tr/en/cable/ television/kablotv. Üç kuruluşa Kürtçe yayın izni çıktı (2006, March 7). CNN Türk. Retrieved from https://www.cnnturk.com/2006/turkiye/03/07/uc.kurulusa.kurtce.yayin. izni.cikti/1622470/index.html. Vivarelli, N. (2017). Turkish TV Reaches More Viewers Abroad. Variety. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2017/tv/markets-festivals/turkish-tv-reachesmore-viewers-abroad-1202591287/.

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Vivarelli, N. (2018). Turkey Experiences Its Own Wave of Peak TV. Variety. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2018/tv/features/turkey-experiencesits-own-wave-of-peak-tv-1202746009/. Yanardağoğlu, E., & Karam, I.  N. (2013). The Fever That Hit Arab Satellite Television: Audience Perceptions of Turkish TV Series. Identities, 20(5), 561–579. https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2013.823089. Yesil, B. (2015). Transnationalization of Turkish Dramas: Exploring the Convergence of Local and Global Market Imperatives. Global Media and Communication, 11(1), 43–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/1742766515573274. Yörük, Z., & Vatikiotis, P. (2013). Soft Power or Illusion of Hegemony: The Case of the Turkish Soap Opera ‘Colonialism’. International Journal of Communication, 7, 2361–2385. Retrieved from https://ijoc.org/index.php/ ijoc/article/view/1880.

PART I

Turkish Television in Context: Political Economy, Policy Making, Production, and Reception

CHAPTER 2

The Regulation of Television Content in Turkey: From State Monopoly to Commercial Broadcasting and Beyond Burcu Sümer and Oğuzhan Taş

Introduction Radio broadcasting in Turkey began in 1927, only four years after the establishment of the Republic. Turkey’s population was slightly less than 14  million at the time, of which almost 80 percent were living in rural areas according to the 1927 census. Considering that eking out a bare subsistence was in fact a primary concern for the majority of a nation suffering from the impoverishing consequences of the preceding long years of war, this rush to launch radio broadcasting was astonishing even in comparison with the developments in the West. Radio as a medium of mass communication was a complete novelty in the 1920s both in Europe and in the United States, and broadcasting as we know today started to emerge only in the 1930s. As it is widely accepted in the literature on broadcasting history in the world, the institutionalization of radio broadcasting set a model for television in these nations, which was launched at different times throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

B. Sümer (*) • O. Taş Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey © The Author(s) 2020 Y. Kaptan, E. Algan (eds.), Television in Turkey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46051-8_2

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Turkey was not an exception. Although radio broadcasting is not the topic of this contribution, we would like to set off by identifying a couple of key issues before moving on to reviewing how television broadcasts became controversial and subjected to regulation at different times but somehow under similar political and cultural circumstances in Turkey. Broadcasting in Turkey began with a mission to contribute to its nation-­ building project and offered a remarkable sight for the articulation of various discursive constellations on modernization, development, industrialization, and Westernization throughout all stages of its institutionalization (Cankaya 2003; Çelenk 2005; Kejanlıoğlu 2004; Ahiska 2010). Turkey’s never-ending in-betweenness attributed to its positing in relation to the East and the West, its aspirations to modernize and develop despite its continuing dependence on foreign resources that directly influenced the timing and the character of the early institutionalization of broadcasting. The same pattern continued throughout the early years of ̇ television broadcasting (Ilaslan 2014a, b). Then again, broadcasting in Turkey was part of the state machinery from the very beginning. Although the first broadcasting license was granted to a private enterprise for ten years in 1926, the main shareholders of the Turkish Wireless Telephony Company (TTTAŞ) were key names of the then ruling elite. They were not only devoted, loyal, and dutiful but also well aware of the mission and remit for broadcasting soon to be the voice of a recently established Republic. Yet, although the first law on wireless communications enacted in 1925 did not have any clause on content-­related matters, the contract signed between TTTAŞ and the Turkish Post openly paved the way for the state’s intervention in broadcasting when deemed necessary (Arvas 2018). The license of the TTTAŞ was not extended after 1936 and from 1940 onward broadcasting was officially run by the Press Department of the state until the establishment of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) in 1964. Considering that Turkey had a single-party regime until the introduction of multiparty elections in 1946, radio broadcasting continued to be the voice of the ruling Republican People’s Party (CHP) until it lost power in the 1950 elections. Despite this great shift in politics, the extent of the state’s control in broadcasting remained unchanged. In short, broadcasting in Turkey institutionalized under very strict state control from the very beginning. Then again, it has often been debated as part of a political controversy. Until very recently, situating broadcasting history within a broader cultural perspective was rather a secondary

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concern. However, there are increasingly more studies looking into broadcasting as an integral part of cultural history in Turkey (Ahiska 2010; Başçı ̇ 2017; Ilaslan 2019). Although this contribution gives a greater emphasis on the political controversies on regulating television broadcasting since the 1960s, it also aims at highlighting politics of culture at different times. We hope it portrays the continuities and interruptions in the history of television regulation in Turkey in its own integrity and is easily accessible to its readers. In order to do so, we will start by reviewing the early regulatory debates during the establishment of the TRT in the 1960s, and briefly sketch the key changes as well as continuities almost in every decade until today.

The Establishment of the TRT and Struggle for Autonomy in the Early Years When the TRT was established by law in May 1964, there were only 13 radio broadcast transmitters broadcasting to a handful of cities and reaching less than half of the population via approximately 2 million radio sets (Kocabaşoğlu 2010). All of these radio stations were under the control of the then State Press Department of the Democratic Party (Demokrat Parti—DP). The DP was in power throughout the 1950s and was infamous for its control of radio to spread its propaganda, and silence all the opponent voices. Against all odds, the 1961 Constitution drafted by the military junta soon after the coup in May 1960 was unique in its design for defining key cultural and educational institutions such as universities, news agencies, broadcasting, and television to be autonomous and independent from the state. Although there were no television broadcasts at the time, the 1961 Constitution obliged the future administration of broadcasting in Turkey to “be regulated by law as autonomous public corporate bodies” and produce broadcasts “made along the principles of impartiality” (Article 121). According to the 1961 Constitution, “furthering and promoting educational and cultural activities” was the remit of broadcasting in Turkey but even radio, which began in 1927, was still struggling to reach to and connect with its audience when this remit was put in writing. Turkey witnessed a completely anti-democratic, populist, and partisan control of radio throughout the second half of the 1950s until the military intervention. Therefore, in the 1960s, although there was a need for a “modern”

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broadcasting institution that would serve the public, the existing institutional culture of radio broadcasting was not reputable enough by the end of three decades to facilitate a decent transition to television. The TRT’s autonomy was in fact a trouble call in the eyes of the policy-­ makers and the ruling elite from early on. Going through the records of the Parliamentary hearings of the period, one can easily see how the Corporation was constantly accused on the grounds of partisanship, inciting social problems, wasting its financial sources, and strangely enough for being “unamenable.” In the 1966 Annual Programme Planning and Budget Report of the TRT the criticism the Corporation received was explicitly regarded as “unfair.” It was emphasized in the same document that an organization of this scale could not be brought into life immediately since broadcasting experience was not advanced and high-level enough as expected and therefore the right circumstances and sufficient time should be granted to the TRT to prosper (TRT 1966, p. 9). The first TRT Law guaranteed the Corporation’s administrative autonomy by establishing a very diverse executive board, which also had independence on content planning. Among its nine members, the government appointed only two and the rest were nominated and selected by various institutions such as universities, and music and drama arts academies. The TRT personnel were also represented in this first board with two members. What made this composition most interesting was that the Director General (DG) was also selected from the board by the board members’ votes. According to the TRT Law, the government could only intervene in the content of broadcasts on the grounds of national security. Additionally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then Ministry of Tourism and Publicity were authorized to identify the principles to be applied to international broadcasts and programs on foreign policy. Although these two exemptions were also problematic, it was very clearly stated in the law that the executive board of the TRT was the sole body responsible for content-­ related decision-making at the Corporation. Unfortunately, yet as might be expected, the statutory autonomy did not prevent the government from constantly pushing the limits to assert its influence over the Corporation. The government tried to do so by different means, much often by pressing the role of the Ministry of Tourism and Publicity to trigger Article 34 of the Law for summoning an audit of the Corporation by the High Supervision Authority, which was then the highest body reviewing the operations of all public enterprises on behalf of

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Parliament. Again, the 1966 Annual Working Programme and Budget of the TRT is a very interesting read in this respect since it is one of the very few documents produced by the TRT bluntly objecting pressures of this kind with a strong emphasis on its autonomy. The authors of this document (i.e., the executive board of the TRT) stated that the reason why the authority to audit the Corporation was given to the High Supervision Authority was because the government’s intervention was seen unfavorable (TRT 1966, pp. 21–26). Additionally, it was also emphasized that the Supervision Authority’s role as stated in law by no means gave it any right to intervene in content and broadcasting policy both of which would be decided by the Corporation based on its remits (Article 2) and the obligations of its executive board (Article 5). Unfortunately, throughout its infancy, TRT never received enough political support to prosper. On the contrary, the Corporation was under constant fire of politicians for every move it made. The heightening of the pressures eventually triggered a split among the members of the TRT’s executive board and the level of support for autonomy among its members clearly varied and diminished over time. Interventions in broadcast content started to take place even at the content planning level as early as 1969.

The Start of Television Broadcasts and the End to the TRT’s Autonomy TV test broadcasts started on January 31, 1968, only four years after the establishment of the Corporation. Neither the country nor the TRT was in fact ready for this much-rushed start. Discussions about the advent of television coupled with never-ending struggles between the government and the Corporation over autonomy. In the midst of this Punch and Judy politics, the broader concern for the TRT was more about the technical requirements of establishing a television service and making it accessible to the public than developing a content policy. Despite the statutory autonomy and independence granted to the TRT, never-ending criticisms against its broadcast content inevitably had an impact on the planning of television broadcasts. Heightening of pressures also overlapped with the drifting of the country into a political, economic, and societal crisis by the end of the 1960s. In this context, the question on how to control broadcasting once again became a priority than what

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should be the merit of television broadcasting. As early as 1969, the then ruling government started drafting a new broadcasting law to change the regulation and make it possible to interfere in the day-to-day administration of the TRT. In the meantime, it tried different ways to meddle in, for instance by not investing any funding to the development of television broadcasting. Considering that it was the same government, which promoted the launch of television broadcasts vigorously, its decision to stop investing in its progress clearly demonstrates its frustration of the ways in which the Corporation operated. By the end of the 1960s, the tensions between the right-wing and left-­ wing groups turned into murderous clashes in Turkey. In the midst of the rising conflict, the ongoing political pressures to intervene in television broadcasts also had an impact on the perception of autonomy by the administrative cadres of the TRT, which eventually paved its way to censorship (see, Ağaoğlu 2004; Sözer 2014). Only in 1970, 234 television programs were subjected to internal review (TRT 1970, p. 15). Not only the programs but also the editorial staff was scrutinized at this time (Sözer 2014, pp. 162–165). The TRT’s autonomy did not last long and was abolished following the coup in March 1971 with an amendment to the Constitution, which was followed by a change in the TRT Law in February 1972. The TRT was now much more aligned with the statist model of the French broadcasting system. Some of the key changes made were as follows: The composition of the executive board was redesigned with an increase in the numbers of its members appointed by the Council of Ministers; the Supervision Authority’s right to audit was strengthened to cover all areas including administrative, financial, and technical, and the new TRT law also enabled the Prime Minister to instigate an audit on any matter deemed necessary. Starting from September 1972, an auditing directorate was set up as a separate unit confirming that internal reviewing was now a matter taken very seriously within the Corporation (TRT 1972, pp. 42–43). Strangely enough, once the TRT’s autonomy was abolished, all the financial sources, which were not available earlier, were started to be channeled to the Corporation for the improvement of its television broadcasting services. Subsequently, the TRT’s technical outlook and broadcast content variety started advancing rapidly. As of 1974, the Corporation started promoting advances in its institutionalization by claiming that television broadcasting in Turkey was successful enough to catch up with its Western counterparts both in terms of its technical and programming standards (TRT 1974).

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During the 1970s, television programs were discussed more in relation to culture than politics. Television was now in the center of the rising entertainment culture, which was coupled with the emergence of the consumer culture in Turkey. The influx of transnational, mainly American, content came along with drastic changes in how popular culture was lived and understood in ways that were not familiar to the majority of the public (Cankaya 2003, pp. 127–130). From the TRT’s perspective, considering that production of original programming was an expensive business, relying on foreign content was the only way to respond to increasing viewer demand. However, this programming strategy of the TRT of filling the schedules with foreign movies, TV series, and cartoons was subjected to an increasing criticism from 1972 onward (Kocabaşoğlu 2010). The key debate was on the poor “quality” of television broadcasts and the lack of original domestic content. However, since the TRT continued to be one of the major arenas where political battles between different parties were fought, creative and innovative programming required from a public service broadcaster could never be prioritized. This was very evident during ̇ the time shortly after the appointment of Mr. Ismail Cem, Turkey’s one of the most internationally well-known politicians in the late 1990s who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1997 and 2002, to the Director General post of the TRT (see, Cankaya 2003; Esen 2013; ̇ Ilaslan 2014a). Mr. Cem became the Director General of the TRT in February 1974 and remained on this post for only “500 Days,” which later became the title of his memoirs. Despite the passing of decades, he is still acknowledged as the most progressive and innovative DG in the Corporation’s history so far. It was under his directorship that the TRT started conducting audience research on the tastes and expectations of the viewers and used this data in TV program planning. In order to comply with the increasing demand for dramatized TV series during this time, the TRT did not only import more of this content, but it also started commissioning ̇ locally (Ilaslan 2014b). Under his directorship, television broadcasts were now on air seven days of the week, live broadcasts began, and the TRT became a member of the European Broadcasters Union (EBU). This membership was in fact very important for the recognition of the Corporation as a public service broadcaster in Europe. As of 1977, there were 2.7 million TV sets reaching to 29 percent of the population rising from approximately 1.4  million TV sets reaching 18.8 percent of the

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population in 1975 (1978 Chamber of Electrical Engineers Report, cited ̇ in Ilaslan 2014b, p. 523). ̇ Ismail Cem was the appointee of the then coalition government, which shattered due to differences toward military invasion of Cyprus. Mr. Cem’s position as the TRT DG was no longer tenable when the coalition collapsed and Turkey’s first “National Front” coalition government was established in March 1975. During the second half of the 1970s, Turkey witnessed the intensification of nationalist ideology coupled with religious sentiments in political as well as cultural spheres. This led to the beginning of religious programming at the TRT, which gradually increased. The Corporation was now under the influence of the new shift in discourse moving toward national and religious conservatism. By the end of the 1970s, Turkey once again spiraled into a severe economic and political crisis. Staggering unemployment, rising of inflation, and intensifying violence between political groups brought the country to its lowest ebb.

Turkey’s Introduction to the Neoliberal Order in the Early 1980s and Its Impact on the TRT Turkey started the new decade with drastic economic and societal changes following the introduction of a new economic program widely known as “January 24 Decisions,” enabling the inauguration of the neoliberal order. The International Monetary Fund (IMF)-supervised measurements included in the program were so harsh on all levels of the society, particularly on the working class, that it heightened the already existing tensions between the far-right groups and the left. Its full implementation was only possible with a bloody military intervention taking place the same year, creating traumas and tragedies for generations that are still not reconciled. Under the governance of the Motherland Party (ANAP) from 1983 to 1991, Turkey witnessed the transformation of all the organizational structures of its press and broadcasting sectors, from ownership patterns to their editorial management creating a media sector that did not exist previously (Adaklı 2009). Soon after ANAP came into power, a new law governing the TRT was enacted. The law was drafted by the National Security Council and “national security” as the major concern dictated by the army generals was permeated to the formation of a new regulatory body—the Radio Television High Board (RTYK)—to monitor broadcasts.

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It is widely accepted that the TRT was one of the most affected institutions by the atrocious consequences of the military intervention (Cankaya 2003). In less than a year, 101 personnel were expelled from their posts. Television broadcasts, particularly news content, started to be heavily inspected and censored. The High Board set up following the new TRT Law in 1983 did not only censor broadcast content but also had the right to “advise” during content planning. The same law also granted the Security Council the right to interfere with broadcasts if deemed necessary. Although enabling “broadcast impartiality” was promoted as the underlying motive behind the new regulatory framework, TRT continued to be the center of criticism throughout the 1980s under the ANAP rule (Kejanlıoğlu 2004, pp. 246, 253). The signs for the possible breakdown of the TRT’s monopoly in broadcasting started to unfold by the second half of the 1980s (Kejanlıoğlu 1998, 2004). One of these signs was the steady increase in the broadcasts of independent productions (see also Çelenk 1998, pp. 75–80). Despite the deliberate shrinking of political space and the lessening of forms of cultural expression during this time, the advocates of the neoliberal agenda started to promote the very same “ideals” for broadcasting as in the UK under Thatcherism, such as the benefits of competition, inertia of public enterprises, hailing of technological convergence, and the prevalence of consumer choice (Sümer 2010, p. 110). TRT’s broadcasting content in the 1980s was also heavily influenced by the rising consumerism and Americanization of the way of life (see, Bali 2002). Turkey was in fact trying to align itself with the globalist neoliberal wave throughout the 1980s and debates over media (including changes in the press sector) in general and television in particular were significant in postulating possible scenarios for the upcoming decade. The handover of the broadcast transmitters from TRT to the PTT—Posta ve Telgraf Teşkilatı—and the launch of pilot broadcasts for Cable TV were the precursors of deregulation in broadcasting (Çaplı 2008, pp.  14, 133; Kejanlıoğlu 2004, pp.  277–278). Again, in terms of ­programming and content policy, the vilification of dependence on foreign programming was replaced with an emphasis on the need to integrate with the international flow of broadcast content (İlaslan 2014b). This change in discourse overlaps with the TRT’s initiatives to export programs to overseas. However, in-house programming supply was behind the demand as the TRT kept launching new channels. As of 1989, the TRT was running four television channels. This inevitably

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resulted in outsourcing, which gradually peaked over the years and became a very controversial issue in the 1990s (Kejanlıoğlu 2004, pp. 286–288).

The 1990s: The End to the TRT’s Monopoly and Changes in Broadcasting Regulation Throughout the 1980s, apart from the public statements delivered by different politicians here and there, there was neither a public debate nor a policy deliberation on the introduction of private broadcasting that would end the constitutional monopoly of the TRT.  There were apparently mixed views on the issue (see Çaplı 2008). However, the launch of Turkey’s first private TV station to broadcast via satellite from Germany became the top news story in March 1989. The then Prime Minister, Turgut Özal, publicly gave his support to this new initiative by stating that the TRT’s constitutional monopoly only covers terrestrial broadcasts and therefore there is no legal barrier for broadcasting targeting the audience in Turkey via satellite. Turkey’s first private/commercial TV channel, Star 1, started to test broadcast in May 1990 shortly after the PM’s welcoming statement. To the nation’s surprise, the public soon learned that one of the two shareholders of the stations’ parent company was the oldest son of the then PM. This way of breaking the state monopoly was in fact a fait accompli (Kaya 1994, p. 393) and there was clearly no policy approach to how to regulate what would follow. Satellite TV channels started mushrooming broadcasting from different countries in Europe targeting the audience in Turkey. There was neither a regulation for technical standards nor content when it all began. Then again, for viewers in Turkey, it was completely a different story. The TRT enjoyed its monopoly status for a long time and its performance was far behind its public service broadcaster counterparts institutionalized in the UK, North Europe, and elsewhere. Considering that the quality benchmark in broadcasting was already low, what these new TV stations offered was also not sufficient enough to raise the standards, but for the very first time all sorts of identities (ethnic, religious, sexual, etc.) previously invisible on the TRT screens were now “out there” (Sahin and Aksoy 1993). Even the news bulletins changed in style. The news bulletins were no longer solely in-house studio broadcasts, but became full of vox-pops, visuals, and even music. Celebrity gossip shows

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then called “Paparazzi” were now the golden content attracting millions together with American sit-coms. It was again during these early years that we all witnessed that Turkey was hungry for debate, as hours long discussion programs focusing on all sorts of issues were on air almost on every channel. Despite lack of regulation, it was clear from the very beginning that these channels were here to stay and would change Turkey’s media outlook drastically. The TRT’s monopoly in broadcasting was finally abolished in July 1993 with an amendment to the Constitution. It took another year to draft a law that would regulate the new broadcasting market (Çaplı 1994; Kejanlıoğlu 2004). The Broadcasting Law of 1994 established a new regulatory body: the Radio and Television Supreme Council (hereafter RTÜK, as known in Turkey). RTÜK’s initial mission as enshrined in the Law was frequency planning and allocations for broadcasters but it was also equipped with a wide range of punitive powers to monitor content, the most extreme being the confiscation of broadcasting license. RTÜK was never independent and competent enough to exercise its regulatory powers (terrestrial frequencies could never be allocated in Turkey despite various attempts by the regulator) but it was always very eager to penalize broadcasters based on its standards of content. It suffered from major structural flaws from the start. The ways in which its executive board was composed (its members were nominated by political parties in Parliament on the basis of division of seats and to be appointed by the Council of Ministers) and the way it would be funded (transfer of five percent share at that time from the annual gross advertising revenues of both radio and television enterprises) were all problematic. In short, the structure of RTÜK was a clear recipe for disaster from the start. The drafting of the Broadcasting Law was more a process of political bargaining than consensus building (Kejanlıoğlu 2004). Its initial framework was adapted from the 1989 Convention of Transfrontier Television of Council of Europe. Turkey became a signatory to the Convention in 1992 and this association was enshrined in the Broadcasting Law. However, there were major discrepancies resulting from the misinterpretation and mistranslation of the principles of the Convention, particularly in regard to the regulation of advertising and teleshopping, and retransmission of broadcasts (Pekman 1994). Where the content principles are considered, Article 4 of the Broadcasting Law listing 20 standards that broadcasts should comply with quickly became the center of criticism. Although this list incorporated

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general broadcasting principles enshrined in the Council of Europe’s Convention, there were plenty other very elusive standards as well. For instance, the broadcasts should be in compliance with: • the existence and independence of the Turkish Republic and the indivisible integrity of the State with its territory and nation (Art. 4/a); the national and moral values of the community (Art. 4/b); general moral values, tranquility of the community, and Turkish family structure (Art. 4/d); the principle on not allowing broadcasts that shall instigate the community to violence, terror, ethnical discrimination, or incite hate (Art. 4/g); the general objectives and basic principles of the Turkish national education system and the principle on the fostering of the national culture (Art. 4/u). RTÜK never hesitated exercising its punitive power by relying on these utterly ambiguous broadcasting standards as a justification of its intervention. During the period from 1994 to 2002, RTÜK suspended the broadcasts of 16 radio stations for 2781 days, and 3 TV stations for 458 days for violating Article 4/a; 44 radio stations for 8620 days and 19 TV stations for 1662 days for violating Article 4/g above (Yıldız 2003, pp. 70–76; see also Çaplı and Tuncel 2005, p. 1560). It soon started to be seen as a “penalizing” and “censoring” authority more than a broadcasting regulator (Kejanlıoğlu et al. 2001, p. 134). Clearly, these standards were serving to protect the establishment and/or state from broadcasters, rather than promoting a pluralistic understanding of media serving its citizens (Irvan 1999). As of 1995, there were already five business groups operating in the media sector and there were others lined up to get in. The processes underlying the emergence of a media “market” in Turkey in the 1990s only make sense when the association of interests of media proprietors and the state is made obvious (see, Adaklı and Aydoğan 2018). In short, owning media was a strategic move for all these business groups to get a share from wave of privatization of public utilities and industrial enterprises speeding up in the mid-1990s. The time leading up to the banking crisis first in 1999 and the severe economic crises in 2001–2002 was chaotic. This meltdown inevitably ended up with the confiscation of the media assets of most of the major business groups in return for the credit debts of the banks they owned. In the midst of this chaos, TV screens became a battle zone for different business groups fighting for their own interests by

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publicly humiliating and discrediting other business groups pursuing similar economic or political interests. Not only business people, but also politicians were constantly targeted and defamed (see, Taş 2012; Adaklı and Aydoğan 2018). One would wonder what the TRT was doing at this time. The Corporation was at first oblivious to the changes in the media environment. It was as if completely reluctant to compete, not believing that this change would stay long. However, sharp decline in advertising revenues and the transfer of its star broadcasters to new channels soon became a serious blow jeopardizing its broadcast output. Rebranding was inevitable for the Corporation, but due to the unwieldiness of its organizational structure and the restrictions in its abiding regulatory framework, it was clear that change could only happen if there was a political will to make it happen. In 1998, the TRT management hired the famous McKinsey & Company to develop a rebranding strategy and a new organizational structure for the Corporation. The strategy designed by internationally known McKinsey & Company after four months of in-house research and assessment concluded that the TRT’s over-bureaucratic structure should be replaced with a less hierarchic and operational working flow, its personnel should be down-sized and reorganized, all of its channels should be rebranded, cost and performance analysis system should be introduced by increasing productivity and efficiency, and finally the TRT should get ready for the digital switchover that is soon to begin in Europe (McKinsey & Company 1998). All of these were easier said than done. Without making major amendments to the TRT Law, restructuring was not possible. The TRT executives did not receive support from the policy-makers, not even from the Corporation’s own personnel (see, Sümer 2010, pp. 259–263). When the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, TRT was clearly not its main concern. However, starting with the corruption allegations regarding its first Director General appointee, the governance of the TRT became a serious trouble for the government.

The Europeanization Impact on Broadcasting Content Policy in the Early 2000s Turkey’s long history with the European Union (EU) reached a new phase when its candidacy status was accepted without any precondition at the European Helsinki Summit in 1999. Turkey started accession talks with the EU in October 2005 but only one chapter is closed so far. As of

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today, Turkey’s EU prospect for the future is very dim for all sorts of reasons that are behind the focus of this chapter. However, where broadcasting is concerned, the period from 1999 to 2005 is particularly important since broadcasting in Turkey was in fact the first policy area that was subjected to the EU impact on the way to Turkey’s start to accession talks (Sümer 2009). Broadcasting in Turkey became the focal point of the EU impact in Turkey as early as 1998 when the European Commission in its first Progress Report on Turkey published in the same year linked the “Kurdish issue” in Turkey to its democratic conditionality requirements widely known as the Copenhagen Criteria. The Commission suggested in this report that “the recognition of certain forms of Kurdish cultural identity and greater tolerance of the ways of expressing that identity” might actually be a good start for finding “a political and non-military solution to the problem of the south-east” (EC 1998). What this obviously meant was a demand for lifting the language ban first in broadcasting and later in education. This required a complete paradigm shift in the state’s historically embedded discourse on Kurds and the conflict. The process finally began in 2001 with the amendments to the Constitution first and later to the RTÜK Law. After years of debate, the TRT started broadcasting in Kurdish in June 2004 alongside with Arabic, Bosnian, and Caucasian. However, these broadcasts did not serve much of a purpose other than being a tick-­ the-­box exercise. Nonetheless, this start had a positive impact in enabling Turkey to clinch a date from the EU to start negotiations. However, the debate continued, as there were demands from the local broadcasters in the region who were finally granted the license to broadcast in Kurdish in 2006, albeit for only few limited hours a week followed by Turkish translations. It took another three years for the TRT to launch a 24-hour TV channel in Kurdish in 2009. This promising change in language policy in broadcasting reversed back to bans and closures starting from 2013, reaching its peak in the aftermath of the coup attempt of July 15, 2016. The EU’s impact on broadcasting content policy until 2005 was not limited to changes in the language of broadcasts. The European Commission in its various reports on Turkey emphasized major discrepancies in the RTÜK Law, which were not in compliance with the EU’s then Television Without Frontiers Directive in the areas of definitions of broadcasting standards, jurisdiction, and freedom of reception. The RTÜK Law was amended in May 2001 as part of the EU harmonization package, but apart from the relaxing of the sanctions, the vagueness of the broadcasting

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standards remained unchanged. RTÜK could no longer suspend radio or TV broadcasts, but instead it could now suspend the particular program violating its content principles only after warning the channel before suspension. The changes also allowed RTÜK to issue fines to the broadcasters as a last resort for continuing violations of its standards. In short, despite a few positive changes here and there, the regulatory framework for content policy continued to be over-protectionist, loosely defined, and having a militaristic tone underneath with the repetition of words such as “national security,” “indivisible integrity,” and “fear.”

The Surrender of the Mainstream Media: The AKP Era and Beyond One of the undisputed facts about the current situation of television broadcasting in Turkey is that together with other media outlets, it has been completely redesigned under the rule of the AKP since its coming into power in November 2002. Of course, it is not the party but its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, also Turkey’s first president-elect since August 2014, who is the key figure behind this unprecedented re-configuration of the so-called mainstream media in Turkey. However, there has always been mixed views on whether there has been a deliberate policy-agenda all along, albeit successfully masked during the early years of the AKP rule, or the current move to authoritarianism is in fact the result of a shift in President Erdoğan’s leadership endeavors. Therefore, although AKP’s 18-year history in power cannot be easily identified as a linear process of agenda-setting and execution, the redesigning of media under the AKP rule and most often as directly instructed by President Erdoğan is a perfect ground to see how political and cultural life in Turkey has been gradually transformed. Eres and Yüksel (2018) chronology this transformation under three distinctive periods. As they suggest, the first period between 2002 and 2007 is a term when seeking a “social agreement” was the key policy agenda, the second period between 2007 and 2013 refers to the beginning of the “restructuring of the social order” including media, and finally the third period between 2013 and 2016 during which the AKP had to face two major crisis: Gezi Park Protests and the unfolding of corruption allegations. Until March 2007, there were three major cross-media groups in Turkey: Doğan, Merkez, and Çukurova. However, from mid-2007

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onward new business groups known to be close to the AKP cadres started acquiring media one after another. The major handover took place in March 2007 when the Merkez Group’s media assets (TV channel ATV, radio channel Radio City, 5 newspapers including Sabah, and 11 magazines) were confiscated due to breach of contract with the Saving Deposits Insurance Fund. These media assets were later sold to the Çalık Group in December 2008, of which its owners were known to have ties with the AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. By the end of 2013, Çalık wanted to withdraw from media and all of its media assets were once again put on the market. The government intervened again and sold this media giant to the Kalyon Construction Company of Zirve Holding, thus making sure that the media corporation remains in the hands of a pro-AKP group. In return for this compliance, the Kalyon Group was awarded with a lion share of the government tenders (see Sözeri 2015; Yesil 2016). During this handover, pro-AKP businessmen who indebted their wealth to the AKP were asked to contribute to a capital pool. The infamous term “pool media” to describe pro-AKP media has been used since then. This was a completely novel strategy for the acquisition of media in Turkey as mandated by President Erdoğan and the whole process completed without a single change in the legislation on media ownership regulations. Aydın Doğan, who has been the country’s biggest media mogul since the 1990s, also sold all of its media outlets (including two of the country’s four biggest newspapers, Hürriyet and Posta; a leading television channel, CNN Turk; and a news agency, among many others) in April 2018 to the Demirören Group, again close ally of President Erdoğan. Despite various public appearances pretending as if they had settled their disputes, Mr. Doğan and President Erdoğan always had troubled relations. Aydın Doğan’s media was critical of the AKP and its then Prime Minister Erdoğan at different times, the harshest being after the so-called Deniz Feneri charity fraud case unfolded in 2008. The group was fined $2.5  billion for unpaid taxes in 2009, which was seen as a “punishment.” It would be fair to suggest that the stronger and more powerful President Erdoğan became, Aydın Doğan became the opposite, which led to his complete getaway from the media sector in Turkey. President Erdoğan, who has been demanding absolute loyalty, was adamant to fabricate a media environment that follows his line in every outlet. The AKP gradually collected all the powers in its hands, as a result of which the new media corporations supported by the AKP now became the new “mainstream media.” Pressures on the remaining opponent media increased after the 2013 Gezi

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Park protests, and turned to a media purge following the failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016, which resulted in the closure of hundreds of media outlets, including 33 television channels as of March 2018 (see, IHOP 2018). Needless to say, TRT also changed for the worse under 18 years of AKP rule. As discussed earlier, TRT in its entire history has never been exempt from political influence, but this would no longer suffice to describe AKP’s confiscation and exploitation of the Corporation. The damage done manifests in its news and programming output that has become very conservative, religious, and partisan in recent years. Watching the screens of TRT today, it is very evident that spokespersons are strongly aligned with the line of the AKP and its leader President Erdoğan receives ample on-air time while opponents do not. This has been extremely problematic during the elections, causing opposition parties to publicly protest. There has also been a great increase in the channeling of TRT’s financial resources to pro-AKP groups via outsourcing of its broadcasting content. The TRT was linked to the Directorate of Communications in July 2008 with a decree, meaning that the Corporation is now officially under the direct control of President Erdoğan.

Conclusion Television continues to be a strategic sight in the struggle for gaining hegemonic power in Turkey. In an environment where trust in newspapers is at its lowest ebb and circulations are on decline, controlling television content is crucial due to its significance and popularity for addressing general public. The major historical continuity we tried to demonstrate in this chapter was how broadcast content regulation in Turkey has always been tied to political partisanship and polarization. Where their lack of independence and autonomy is considered, the regulator RTÜK and the “public service” broadcaster TRT continue to be part of this order as facilitators and ideological communicators. It would be fair to say that the current television broadcasting culture in Turkey has almost completely surrendered itself to politics and political controversy. According to the Media Ownership Monitor Turkey (2016), out of ten most watched TV channels, nine belong to owners that are affiliated with the government. This is clearly a very dim picture. It is not a coincidence that many critical and alternative voices have been migrating to social media to reach the public for more than three years now. Despite

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frequent regulatory and judiciary attempts, social media is still free from absolute state control. It is very evident that the struggle to control and censor content on social media will continue to be at the center of political and cultural life in Turkey in the upcoming years.

References Adaklı, G. (2009). The Process of Neoliberalisation and the Transformation of the Turkish Media Sector in the Context of the New Media Architecture. In J.  Harrison & B.  Wessel (Eds.), Mediating Europe: Communication in Contemporary European Culture Contents. Oxford: Berghahn. Adaklı, G., & Aydoğan, A. (2018). The Historical Background of AKP’s Media: A Chronicle of Neoliberal Media Architecture (1980–2002), HalaGazeteciyiz Report, 05/04/2018. Retrieved January 28, 2020, from https://halagazeteciyiz.net/2018/04/05/the-historical-background-of-akps-media-a-chronicle-of-neoliberal-media-architecture-1980-2002/. ̇ Ağaoğlu, A. (2004). Damla Damla Günler I. Istanbul: Alkım. Ahiska, M. (2010). Occidentalism in Turkey: Questions of Modernity and National Identity in Turkish Radio Broadcasting. Library of Modern Middle East Studies. London: I.B. Tauris. Arvas, I.  S. (2018). Türkiye’nin Radyo ile Tanışması ve Türk Telsiz Telefon Anonim Şirketi. International Journal of Cultural and Social Studies (IntJCSS), 4(2), 406–428. ̇ ̇ Bali, R. N. (2002). Tarz-ı Hayat’tan Life Style’a. Istanbul: Iletiş im. Başcı, P. (2017). Social Trauma and Telecinematic Memory: Imagining the Turkish Nation since the 1980 Coup. Palgrave Macmillan. Cankaya, Ö. (2003). Bir Kitle İletişim Kurumunun Tarihi: TRT 1927–2000. ̇ Istanbul: YKY. Çaplı, B. (1994). Turkey. In J. Mitchell & J. G. Blumler (Eds.), Television and the Viewer Interest (pp. 135–146). London: John Libbey. ̇ Çaplı, B. (2008). Fili Tarif Etmek: Özel Televizyona Beş Kala. Ankara: Imge. Çaplı, B., & Tuncel, H. (2005). Television Across Europe: Regulation, Policy and Independence Turkey. EU Monitoring and Advocacy Program (EUMAP)  – Network Media Program (NMP). Open Society Institute. Çelenk, S. (1998). Türkiye’de Televizyon Program Üretimi: Bağımsız Prodüksiyon Şirketleri Üzerine Bir İnceleme. Unpublished MA Dissertation, Ankara Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Ankara. Çelenk, S. (2005). Televizyon, Temsil Kültür: 90’lı Yıllarda Sosyokültürel İklim ve Televizyon İçerikleri. Ankara: Ütopya.

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Eres, B., & Yüksel, H. (2018). The Changing Media Capital in the AKP Era, Hala Gazeteciyiz, 31/05/2018. Retrieved January 1, 2020, from https://halagazeteciyiz.net/2018/05/31/the-changing-media-capital-in-the-akp-era/. Esen, S. (2013). Olayların İçinden (Bir TRT Tarihi Denemesi). Ankara: Kanguru Yayınları. European Commission. (1998, November 4). Regular Report on Turkey’s Progress Towards Accession. Brussels: European Commission. IHOP. (2018, April 17). Updated Situation Report – State of Emergency in Turkey 21 July 2016–20 March 2018, Human Rights Joint Platform. Retrieved January 29, 2020, from https://ihop.org.tr/wpcontent/uploads/2018/04/ SoE_17042018.pdf. ̇ Ilaslan, S. (2014a). Türkiye de Televizyon Yayıncılığının Kuruluşu Üzerine Temel Tartışmalar Kalkınma Eğitim ve Milli Güvenlik. SBF Dergisi, 69(3), 481–510. ̇ Ilaslan, S. (2014b). Türkiye’de Televizyon Yayıncılığının Kuruluşu: TRT ve Kamu Hizmeti Etrafındaki Mücadeleler 1960–1980. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Ankara Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Ankara. ̇ Ilaslan, S. (2019). Türkiye’de Televizyonun Kuruluşu. Ankara: Detay Yayıncılık. ̇ ̇ ̇ Irvan, S. (1999). Radyo Televizyon Yasası ve Yayın İlkeleri. Iletiş im, GÜ ILEF Yayınları, 99(1), 263–267. Kaya, R. (1994). A Fait Accompli: Transformation of Media Structures in Turkey. METU Studies in Development, 21(3), 383–404. Kejanlıoğlu, D.  B. (1998). 1980’lerden 90’lara Türkiye’de Radyo Televizyon Yayıncılığı. Birikim Dergisi, 110, pp. 40–45. ̇ Kejanlıoğlu, D. B. (2004). Türkiye’de Medyanın Dönüşümü. Ankara: Imge. Kejanlıoğlu, B., Adakli, G., & Çelenk, S. (2001). Yayıncılıkta Düzenleyici Kurullar ve RTÜK. In B. Kejanlıoğlu, S. Çelenk, & G. Adaklı (Eds.), Medya Politikaları: ̇ Türkiye’de Televizyon Yayıncılığının Dinamikleri (pp. 93–144). Ankara: Imge. Kocabaşoğlu, U. (2010). Şirket Telsizinden Devlet Radyosuna: TRT Öncesi Dönemde Radyonun Tarihsel Gelişimi ve Türk Siyasal Hayatı İçindeki Yeri. ̇ ̇ Istanbul: Iletiş im. McKinsey & Company. (1998). Başarılı Bir Gelecek İçin Değişim Programı Tasarısı. Ankara: TRT. Media Ownership Monitor Turkey. (2016). Television. Retrieved January 29, 2020, from http://turkey.mom-rsf.org/en/media/tv/. Pekman, C. (1994). Avrupa Standartları ve Radyo-TV Kanunu. Ayna, Yaz-Güz, 1(3–4), 68–73. Sahin, H., & Aksoy, A. (1993). Global Media and Cultural Identity in Turkey. Journal of Communication, 43(2), 31–41. ̇ Sözer, Z. (2014). Halkın Sesinden İktidarın Borazanına. Istanbul: Doğan Kitap. Sözeri, C. (2015). Türkiye’de Medya-İktidar İlişkileri: Sorunlar ve Öneriler. ̇ ̇ Istanbul: Istanbul Enstitüsü.

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Sümer, B. (2009). The Impact of Democratic Conditionality on Policy-Making in Turkey: Minority Rights and the Politics of Broadcast Regulation. Central European Journal of Communication, 2(1), 99–112. Sümer, B. (2010). The Impact of Europeanisation on Policy-Making in Turkey: Controversies, Uncertainties and Misfits in Broadcasting Policy (1999–2009). Ankara Üniversitesi Avrupa Toplulukları Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi Araştırma Dizisi, No. 35, Ankara: ATAUM. Taş, O. (2012). Gazetecilik Etiğinin Mesleki Sınırları: Profesyonellik, Piyasa ve ̇ ̇ Sorumluluk. Istanbul: Iletiş im. TRT. (1966). TRT Annual Planning and Budget. Ankara: TRT. TRT. (1970). TRT 1970 Annual Report. Ankara: TRT. TRT. (1972). TRT 1972 Annual Report. Ankara: TRT. TRT. (1974). TRT 1974 Annual Report. Ankara: TRT. Yesil, B. (2016). Media in New Turkey: The Origins of an Authoritarian Neoliberal State. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Yıldız, A. (2003). Bir Düzenleyici Kurul Analizi: Radyo Televizyon Üst Kurulu. Ankara Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Yayınlanmamış Yüksek Lisans Tezi. Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi.

CHAPTER 3

Televised Journalistic Documentaries of the 1990s: The Form, Content, and Historical Juncture Burçe Çelik

In the 1990s, when the Turkish economy and politics were opening to the global neoliberal order and its communicative spaces were accordingly privatized, commercialized, and deregulated, television adopted a prominent role in public life for narrating, teaching, and writing history. Much as this was an outcome of the popularization of television as a political and entertainment medium in public life in the neoliberal era, it was also a consequence of a particular logic that utilized the past to make sense of the present, and of the current socio-political issues that were prioritized in line with the dominant ideological agenda. The most popular and impactful format for television’s pedagogic role in teaching history was the journalistic, historical documentaries aired first on the public and then the newly emerged private channels. Despite that this genre has played a vital role in the making of political culture, society of political spectacle, and the production of popular memory in Turkey, it was seldom an object of scholarly inquiry. This chapter aims to contribute to filling this gap.

B. Çelik (*) Loughborough University, London, UK © The Author(s) 2020 Y. Kaptan, E. Algan (eds.), Television in Turkey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46051-8_3

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The power of television as a political medium as well as a popular historian has been well established in scholarly research. Scholars have shown the ways that television broadcasting participates in the making of the political, altering the collective consciousness about political matters, and constituting the shared historical narratives, affectivities, and memories (see Miller 2010 for a comprehensive literature review of television studies). Its power to reach a wide range of audiences regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, and class disparities made the medium a prominent vehicle for learning and teaching history. Relatedly, the popularization of historical content adds to the commercial pursuits of the capitalist television industry by providing accessible and appealing historical content to a mass audience and thereby exchanging the popularity of programs for advertisement and sponsorship revenue (Edgerton 2000). Its unwavering allegiance to the present shapes the ways in which it narrates, teaches, and writes the past. “Television as historian,” Gary Edgerton (2000, p.  9) writes, is committed to animate the past for millions “by accentuating those matters that are most relevant and engaging to audiences in the present.” In its most conventional and commercialized form, the historical journalistic documentary is shaped by a mode of “presentism,” as Linda Hutcheon (1988) maintains, in terms of revealing the bits and pieces of past that are most relevant to the present both in an ideological sense and content-wise. For instance, exploring the US memory boom in the 1960s, Robert Sklar (1997) shows how popular television historical documentaries served to justify American Cold War policies. By hewing closely to the codes of realism and objectivity, the conventional news documentary gives the sense that what is portrayed on screen is the presentation rather than a representation of things as they have actually happened (Cook 2004). In this way, the very rhetorical action that comes into play through contextualization, historicization, narrativization, and fixation of the past in the mainstream journalistic/historical documentary becomes almost invisible. As such, the journalist who tells, documents, and contextualizes the past becomes an authority on history through the narrative s/he composes. Barbie Zelizer (1992, p. 8) describes this as a process in which “narratives beget authority, which begets memories, which beget more narratives, which beget more authority, and so on.” In this chapter, I invite the reader to have a close look at one of the most popular and impactful journalistic/historical documentary series in Turkish television history, developed and presented by the then prominent television journalist Mehmet Ali Birand. The series are Demirkırat: Bir

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Demokrasinin Doğuşu [Demirkırat: The Birth of a Democracy] (1991, ̇ Bülent Çaplı and Can Dündar, TRT 1), 12 Mart: Ihtilalin Pençesinde Demokrasi [12 March: Democracy Under the Threat of Junta] (1994, Can Dündar and Bülent Çaplı, Show TV), and 12 Eylül [September 12] (1998, Mustafa Ünlü, Show TV). These series used the generic conventions of “expository documentaries” (Nichols 2017): episodes within each series start with the presenter’s (Mehmet Ali Birand) opening remarks, then continue in chronological fashion to present the political events by way of testimonials, archival clips, and photographic images, and end with the presenter’s concluding remarks. Bill Nichols notes that the viewer typically expects the expository texts to take shape around the solution to a problem or puzzle. In defining, framing, and presenting the problem, the rhetoric of the commentator’s argument serves as the dominant text, moving the narrative forward toward a solution as well as refuting other elements that do not fit into the proposed problem and solutions proposed by the commentary (Dow 2004; Corner 2008). As such, the texts claim to expose an actuality (of the past) by using the codes of realism and objectivity in such a way that the content is consumed and understood by a mass audience. The three series we will investigate here trace the development of “democracy” in Turkey from the late 1930s to the 1980s. In this period the country has experimented with a multiparty parliamentarian democratic system and a state-led import-substitution industrialization (ISI) model that was adopted between the 1950s and 1980s in many countries in the developing world (see Boratav 2014 for a thorough analysis of ISI policies in Turkey). Various socio-political movements emerged to shape the culture and the tensions within the country, including the socialist labor and student movements that partially embraced Kurdish rights, the far-right nationalist movement, and political Sunni Islam. The military has intervened in the governance of the country three times in this period—in 1960, 1971, and 1980—to reorganize the country’s political economy and shape the constitutional and social order by inflicting numerous collective traumas on different segments of the population, particularly on the socialist, Alevi, and Kurdish political groups. The documentaries take each military intervention as the beginning and end of a new historical period in Turkey’s political past and are relatedly broken into three series, each of which chronologically narrates the period that led to the first, second, and third military intervention.

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The documentaries were considered to be taboo-breaking productions in the 1990s for placing the problematic ruling power of the military at the center of the historical narrative. In an environment where the old forms of political economy and communication were transforming in line with globalization and neoliberalization, the documentaries were believed to open up a space for Turkey’s populace to face its traumatic political past (see Dündar 2012 for accounts of the praise these documentaries received at the time). Accordingly, the journalists who produced, presented, and wrote the series were regarded as prominent authorities on televisual documentary, and even as experts on political history. In 2012 when the Turkish Grand National Assembly formed a commission to investigate all military interventions in its past, one of the journalists, Rıdvan Akar, who contributed to the production of the last series on the September 12 coup, was invited to parliament to present his views and evidence he collected for the documentary to the commission (TBMM Tutanakları 2012). The series were first broadcast on television channels, then became available as books (that were reprinted by different publishing houses) and DVDs over the following years, and were finally uploaded onto online platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo in 2017 for free consumption. As no subsequent historical TV documentary productions reached the popularity of these series, they continue to serve as some of the most popular audio-­ visual references for learning about and remembering the political past. Following, I will first outline the context in which these documentaries were created, produced, and broadcast on state and private television channels by exploring the broader ideological shifts in the Turkish political, communication, and cultural domains in the 1990s. Then I will move into narrative analysis of the series’ format, aesthetics, and discourse. In doing so, I will pay close attention to not only what is included in the narrative and how it is told, but also what is excluded, omitted, and intermeshed into the main stories and arguments of the series to explore how the political history of Turkey’s “democracy” was explained within the present context of 1990s socio-political and cultural dynamics. This analysis may help us trace how “democracy” has been imagined, experienced, and narrated through popular television over the history of modern Turkey.

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Television in the 1990s Following the 1980 coup that introduced neoliberal economics and politics in Turkey along with a new constitution that restricted some of the civic, labor, and communication rights guaranteed by the previous 1961 Constitution, the Turkish television industry rapidly and radically transformed (see Kejanlıoğlu 2004 for a thorough analysis of television history in this period, and see Çelik in press, for a comprehensive historical study of Turkey’s communications landscape). Until 1990, the state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) protected its monopoly over television broadcasting in the country, but now it had to be reoriented to accommodate the requirements of the neoliberal restructuring. First and foremost, this meant the transformation of TRT into a profit-seeking state company by extending its reach to the more remote parts of the country and instituting a programming policy that would attract viewers’ attention without contradicting the state’s official policies (more below). Essentially, red lines were drawn to prohibit critical public debate about neoliberalism on the one hand and the repressive state policies over the socialist and Kurdish groups on the other. By the early 1980s, some of the factions within the Kurdish political movement thought that armed struggle against the Turkish state was the best strategy to gain their ethnic and political rights, and they formed the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê/ Kurdish Workers Party) to pursue this goal. A High Authority Commission for Radio and Television was formed in 1984 to produce policy guidelines for broadcasting and appoint the administrative council and director general of TRT (see Christensen 2013). The Commission would constitute the main apparatus for regulating the new private radio and television channels that would eventually form and enforcing the new programming policy. The Commission also recommended that state channels should expand and multiply, and it controlled the granting of licenses to the new private broadcasting outlets. In line with the recommendations, in 1986 TRT established its second and third channels (TRT2 and TRT3) along with GAP TV, which was aimed at the predominantly Kurdish and Arab populations living in the Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi (Southeast Anatolia Development Project) region in southeast Turkey. In the meantime, the reach of television signals was extended across the country by way of satellite technology, which Turkey had adopted in the late 1960s within the scope of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-led communication programs. By the late

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1980s, private satellite dishes were installed to receive European channels and America’s CNN. After expanding public channels and extending the terrestrial and extra-terrestrial televisual infrastructure (see Chap. 1), TRT was ready to increase its audience, popularity, and revenue. To reach this goal, it began to sell airtime to companies and political parties and purchase independent productions. By the mid-1990s, a significant portion of TRT’s budget was allocated to pay for independent productions produced by national and international companies (Kejanlıoğlu 2004; Şahin and Aksoy 1993). Mehmet Ali Birand entered the television world in 1985 as an independent programmer and began to produce his famous monthly news programs, 32. Gün, for TRT1. Inspired by famous British news programs like BBC’s Panorama, 32. Gün (32nd Day) covered monthly international and diplomatic news and included exclusive interviews with international political figures of the period, such as Margaret Thatcher, Vladimir Lomeiko, Helmut Kohl, Imelda Marcos, and Yasser Arafat. The program soon became one of TRT’s most influential and popular news programs, symbolizing the positive outcomes of the policy changes and branding the neoliberal administration as one that encouraged the opening of the national cultural and economic spheres to the world. 32. Gün was considered a window to the world, and Birand was celebrated as the journalist who made this opening possible (see Dündar 2012). Birand was commissioned by TRT in 1989 to make a documentary about the history of the Cyprus crisis. This was followed by Demirkırat: The Birth of a Democracy. Shortly after the broadcasting of this series on TRT, Birand was accused by the state broadcaster of misusing its resources for personal pursuits.1 The screening of Demirkırat on TRT coincided with further transformation of the broadcasting sector. By the early 1990s, the government allowed the introduction of the first private television channel in Turkey by going around the constitutional rules prohibiting private enterprises from broadcasting on Turkish soil. A Swiss company called Magic Box, whose cofounder was the son of then Prime Minister Turgut Özal, began to broadcast programs in Turkish on the first Turkish satellite station, Star 1. Although all programming was done in the Turkish language for audiences in Turkey and by Turkish companies and workers, the company was registered in Switzerland and subject to its taxation and regulation. Following the introduction of Star 1, various entrepreneurs opened broadcasting companies in Europe, used Eurostar satellites to send their signals to Turkey’s audiences, and enjoyed the power of utilizing a popular

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communication medium without paying the taxes and being subject to the broadcasting regulations of Turkey. By 1993, there were seven private television stations broadcasting to Turkey through satellite technologies (Aksoy and Robins 1997). Shortly after the introduction of the initial mainstream private channels, a Kurdish satellite television network began broadcasting from London to Turkey’s Kurdish population, in addition to the “family” networks that broadcast Islamic content to broader Turkish audiences. In the beginning, viewers had to purchase individual satellite dishes to watch these channels in their homes, but soon Turkish municipalities installed their own dishes and transmitters to enable viewers to watch the private channels without paying for the equipment (Christensen 2013). This was the case in many territories of Turkey, except for the predominantly Kurdish areas of the southeast. As the Kurdish network was considered a vehicle for terrorism, the ownership of satellite dishes in the Kurdish areas was considered sufficient evidence for the criminalization of those viewers (see Hassanpour 1998; Keleş 2015). The Turkish-speaking mainstream private satellite channels largely aired imported programs in the 1990s, including Latin American soap operas, American television series, and Hollywood films. Their only “original” content was comprised of news bulletins, debate programs, talk shows, and reality shows. Despite their limited airtime, the impact of these locally produced programs was enormous in changing the language, discourse, and representation policies of the country’s televisual world. The news on these channels covered ordinary people’s stories as long as they had sensational elements and employed an emotional narrative along with dramatic music. The glamorous lives of celebrities and their private relations on the one hand and the daily struggles of the ordinary people on the other were increasingly on screens through reality and talk shows (see Bek 2004; Ergül 2000). Many commentators celebrated this new televisual world as the first chance for Turkey’s populace to “speak” (Mango 1997) or “find its own tongue” (Göle 1994). The private satellite TV establishment in Turkey, as elsewhere, was quickly equated to the liberalization of civil society from the tyranny of authoritarian state power (e.g., see Sreberny 1998 for an optimistic analysis of how satellites could change gender relations as well as political culture in the Middle East). Studies show, however, that this liberalized televisual broadcasting instead contributed to a negative portrayal of the feminist movement, which flourished in the 1990s (see Bora and Günal 2002), as well as of the Kurdish political movement through the discourses of “terrorism” (see Aydınlı 2018).

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These private mainstream outlets were largely owned by the business classes who had investments in the banking, energy, and telecommunications sectors. While the banks were used to create capital for their investments, the television outlets were increasingly used by the new conglomerates to influence the government. The mismanagement of the banking sector by these firms would eventually lead to the economic crisis in the early 2000s, while the concentration of media ownership under their control would contribute to the making of televisual political culture. One of the media moguls of the time was Erol Aksoy, who owned the private Show TV, the first pay TV Cine-5, the biggest newspaper Hürriyet, and other mainstream dailies such as Sabah and Yeni Yüzyıl, along with ̇ banks such as Iktisat Bankası in Turkey, Commerce de Paris in France, and the Park Avenue Bank in the USA, and insurance companies such as Emek Sigorta. Following a rift with TRT, Mehmet Ali Birand and his team moved to Show TV to broadcast their documentaries and news programs.

Demirkırat: The Birth of a Democracy Democracy is the most fragile flower of the world. Its endurance depends on tolerance, consensus, and dialogue. (Opening commentary by Birand)

Birand opens the series with a traditional “stand-up” commentary that defines democracy as a culture of understanding and dialogue. Every episode (ten in total) begins with this opening remark to remind viewers how to think about democracy, and what is to be sought but cannot yet be found in the history of democracy in Turkey. The historical period it covers begins with the first attempts to institute a multiparty parliamentary system and ends with the 1960 military coup, which temporarily disrupts multiparty “democracy.” By introducing the male characters of the political realm in the first episode, such as the leader of the Republican People’s ̇ ̇ Party (CHP) Ismet Inönü, the important opposition leader Celal Bayar (who would later become president after the Democrat Party [DP] victory), Adnan Menderes (first as a young politician of the single party system, then as a prime minister of the early multiparty regime, and finally as someone executed by the military regime), and the leading generals of the Turkish Armed Forces, the documentary shows us that this is essentially a story told by men about men and their conflicting power relations. The personalization of history and historical events is one of the constitutive elements of the conventional history documentaries produced for

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and broadcasted on television. Throughout the ten episodes, this series uses this conventional narrative technique to explain what actually happened and how democracy has evolved through the stories of these powerful men. The testimonies, archival footage, and photographic images used in the documentaries, accordingly, support the idea that the domain of politics was constituted and structured by these men, their worldviews, and their ambitions to seize or keep political power. The narrative never presents women as agents of political history. They are never interviewed or asked about their opinions, except in the context of their roles as wives or daughters of the dead male political figures. As such, the televisual history of the political past seems to be written exclusively for male audiences as a story of male actors that is presented and written by male journalists. Thus, the absence of women is threefold—in the narrative, in the presentation, and in the presumption of the potential audience. The series narrative does not misrepresent history; it rather reduces history to the chronological events and relations of men in powerful roles. For instance, the rivalry between the Democrats and Republicans—as the governing and opposition parties—is presented at length through scenes of their verbal attacks on one another. The ideological and policy differences about their approach to economics or Turkey’s alliance with the USA in foreign policy during the Cold War are presented only as “little stories” (Heath and Skirrow 1977, p.  8) that complement the personal political histories. Similarly, the military conspiracy in the late 1950s to plot a coup is largely depicted using testimonials by the coup designers and supporters within a narrative of the coup as a struggle for power between male political actors. In this regard, the leaders of the Democrat Party (Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and President Celal Bayar) on the ̇ one hand and the leader of the Republican Party (Inönü) and his military supporters on the other are shown as the key actors in the political tension. While politics is reduced to the rift between the male actors and democracy is reduced to the communication between the actors, the curtailment of justice and civil and labor rights, and the lack of any separation of powers find almost no place within the narrative. What was included or excluded in the series about the political developments of the period, such as the politicization of Islam on the one hand and the anti-communist policies of the state on the other, was carefully edited in the narrative. While the Democrats’ exploitation of Sunni Islam as a tool to garner electoral support is discussed at length, the rise of the anti-communist movement—which was actively supported by the

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state—receives no coverage (see Meşe 2016 for a thorough study of Turkey’s anti-communist charities and their links to the state). Relatedly, one of the first lynching campaigns against the socialist left—the owners and writers of Tan (daily) and Görüşler (periodical)—in 1945 is omitted from the narrative (see Koloğlu 2015 for a comprehensive historical study of the press in Turkey). Despite its shortcomings, particularly in its reductive exploration of what democracy is and can be and the absence of economic and gender discussions, the series brought valuable archival materials to light that have reinforced its impact. Among these materials, the propaganda film Düşükler Yassıada’da [The Fallen Politicians of Yassıada]2 that was produced by the military to show how the deposed politicians of the Democrat Party lived in an open-air prison on Yassıada Island was especially significant. The imprisonment of the Democrat Party officials by the military regime and the long and humiliating trial throughout 1960 generated public complaints and resentment, particularly on the part of Democrat Party supporters in inner Anatolia (see Karpat 1970). In response to the rising complaints, the film aimed to show the public that the inmates were treated well and had a fairly comfortable life. These former politicians, including former President Celal Bayar, were forced to act as if they had enjoyed their time there, eating in the restaurants, reading in their private rooms, and conversing and socializing with other inmates. Bayar would attempt to commit suicide because of the humiliating charade that he was forced to perform. The series broadcast clips of this propaganda film along with the story of Bayar’s attempted suicide. Dündar recounts in his biography on Birand that it has been a laborious process to find this propaganda film: the film was first shown to the public in movie theaters shortly after the military coup, then sold to a businessman to be shown in the eastern regions of Turkey, and then to a former Democrat Party deputy. Following the failed attempts to obtain the film from military archives, Birand and his colleagues reached out to the former DP deputy who had possessed the film for years and purchased it to include in the documentary series. Dündar writes that this footage was “the pearl” of the documentary series, which they thought would shock the audience, most of whom had not seen or been aware of it (Dündar 2012, p. 341).

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The documentary ends with the scene of Menderes being hung by the military regime after his trial. The photographic image of Menderes’ corpse after the execution was screened for the first time in this series. In addition, Menderes’ last message before he was executed was read to the audience. Inspired by Menderes last words, Sezen Aksu would write the lyrics of a popular song, “Dargın Değilim” (I’m Not Angry), to a melody composed by Fahir Atakoğlu. Following the screening of this last episode, hundreds of people marched to Menderes’ cemetery in Topkapı to show their belated appreciation. The documentary and its final image were on the covers of the main newspapers the next day. According to research conducted by Zet Medya, the documentary has changed 17% of the viewing public’s attitude toward the first military intervention from positive to negative (Dündar 2012, p. 345).

12 March: Democracy Under the Threat of Junta Three years after the broadcast of the first series, Birand and his team began to work on the second series that would follow up the chronological history of democracy in Turkey. The narrated period in the second series began with the early days of the military regime in 1961 and progressed toward the second military intervention in 1971. The title of the series, 12 March: Democracy Under the Threat of Junta, did not only symbolize the date of the second military coup but also underscored the ways Turkish democracy had evolved under the constant and continuous threat of military takeovers. Birand’s opening remarks again set the tone of the historical narrative and introduced the main argument that would be presented in ten episodes: On the road towards democracy, the streets of the 1960s were first crowded by the coup plotters, then by the youth with their victorious songs, the workers with their flags and banners, right-wingers, leftists and once again by the interventionist soldiers. The country has gone through another 12 years under the threat of military intervention. In the end, all roads led to the familiar roundabout.

The first episode of this series opens with the last scene of the first series to remind viewers that they are watching a continuous story of the political past in episodic format. Once more, the story was narrated through

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political actors, including the military officers who continuously attempted to take over the government, as well as leaders and deputies of the political parties that formed coalition governments throughout the 1960s. In contrast to the first, this series allocated significant time to the narration of social movements like the socialist labor and student movements and the political Islam and far-right nationalist movements. The personal stories of the leftist publications that supported the military interventions, such as Yön and Devrim, and the leaders of the socialist student movement, such as Deniz Gezmiş and Mahir Çayan, are introduced to the audience. As these political actors and others were killed—the first hanged in 1972 by the military regime, the second killed in an armed struggle between security forces and his group—their stories were told through other activists’ testimonials, archival footage, and photographic images. The ultra-right movement as well was depicted through testimonials and archival resources. By highlighting the long and disproportionate suffering of the leftist activists compared to the ultra-right, the series reminds viewers that the fight did not wound the conflicting groups in the same way. In continuity with the first one, however, this series repeats the nonrepresentation of women in the making of the political. The lack of female representation in this series is especially important given that there were some impactful female politicians in the 1960s, such as Behice Boran of the Labour Party who was very active in parliamentary and activist politics, and given women’s participation in the student and labor movements of the period. The series erases not only women from the political past, it also silences the ideological differences between left and right, the secularists and the Islamists, and their connection to the external world beyond the nation. In portraying the student movements through leading characters’ stories, including the university boycotts or the kidnapping of American officials, the series never tells us what the groups actually wanted to achieve through their activism, nor does it inform the viewers about the ideological aspirations of these groups in their struggle to transform the existing social order. What these movements meant for the development or underdevelopment of the nation’s democracy, economy, or place in the broader world are left as unanswered questions. Without a solid ideological background, the youth activism is portrayed as an almost causeless fight between naïve and violent militants. The dispute between the left and right is portrayed as nearly meaningless, other than providing legitimate grounds for another interruption in democracy with a military coup. The series ends quite dramatically with the execution

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of leftist student leaders, which was enabled by the 1971 military intervention and supported by newly elected right-wing politicians. The 1968 student movement is thus portrayed as a bunch of well-meaning but lost kids of the utopic left. The portrayal of the 1968 student movement in this manner on television has effectively contributed to the renewal of public interest in the executed leaders of the leftist movement in the following period. After the screening of the final episode of the series, the dailies began to discuss how and why the military and civil administration opted to execute the three male leaders of the 1968 movement (in Milliyet there were 60 news stories about Deniz Gezmiş between January 1994 and 1995, most of which emphasize that they were only kids). In the following decade, the student movement would become the subject of fictionalized television dramas (such as Hatırla Sevgili [Remember Darling]). On one hand, these journalistic and fictional representations helped to reinvigorate a public debate about the former repressive policies of the state against the socialist youth. On the other hand, they could not move beyond presenting the ideological movements within the confines of personal stories, so they contributed to the popularization of the activists as “celebrities” whose images and stories are reproduced in commodified markets.

September 12 The last series, September 12 (12 Eylül), historicized in nine episodes is arguably one of the most painful and violent periods of modern Turkey’s history. From the second military intervention in 1971 to the third in 1980, Turkey experienced systematic political violence that turned into, according to some, a civil war from the mid-1970s to 1980. Political violence at the time was not merely a result of left and the right militant activists’ fights. The daily political violence was also orchestrated by external and internal forces that were largely linked to the “deep state” establishment in the country. Just like other member states in NATO, the Turkish state had reoriented and empowered from the 1950s onward its “gladio” forces to undertake espionage, intelligence collection, and even assassination of suspicious political subjects under the remit of containment policies—that is to say, a permanent war against socialism. The “gladio” forces were established within branches of NATO headquarters, and were directly and indirectly linked to the member states’ intelligence institutions, including the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In the years

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leading to Turkey’s third military coup, the Turkish “gladio” would be actively involved in assassination of many journalists and political actors, and it trained far-right activists to confront socialist groups. Provoked by this special organization, there also emerged a systematic Islamist violence against the Alevi population, which came to be known as the Maraş, Malatya, and Çorum massacres (the cities where the massacres took place in the late 1970s). The 1980 coup, the most violent in Turkey’s history, squashed the leftist and Kurdish movement while promoting anti-communist Islamism and the racist Turkish movement, and it sprouted from an aggressive economic neoliberalization process. The coup was condoned by many in the country, including those tired of the daily political violence and the business classes who demanded restrictions on the labor and civil rights leaned on by the left in pursuit of their activism. The owner of one of the biggest holding companies of the time, Vehbi Koç of Koç Holding, claimed to be corresponding with the interventionist military leaders calling for collaboration. In one letter, in an effort to be of service to the regime Koç urged the military to bring a halt to the union movement and regulate labor-­ management relations (Sönmez 1990). The business groups, including Koç Holding, paid a number of visits to the USA to show support for the neoliberal restructuring of the country’s economy, which was guided by international financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank, and to resist the elected government of the time led by Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit of the social democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP). The coup that toppled the elected government was largely believed to have been organized with the support of the CIA. To narrate this eventful period, Birand opens each episode with the following: After going through the coups of 27 May [1960] and 12 March [1971], Turkish democracy would have been ready to get back on track only if the political battles had come to an end. And yet, there was no calm after the storms. New battlefronts were opened, and blood was shed through the 1970s. In the end, the door was knocked on once again by those who would change everything, every single thing in the country. Nothing would be the same ever again.

The series, which was written, researched, and produced by a different team (including Hikmet Bila and Rıdvan Akar) than the first two series,

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was broadcast in 1998 on Show TV. In 1997, the Turkish military intervened in politics again but did not take over the government, instead forcing the existing one to resign. The perceived threat this time was the rise of political Islam and reactionary religious politics. This last coup—widely known as the Postmodern Coup—was also supported by the mainstream neoliberal secular media conglomerates, including Erol Aksoy’s conglomerate [Aksoy Holding]. The series dwelled on the rise of political Islam and Islamist violence in the 1970s, which mostly targeted leftist and Alevi groups. Importantly, the massacres of Alevis in Maraş, Malatya, and Çorum in the late 1970s received extensive and detailed coverage in this series. The narrative has also included the ways that Sunni groups were provoked to attack Alevis in places where they had historically cohabited. The documentary points to a hidden and mysterious hand that sets the scene for massive provocations, massacres, and violent clashes between different groups. The 1977 mass killing of protestors in Taksim Square and the assassination of journalists, intellectuals, academics, and unionists in that period are often narrated as plots designed by a “hidden hand.” To increase the dramatic effect, the series used scenes of “fictionalized narratives” to reenact these traumatic events. One of these scenes included the assassination of journalist Abdi Ipekci, who was shot dead as he drove home from work. In the manner of detective stories, the series creates suspicion that this curious hand might be connected to the interventionist military and US intelligence. It gives the sense that all acts of political violence in this period were guided by the hidden hand to legitimize military takeover. Following the narrative progression toward the actual takeover, a former American intelligence officer testifies that they were told the coup was led by “our guys,” solving the riddle. Emphasizing the role of the “deep state” and its geopolitical links in the escalation of political violence, the series has effectively contributed to public discussions about Turkey’s “gladio.” In this regard, the series has been an example of journalism as a truth-seeking and truth-telling profession. On the other hand, while the series did not provide a discussion on the role of the business classes in the preparation and/or sanctioning of the coup, the testimonial suggesting that this was the case was carefully corrected by the presenter. The testimonial of Bülent Ecevit in which he said the business groups traveled to the USA to conspire to topple his government, with a reference to a book written by Mehmet Ali Birand, was covered in the narrative. However, Birand pointedly refutes this by

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stating directly into the camera that his books contained no such claims nor revealed any wrongdoing of the business classes. In a similar manner, although the documentary reveals the systematic torture mechanisms the military regime employed to repress left-wing and right-wing political inmates in the prisons, it carefully avoids the particular torture methods used against leftist Kurds in the Diyarbakır prison in the early 1980s. While the documentary contextualizes the Kurdish problem in the late 1970s and 1980s through the testimony of Kenan Evren (the commander of the military coup), who speaks of the issue as a “terror problem,” it never presents the testimonies of Kurdish political figures or ordinary Kurds. Although women provided testimony on some of the events covered in this series, they remain framed as nonagents of that history. As in the first two series, this one never shows us how the military regime affected women, women’s lives, or women’s politics, nor does it tell us what role women have played in the making of the political throughout the 1970s.

The Legacy The 1990s can be considered a key decade in the development of neoliberal capitalism and its transformation of the communication sector in Turkey. The “liberalized” political-economic structure of media did not only introduce new media conglomerates, new technologies, and new practices—most of which arose from the deregulation processes—but also brought new forms of cultural politics in which the political and the historical are re-written, re-told, and re-narrativized through the prisms of liberal values and ideologies. Although the texts examined in this essay are distinctive as serious, well-researched, and well-told narrative journalistic productions of the televisual past that contrast with the popular forms of television broadcasting and journalism of the time, they were loyal products of the neoliberal social order. On the one hand, they were created by renowned journalists (whose journalistic authority was reaffirmed and reinforced by these series) and broadcast on commodified state and private channels to show the public that under the “liberalized” political and economic spheres it was finally possible to learn about the shared histories of pain and trauma of the past. By following the conventional codes of objectivity and realism and hewing closely to the traditional chronological narrative of historiography, the documentaries gave the sense that they unveiled the entire story of the political past by bringing the unknown and

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forgotten to the domain of remembrance and by opening the taboo subjects of the past to public discussion in the liberalized public sphere. On the other hand, the documentaries persistently narrated a story of the past filtered through the dominant popular political discourses in which the political is reduced to the power relations of men, the political is dissociated from the ideological, and the past (just as the present) is freed from women’s agency. As such, the series defined and framed what democracy is and what we should expect from an ideal democratic establishment, and it showed us what prevents us from experiencing that ideal. All the puzzles in the history of Turkish democracy are riddled with the controlling power of the military. As democracy is reduced to an electoral regime, the force that inhibits its evolution is military power. Critiques of the military, however, never include violence against women, Kurds, and/or its active support for the more unequal world under the neoliberal regime. Just as all actors lost their ideological depth in the documentary series, the military is seen as an institution without an ideology. Thus, the constitutive ideologies of the Turkish nation-state, which are based on pervasive patriarchy and right-wing Turkish nationalism and which also constitute and legitimize the power of the military, are simply left out of the narrative. At the historical juncture of the present, where such documentaries cannot even be created, produced, or broadcast on mainstream television channels under the current elected dictatorship that always legitimizes its neoliberal and Islamist authoritarian policies with the threat of military intervention, we may ask about the legacy of these documentaries. Questioning the extent to which these particular texts have shaped popular ideas about democracy and people’s memory of the political past leads us to controversial discussions. However, we can easily trace how democracy was imagined, experienced, and narrated from the 1990s to date through these television documentary narratives.

Notes 1. TRT administrators concluded their investigation on Birand with the decision that there were a number of occasions between 1985 and 1987  in which invoices for production expenses were either fake or covered personal expenses. Birand continued to be accused of a number of wrongdoings throughout his career, including the legal disputes between Birand and Mustafa Ünlü, the director of 12 September, for copyright of the documen-

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tary, and with Rıdvan Akar for the non-citation of Akar’s work in a documentary series on the 28 February Postmodern Coup. 2. The film was directed by Nusret Eraslan and commissioned by military propagandists (Milli Birlik Komitesi Irtibat Bürosu—Foto Film Merkezi) in 1960.

References Aksoy, A., & Robins, K. (1997). Peripheral Vision: Cultural Industries and Cultural Identities in Turkey. Environment and Planning A, 29, 1937–1952. Aydınlı, S. (2018). Framing the Pain: Printed Articulations, Terror, and the Political Otherness in Turkey. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Loughborough University London. Bek, G. M. (2004). Research Note: Tabloidization of News Media: An Analysis of Television News in Turkey. European Journal of Communication, 19, 371–386. ̇ Bora, A., & Günal, A. (Eds.). (2002). 90’larda Türkiye’de Feminizm. Istanbul: ̇Iletişim. Boratav, K. (2014). Türkiye Iktisat Tarihi. Istanbul: Imge. Çelik, B. (in press). Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Christensen, M. (2013). Turkey. In H. Newcomb (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Television (pp. 2371–2374). London: Routledge. Cook, A. (2004). The Use and Abuse of Historical Reenactment: Thoughts on Recent Trends in Public History. Criticism, 46, 487–496. Corner, J. (2008). Documentary Studies: Dimensions of Transition and Continuity. In T. Austin & W. De Joung (Eds.), Rethinking Documentary: New Perspectives, New Practices (pp. 13–28). New York: OUP / McGraw Hill. Dow, B.  J. (2004). Fixing Feminism: Women’s Liberation and the Rhetoric of Television Documentary. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 90, 53–80. Dündar, C. (2012). Birand: Bir Ömür Ardına Bakmadan. Istanbul: Can. Edgerton, G. (2000). Television as Historian: An Introduction. Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies, 30, 7–12. Ergül, H. (2000). Televizyonda Haberin Magazinleşmesi. Istanbul: Iletişim. Göle, N. (1994). Towards an Autonomization of Politics and Civil Society in Turkey. In M. Heper & A. Evin (Eds.), Politics in the Third Turkish Republic (pp. 213–222). Boulder: Westview Press. Hassanpour, A. (1998). Satellite Footprints as National Borders: Med-TV and the Extraterritoriality of State Sovereignty. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 18, 53–72. Heath, S., & Skirrow, G. (1977). Television: A World in Action. Screen, 18, 7–60. Hutcheon, L. (1988). A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge.

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CHAPTER 4

Revisiting the Unplugged Margins: Rural Television Audiences and Mediatization Nurçay Türkoğlu

Introduction The history behind this longitudinal audience research over a 30-year span overlaps with the changes and transformations in communication studies. This is a period that includes crucial changes in urbanization through globalization and the use of the means of communication. Here, I will try to unveil my adventure of ethnographic fieldwork in researching the role of television in the everyday lives of villagers near a metropolitan area in Turkey with close reference to terms such as social change, social transformation, and mediatization. To begin, I will mention some seminal works in the field that were the bases of my previous work. Then I will give a comparative picture of my fieldwork in 1987 and revisits in 2010, both in terms of comparing two villages’ television viewer and non-viewer habits and in terms of the visible social and cultural changes over time. A final revisit in 2019 to the same villages allowed me to discuss whether mediatization penetrates rural lives and how it works. In early mass communication research, culture and urbanization were used as lenses to examine the role of television viewing in social change.

N. Türkoğlu (*) Istanbul Arel University, Istanbul, Turkey © The Author(s) 2020 Y. Kaptan, E. Algan (eds.), Television in Turkey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46051-8_4

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Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society (1958), Schramm’s Mass Media and National Development (1964), Frey’s The Mass Media and Rural Development in Turkey (1966), Pye’s Communication and Political Power (1963), and Rogers’ Modernization Among Peasants (1969) are fundamental studies cited by pioneering Turkish academics studying media and social change. The focus of these early works was to find out how traditional communication changes in developing societies. In the liberal modern climate of the 1950s, researchers in mass communication looked for traces of technological determinism in less developed countries. It was believed that the cultural values and life practices of the modern world, which were considered ideal, could be advanced in less developed societies through mass communication systems. Local information resources and opinion leaders in rural areas could be used for the adoption of modernization, circumventing top-down structural changes. The development of modernization in less developed regions was intended to reveal the efficacy of the technological tools of developed countries. Kıray, in her sociological study of the town of Ereğli (1964), questions the buffer mechanisms of urbanization, disclosing the kinds of strategies used by families to survive rapid social change and addressing the role of mass media in changing mindsets about time and space. Her studies, conducted in the pre-television era, indicate that radio, magazines, newspapers, and cinema were popular and changed the everyday lives of their audiences. Notable among pioneering political science dissertations in the 1970s related to the use of mass media was Oskay’s theoretical assumptions on the benefits of creating an industrial society and the need to change the traditional infrastructure (1971). The purpose of my previous fieldwork in the late 1980s was to test whether it was possible to ascertain the role of television—the most influential mass media of the time—in social change. I began to look for settlements where residents had not yet developed the habit of watching television, and I found a couple of villages just 100  kilometers from ̇ Istanbul—Çataklı and Soğullu—located near the town of Ağva in the Şile district. I first visited them in 1987 and then revisited them in 2010 and 2019. Conducting fieldwork with villagers who had a tendency to urbanize but had not developed the habit of watching television regularly was a challenging yet compelling experience. Moreover, the reality of urbanization and adapting their everyday lives to the nearby city was a necessity for these villagers: in the course of my research, a dam was planned and the villagers were soon to be evacuated. How did they respond to this vast

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break in their lives? Did watching public television help convince them to leave their homes and move to the big city? What were the expectations of these villagers from their new lives? What were their motivations for moving to the city? How would the evacuation process transpire? The duration of my dissertation fieldwork was insufficient to answer all these questions; moreover, working conditions at the university could not support the continuation of the work into a longitudinal study. Nevertheless, the study lived on. Revisits and meetings with inhabitants in different environments made updates possible and suggested new questions about new media use and the rising popularity of eco-friendly tourism. As my findings illustrate, the daily hard work that the inhabitants engaged in has not changed over time since the late 1980s, but their vision of what life was outside their villages has changed. During my last visits, they expressed how living in the village had more advantageous aspects than living in the city, such as the comfort of living in a peaceful neighborhood with relatives and families nearby in a big city while keeping a distance from its chaotic modernism.

Fieldwork in Villages Near the Big City: 1987 As a doctoral candidate in the second half of the 1980s, critical theory’s aversion to empirical studies was attractive to me and I undertook some fieldwork to investigate the relationship between social change and television viewing outside of the urban center. I decided to do field research in two villages where sociological characteristics and practices other than television viewing could be matched so that I could demonstrate that the model of technological determinism was problematic. These two forest villages (Çataklı and Soğullu) were near ̇ Istanbul close to the Şile district town of Ağva and shared population and income characteristics. Villagers mostly worked outdoors in the manually laborious industry of charcoal production. The television broadcast signal at the time reached one of the villages (Soğullu) but not the one (Çataklı) located among the forested hills. Accompanied by a volunteer group of my university students and with the support of the locals, teachers, and craftsmen, I made several visits to the villages in the spring, summer, and fall of 1987. Each of the villages had 350 inhabitants and I conducted interviews with 10% of the population, totaling 35 per village. All of my informants permanently lived in their villages and worked in the production of wood charcoal. Seventy percent of the villagers were women and

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30% were men, a ratio that was reflected in my group of informants. Most of the informants were primary school graduates ranging between 17 and 60  years old. The interviews were first conducted at the village coffee house that was open to all genders and ages, unlike the men’s coffee houses in most Anatolian villages. The informants were generous enough to invite us into their homes where they often offered us tea and breakfast. They had learned some information about entertainment trends and television broadcasting on their rare visits to the city. At the time, the content of television broadcasting was produced by the Turkish Radio and Television Broadcasting Company (TRT), which was charged with the mission of public broadcasting (Cankaya 1990). Private broadcasting was not yet permitted. News broadcasts in the 1980s conformed to the rules of a political protocol, and television was a means of popular entertainment. TRT imported television series such as Star Trek, The Fugitive, Dallas, Columbo, Charlie’s Angels, and Escrava Isaura. Walt Disney productions as well as Tom and Jerry, Lassie, Yogi Bear, the Pink Panther Show, Sesame Street, and Casper the Friendly Ghost were among popular shows for kids. There were also some domestic series as well as adaptations of Turkish literature. Popular music programs included studio concerts and song contests. Television advertisements effectively encouraged the consumerism of the coming era of globalization. With these popular televised entertainment frameworks in mind, I designed a carefully worded survey instrument that alluded to popular trends in media culture generally and in television content in particular. The survey results revealed minor, expected differences with respect to daily entertainment culture. Recognition of entertainment media figures and popular songs was different between television viewers and non-­ viewers. However, there was almost no difference between the two villages in their reaction to what I viewed as a critical change in their lives: the decision to evacuate the villages for the construction of a dam. The majority of the villagers supported this decision, or at least that was what they claimed in face to face interviews. The construction of the dam (named ̇ ̇ Isaköy at that time) was formally decided in 1985 by the Istanbul Municipality and it was planned to be completed in 1990 (Türkoğlu 1988). The villagers were told that they must be evacuated and would be monetarily compensated. It was rumored that a new settlement neighboṙ hood in Istanbul would be offered to these villagers (around 10 villages would be evacuated), but there was no clarity about whether the national government or municipality would be responsible for this process. The

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villagers were told by public officers that their future was in the big city and they should be happy because their children would get the benefits of a new dam while living in new urban homes. So far as I witnessed, the news about the evacuation was accepted by the villagers without protest because they had full trust in the state to keep them safe and take care of their futures. Actually, there was no visible current pressure to remove them from their homes and the villagers were conducting daily life as usual. The interviews were constructed around four thematic sets of questions, each set including six or more options with subsections to be evaluated by the student interviewers. The first set of questions was aimed at eliciting the villagers’ comparative perceptions of life in the village versus life in the city. The second concerned their knowledge of actual entertainment media celebrities and media content, and the third concerned their rationale for buying consumer products. The final set concerned the construction of the dam. All the questions were open-ended, except for initial ones related to the interviewees’ identities. The context of the questions was knowledge of media culture and the political decision to evacuate the villages, and the research team guided long conversations with the villagers that included both direct and indirect questions (Türkoğlu 1988). Below are some cumulative results from the 1987 field notes: Living in the city: Respondents (especially women) commonly claimed that the city would be a more comfortable living environment than the village. Interestingly, non-viewers favored the city more. Television viewers were more realistic, saying that urban life is unsafe, expensive, and even frightening. But the TV viewers were also empathetic toward urban people. Both sets of villagers clearly preferred educating their children in the city and wished for them to secure good professions and salaries. Living in the village: Another common claim was about the disadvantages of living in the village: “It is good not to need money to live in the village, but it is hard work,” said a man who had experienced city life during his military conscription (age 30, engaged), and this was agreed by most of the villagers. Television viewers preferred to live in the village and non-viewers preferred to live in the city, though both felt empathy for villagers anywhere in the world. Knowledge of media celebrities and media content: Most respondents said they would love to meet Turkish movie stars and popular arabesque singers who were not actually on the small screen. Their knowledge of these celebrities came from weekly magazines, radio, and cassette tapes.

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Some young villagers had their favorite artists’ posters on the walls of their bedrooms. The popular weekly youth magazines of the era were available, brought by family members from the city. One or two daily newspapers were only available at the village coffee house. Radio and music tapes were also popular leisure activities. The prime minister at the time was supported by the villagers. Due to the upcoming 1987 Turkish general elections, the political campaigns were professionally conducted by advertising agencies and the ruling party was getting a lot of positive coverage. Rationale for buying consumer products: The annual lottery was popular at the time and the live New Year’s Eve television broadcast during which the lottery drawing is held was a great source of entertainment. There were also monthly lotteries, but our inquiries into them prompted no interest among the villagers. Neither set of villagers was keen on lotteries, and non-viewers nor women had no idea as to how one could spend such amounts of money. Men and television viewers had some understanding of the current national economic conditions. Construction of the dam: All the villagers were aware of the planned construction project and relocation of the villages, but some knew neither the name of the project nor the process and timing of the evacuation. As mentioned above, the name had actually been officially announced,1 but the process was as yet uncertain. Television viewers were eager to learn more, and all were loyal to civil servants, believing that they would care for them well. They were told that they would be ̇ moved to Istanbul and that the dam would be the largest supply of water for that megacity’s inhabitants. The effective factor in the matter of relocation was not only television, although it was part of their experience of modernity, but rather economic poverty in the region. There was a desire to migrate to the city, and indeed some migration had already begun. Both communities had a political tendency to support the current national government. The support of both television viewers and non-viewers for the national government was based ̇ on the persuasiveness of party officials from Ankara and Istanbul who visited the town coffee houses. Thus, as I argued, television conveys and supports the dominant political trends and cannot act contrary to the social and cultural climate. These villages were, after all, isolated forest settlements. But, the desire of their inhabitants to move to the big city would not be realized in the coming years, much less decades.

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Fieldwork in Villages Near the Big City: Revisits in 2010 In the 1990s, globalization brought ethnographic studies to the fore of academic discussion; as it was usually connected to a single technology such as television broadcasting, it relied on bygone concepts like mass society, and as a result, audience impact research was discredited (Livingstone 2000). But, a European research network called Transforming Societies, Transforming Audiences, which I joined in 2010, gave me the opportunity to participate in extensive audience research, including revisiting the villages of my previous study (COST Action IS0906 2010–2014). I started to refocus on audiences with the new concepts of self-­reflexivity and reflexive ethnography. Perhaps now I could again set out to explore marginal audiences in the mediated world while keeping in mind Burawoy’s (2003) note on the challenge of the ethnographic revisit: “to disentangle movements of the external world from the researcher’s own shifting involvement with the same world, all the while recognizing that the two are not independent” (p. 646). The longitudinal ethnography—revisiting the same site at different times over a number of years, such as that conducted by Algan (2017)—is an example of situating a particular social problem in transformation, such as young people and lived media experiences. Such an approach can expand the horizon of the ethnographic method which focuses on micro-­ narratives of communication through the study of personal experiences while being able to trace macro-sociocultural structuring in daily life over time. It enriches an interdisciplinary approach to communication studies, raising awareness of the media environment by which the researcher is surrounded (Hartman 2006). The power of pseudo remedies offered by popular media to capture the imagination of the engaged audience is a challenging aspect to study. However, in the case of my research, the scale of the construction of the dam was changed and limited, so the villages were not evacuated (as of yet). So, I was able to reach the unplugged margins again! I redesigned the fieldwork in my revisit. This time, the aim of the research was unveiled to the informants. We had long conversations about media and communication education. By that time, one of the relatives of a villager had been a student of mine (at my former school of communications), and she told her uncle from the village that my courses often referred to the village in the context of “social change and TV audience.”

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In addition, the villages also had experienced several visits by media and communications students from other universities for the filming of documentaries about wood charcoal and forest life. So, this new visit in 2010 was more open to mutual understanding (thanks to self-reflexivity!). The technical problem of not receiving television broadcasts in one of the villages disappeared in the intervening decades; satellite receivers were observed on the roofs of every village house, and everybody used mobile phones. The nationwide expansion of cable and satellite platforms and digital broadcasting was made possible by the termination of the public broadcasting monopoly in 1990 (Tunç and Görgülü 2012). There was a vast difference in the volume and types of available media content, so the reception of the television audience had also transformed. Adoption of popular, globally standardized media formats by Turkish television increased with the economic crisis of 2001 (Yumlu 2007, pp. 277–288). At the top of the popular nationwide television entertainment hierarchy in the 2000s were local reality and tabloid marriage shows. The globally standardized format of Blind Date was turned into mediated shows that adopt a pre-modern mentality toward arranged marriage (Türkoğlu 2010) and promise salvation for their desperate and often destitute participants. Domestic television series were also popular, and countless fan groups for the stars of these passionate dramas emerged on social internet networks. Social networking among internet users also grew rapidly. In accordance with these new configurations and patterns, I used the old questions and added questions about new television knowledge. Thematic sections were kept to the four concepts (listed again below). As for the interviews, I was lucky enough to find most of the informants from my previous visit. The population of the villages (350 each) had not changed, although migration of some in and out had occurred. It was as if the forest had captured the group and embraced them together. Once the children of my previous informants had married nearby villagers, seven men agreed to be new informants. I could not maintain the exact profile of the previous research for a perfect comparison, but I managed to interview at least 20 from the village that previously received no television broadcasts. I clustered the results of the 2010 revisit as follows: Living in the city: With the development of intercity roads, the distance ̇ between the villages and Istanbul was reduced to less than two hours by car. Moreover, public transportation was available between the villages

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̇ and nearby towns. Most families had close relatives in Istanbul, and as a man in his 30s said, “we know what it’s like to live in the city, but it is better to stay in the village.” Living in the village: “It’s comfortable here! Our village is better than anywhere else,” said a man aged 35 who was a child during our first visit and was now married with a daughter in school and prefers to live in the village after some experience living in the city. Everyone was at least a primary school graduate, and some young men had graduated from the university in the city and returned to live at home in the village. A woman aged 60 added that “villagers are misunderstood by urban people … we are not just producers of organic food!” Knowledge of media celebrities and media content: Villagers were asked if they would like to meet reality show celebrities, television series actors and actresses, or politicians, and a man (aged 50, married) who answered negatively said, “There’s no need to go around or meet people; everything is on TV.” The participants in globally standardized reality shows were actually quasi-casted ordinary but desperate people seeking escape from their lot in life. “They are weird people who suffer from the lack of family bonds; you cannot find anyone like them here,” said a woman (aged 55, married). “Those people there are so aggressive; they just give me a headache. … We don’t have that sort of people here,” said another woman (aged 50, married). Rationale for buying consumer products: The transportation for schoolchildren and shopping in the Ağva district (ten minutes by car) was sufficient for villagers. Their main income still came from charcoal production, and charcoal was now required by nearby hotels for their barbecues. The villagers were hardworking men and women who opposed the lottery and any kind of excessive consumption. Construction of the dam: The construction of the dam was not completed due to various legal and political setbacks that have continued unresolved for almost 40 years now. The promises that political party officials made about relocation to the city, which villagers had supported, were not kept. Indeed, shortly after my initial visits and after my dissertation was completed, I saw newspaper articles and television debates about the concerns of these villagers. Because of the legal procedure for their relocation, it was forbidden by law for any of the buildings in the villages to be renovated. Life continued and uncertainty about the dam construction project annoyed the villagers, though there

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were no obvious protests against the government. As a researcher, it was as if time had stood still. The major differences between the 1980s and the 2010s were the use of mobile telephones, easy access to the city, and more television viewing in the evenings. Daytime television was still not part of their daily viewing habits, but this time they were watching replays of TV series on late night broadcasting. Especially in the winter, there were no alternatives to watching television at home. Men and women enjoyed the melodramas and romantic plots of the series. Mobile messaging was used almost exclusively for practical purposes, like a woman in her 60s instructing her grandson to pick up something on his way home from school. There were more university graduates in the young generation than before, and they had more experience in the big cities or even abroad but nevertheless decided to return to their villages for a quiet life. There also were more retired men who returned from the cities with their families. Because of the problem with the construction of the dam and the evacuation, many were more suspicious about politics and politicians.

Reflections on a Final Revisit: 2019 In preparing this chapter, I made a final revisit to the villages in August 2019. Over the years, I followed social network groups and internet media in which the dam and planned relocations were debated. Every year or two, during local and general elections, articles and interviews appeared; the headlines read that “the longing for water is coming to an end!” or questioned “what will be the future of villages with 600 years of history?”.2 I have several contacts with relatives still living in the villages. One is a former student of mine at the university. Others who moved separately to ̇ Istanbul over time still make frequent visits to the region. They love sharing photos and videos of nature in their villages on social media. The frozen image of old wooden houses in the green forest with apple and hazelnut orchards and rivers’ flowing to the sea is a wonderful fairy tale. But confronting our admiring gaze, one man (aged 58) said, “It looks like heaven for people coming from the city; if it is, why is it hell for me to live [here]?” This is a warning to avoid the fetishization of nature. There are evident changes in the region. The roads are further devel̇ oped, reducing the distance between Şile and Istanbul. Public

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transportation is comfortable and efficient, and the surrounding area has become a unique destination for domestic tourism. The Black Sea coastline has become famous and serves as the set for recent television dramas, and more than a few hotels and restaurants proudly advertise their appearances in these shows. There is a range of tourist attractions. While most of the hotels are expensive, there are options for young campers and adventurers pursuing eco-friendly tourism in tree houses and forest hotels. For better or worse, the two villages I researched remain at the outer borders of the touristic area and are not popular tourist destinations. Their income still comes from outdoor labor, and for generations now, they have been the suppliers of charcoal to the hotels. The villages appear geographically isolated but villagers are aware of what is happening around the world via their mobile phones and the internet. Village life is so busy that there is little leisure time for watching television; therefore, series are watched sometimes just for enjoyment and during indoor gatherings on winter evenings. The villagers wear cheap clothing modeled on those of television ̇ figures that are brought from Istanbul and sold in the village bazaar, but they do not comment on the people they watch on television. As a saleswoman in the open bazaar aged 50 said: they “cannot comment on people who are foreigners” to them. The participants in daytime reality shows are far removed from their experience, just as the reality portrayed in the media is far removed from that of the village. It is uncertain if the villages can be maintained in the future and whether the area’s supply of water will help them survive or cause them to disappear. They will continue working to produce charcoal while awaiting the state’s final decision about their relocation. The elected headmen of the villages have the full support of the younger generation in their political struggle to keep the villages safe and comfortable and get the evacuation decision reversed.

Conclusion Media penetrate daily lives more than people realize; even those who do not regularly watch popular entertainment television are somehow mediated or acculturated through the people with whom they have connections. The ways in which we communicate in a mediated society are believed to go beyond traditional values, but do they go completely beyond local borders? This is a major question this article addresses, though without concrete answers. Yet, a determined search for both the

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“acting” and “watching” daily life practices of the audiences can give some clues. The research into traditional television viewing habits is changing. There are many aspects to this change, from being a once popular subject for academic research to being démodé. The relevant ones include, first and most obviously, immense developments in media technology. Digital technology has swept away the centrality of analog broadcasting; meanwhile, the distinctions between mass media and personal media have blurred and created a more complex interplay between traditional media and new media. Second, the research focus on urbanization has been replaced by the condition of globalization, a shift that is related to changes in information technology. Early twentieth-century research was closely linked to the invention of mass communication and urbanization in the context of industrialization (McQuail 2010, p. 29). Now, new communication technologies and the distribution of knowledge and communication are claimed to expand the possibilities of exchange worldwide in the discourses of globalization (Grossberg 2005, p.  148). These two intertwined social transformations (technological developments and globalization) became more visible than ever through mediatization and mediated culture. The archetypal form of community in the pre-television era was considered an authentic, traditional rural society unaffected by modernization efforts. Today it is nearly impossible to find such a wholly unplugged, authentic community as mediatization happens in most parts of the world. The idea behind my prior research in 1987 on comparing television viewing and non-viewing communities in two forest villages was to argue that media do not have an independent role in social change. For instance, in the case of the political decision to evacuate these villages to make way ̇ for the construction of a dam to supply water to Istanbul, the older modernization theories on media impact on attitude change (Rogers 1969) would have predicted that the television viewers would support the evacuation while the non-viewers would oppose it. But, this was not the result of my research, as I had foreseen at the beginning. The result was that the television viewers had more knowledge of popular entertainment but there was no major difference in their reactions to the evacuation decision. The villagers’ common acceptance of the state’s decision was a result of political compliance (as it was during a general election) and optimism about their economic future (because of the promise by officials that there ̇ would be a new neighborhood built for them in Istanbul). Also, that was

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the era of public broadcasting and no private channels yet existed, as they do now. In 2010, I revisited the villages for more ethnographic research. This time, my focus was not their modernization but globalization and mediatization with a more self-reflexive approach that takes everyday practice and analytic practice seriously (Bourdieu 2003). In media and communications research, a refreshing trend since the 1980s has been to understand audiences’ own living space in more detail. This space is not an actual place, but the place of the mediation of situated knowledge, in Couldry’s words (2003, p. 40). It is a mediated culture derived from the rhetoric of media production and structure that researchers have studied in the literature, through long, open-ended conversations, and through observation. In the case of my research subjects, the evacuation of the villages has not happened. The villagers experienced hard times, unanswered questions about their future, and weakened trust in their politicians. The infrastructural problems of television broadcasting were solved by satellites, and the number of television channels and types of available programming became bountiful. Unsurprisingly, television viewing was still not a daytime habit for the villagers because of their heavy work in traditional wood charcoal production in the forest. Mobile phone usage during daytime became popular for practical reasons, and leisure time in the evenings now included the consumption of television series. A final visit in 2019 coincided with an influx of local and Arab tourists to the area. The district of Ağva became very popular as a media tourism destination because of the filming of movies and television series there. The basic conditions of my research subjects—their use of media, television viewing habits, traditional charcoal production, and potential evacuation of their villages—had hardly changed. Mediatization for the busy villagers is a means of making connections beyond their local borders.

Notes 1. Building dams in the area is a story that goes back to the 1960s, say the local ̇ people. In the official reports of 1987, the dam was to be named after Isaköy, 1 of 11 villages to be relocated. In time, a water treatment plant rather than a dam was given this name. This was not a large project and did not affect the locations of villages in the region. 2. A larger project called Osmangazi Dam is still planned and, according to official announcements, will be constructed without big changes to the

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existing settlements, so the evacuation of villages was canceled: http:// www.sile.bel.tr/mobile/detail/17010 (access 25.12.2019). But, this is not the end of the story. With a growing population and need for water, the ̇ agenda of the Greater Istanbul Municipality includes building new dams and enlarging older ones, as well as encouraging development to the north. http://www.milliyet.com.tr/gundem/600-yillik-koyler-sular-altindakalacak-2399913 (access 25.12.2019) https://www.sozcu.com.tr/2017/ gundem/silede-12-koy-sular-altinda-kalacak-1700047/ (access 25.12.2019) (Local news; access 25.12.2019) https://www.bolgeninsesi.com/osmangazi-baraji-ile-ilgili-asparagas-haber/; http://www.bolgeninsesi.com/baskantabakoglu50-yillik-osmangazi-projesi-yenileniyor/.

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Livingstone, S. (2000). On the Cutting Edge, Or Otherwise, of Media and Communication Research. Nordicom Information, 22(2), 7–13. McQuail, D. (2010). The Future of Communication Studies. In N. Carpentier, I. T. Trivundža, P. Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, E. Sundin, T. Olsson, R. Kilborn, H.  Nieminen, & B.  Cammaerts (Eds.), 2010 ECREA European Media And Communication Doctoral Summer School (pp.  27–35). Tartu: Tartu University Press. Oskay, Ü. (1971). Toplumsal Gelişmede Radyo Ve Televizyon: Gelişmişlik Açısından Olanaklar Ve Sınırlar. No: 2. Ankara: AÜ SBF Yayınları. Pye, L. (1963). Communications and Political Development. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rogers, E.  M. (1969). Modernization Among Peasants: The Impact of Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Schramm, W. (1964). Mass Media and National Development. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Tunç, A., & Görgülü, V. (2012). Mapping Digital Media Turkey Report, Open Society Foundations Media Project, April 2012. ̇ Türkoğlu, N. (1988). Toplumsal Değişimde TV Izleyiciliği: TV İzleyen ve İzlemeyen ̇ İki Köyde Karşılaştırmalı Alan Araştırması. Doctoral dissertation, Istanbul Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü. Türkoğlu, N. (2010). Transforming Neighbourhood Mediators Driven by Poverty on Turkish Reality Television. Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, Intellect, 2/1. Yumlu, K. (2007). Acceptance of Internationally Based Genres. In B. L. Tomaszczyk, T. Płudowski, & D. Tanno (Eds.), The Media and International Communication (pp. 277–288). Berlin: Peter Lang.

PART II

What’s on TV?: Debates over Identity Politics and Gender

CHAPTER 5

Debating Women’s Issues on Turkish Television: Exploring the Role of Political Power in Women’s Talk Esra Özcan

Introduction In March 2016, the words of feminist scholar and icon bell hooks shook many progressives and feminists in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential elections in the United States. “I can no longer be a Hillary Clinton supporter in the name of feminism,” hooks said. “There are certain things that I don’t want to co-sign in the name of feminism that I think are militarist, imperialist, white supremacist whether they are conducted by women or men.”1 With this departure, hooks, one of the most influential feminists of our time, the author and advocate of “Sisterhood: Political Solidarity between Women” (1986), pointed at the limits of feminist sisterhood/political solidarity between women. In the same talk, hooks mentioned the challenge between “identity politics versus who are you and what do you stand for.” Her departure hints at real and symbolic challenges for women’s movements and also calls for a moment of reflection:

E. Özcan (*) Department of Communication, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA © The Author(s) 2020 Y. Kaptan, E. Algan (eds.), Television in Turkey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46051-8_5

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What are the limits of “political solidarity” between women? What if the idea of “sisterhood” is just a fantasy? Even though feminist research has paid a great deal of attention to divisions among women generated by racial, ethnic, and class differences, little attention has been paid to how politics itself divides women. In this article I explore the limits of “sisterhood” and the ways political power shapes communication patterns among women. I do that by providing an in-depth analysis of a television debate in Turkey that brought women committed to different political projects together to discuss women’s issues in a women-only space. At this moment, Turkey is severely polarized about President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s role (in power since 2002) in re-­shaping society, culture, and politics toward an authoritarian and religiously conservative direction. Within this climate, feminist scholars in Turkey (Arat 2016, Simga and Goker 2017, Çağatay 2018, Unal 2018, Özcan 2019) have been exploring the potential to create solidarities among women to fight misogyny and violence against women. My results show that women from different political standpoints do want to find common ground, yet that common ground does not seem to exist. Women supporting different political projects (i.e. left vs. right) do not have a shared understanding of what constitutes “oppression” for women. Following the promise of sisterhood feminism, women express willingness to create a space to discuss women’s issues above and beyond all ideologies and political projects. Yet, in actuality, women with more political power dominate the conversation and deny the concerns of other women with less political power. Emphasis on “womanhood” does not bring women together. My findings indicate that partisanship trumps sisterhood and women in power use a number of argumentative and rhetorical tactics to undermine and minimize the problems of women who support political parties on the opposition.

Literature Review Sociologists of gender have long been critical of gender essentialism applied to differences between men and women. Michael Kimmel and others have consistently pointed at the similarities between men and women and showed that the differences among women and among men are greater than the differences between women and men (Kimmel 2013, Wharton 2012). In a similar way, communication scholars Rosalind Barnett and Caryl Rivers (2006) criticized the “difference rhetoric” that

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has dominated the analyses of gender and communication. Barnett and Rivers have criticized communication scholar Deborah Tannen (1994), famous for her analyses of gender differences in communication, for seeing gender “as the main driver of communication, ignoring a whole host of other important factors—such as power, individual personalities, and the situation you’re in when you are about to speak” (2006). Barnett and Rivers challenge the idea that “men always interrupt women” and argue that this position is not backed by research, that is, by Anderson and Leaper (1998), Aries (1996) and others. Barnett and Rivers identify power as “the key” to understand interruptions because “[t]hose with more power, male or female, are likely to take control of the conversation” (Barnett and Rivers 2006). Barnett and River are not alone in their criticisms of gender essentialism and the early studies that aimed to understand domination in conversations. In her summary of the literature on gender and domination in conversation, Anna Boucher (2017) emphasizes that an exclusive focus on gender eclipses other grounds, such as social class and ethnicity, which also account for “powerfulness or powerlessness of language” (p. 101). Scholars analyzing conversations have paid special attention to interruptions (Zimmerman and West 1975). Boucher points that there is consensus among scholars that “successful interruption itself is a manifestation of power in speech” and by the same token, “being interrupted can be seen as an example of linguistic powerlessness” (2017, p. 102). The majority of studies focus on male-female interaction and the studies that analyze the patterns of interruption among women and among men are much fewer in comparison (James and Drakich 1993, p. 282). In a small exploratory study, Lynette Hirschman (1994) found that “two females talking to each other interrupted with a much higher frequency than any of the other pairs” (p. 437). In their study of a group of educated upper middle class Iranian women, Jan and Mohajer (2012) reported that women participants “constantly interrupt each other […] in order to demonstrate the power and control that they possess over their peers” (abstract and p. 1204). Not all interruptions signal a desire for domination, and scholars have distinguished between different types of interruptions. While some interruptions are supportive and show agreement, the others can be “intrusive” and “function to usurp the speaker’s turn at talk with the intent of demonstrating dominance” (Anderson and Leaper 1998, 244). Political debates, televised or otherwise, have been a particular area of interest for

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scholars to explore power and dominance in language (Edelsky and Adams 1990, Shaw 2000, Yemenici 2002, Cameron and Shaw 2016). Holmes classifies TV discussions as “valued talk” (emphasis original) where “effective contributions clearly have the potential to considerably increase a person’s status or mana” (1992, p. 134). In other words, the stakes are high for participants in TV discussions. In addition, moderators might frame the discussions taking place in television and radio in co-operative or confrontational ways and shape the ways a certain topic is debated (Hutchby 1992, Hess-Lüttich 2007). Norman Fairclough conceptualized power “in terms of asymmetries between participants in discourse events” (1995, p. 1). In this article, I focus on “asymmetries between participants” and the role of political power in creating and reproducing inequalities among women. My study aims to explore the power dynamics among women as they are played out during a television debate that focused on women’s problems in Erdoğan’s “New Turkey.” In addition to looking at the length of each participant’s talk, I pay attention to patterns of interruption to understand the power dynamics among seven women who represent different shades of political spectrum in Turkey. I also analyze rhetorical and argumentative strategies that women use to maintain or exercise power.

Methodology In this study, I used a mixed methods approach, pulling from a number of methods to analyze the material: textual analysis, rhetorical analysis, and conversation analysis. Textual and rhetorical analyses involve repeated reading, viewing, or listening to a text (Fürsich 2012, Foss 2018). I watched the selected debate program three times to see how the participants interacted with each other and how they used language. In other words, I look at what the participants “do” with language (Gill 2007), that is, shifting the blame, minimizing another woman’s concerns etc. As part of conversation analysis, I used a chronometer and manually counted the minutes to see the talking time of each participant. In addition to talk time, I counted “intrusive interruptions,” that is, the interruptions that stopped a speaker even though she did not finish her point, to challenge, confront, or counter her and shift the terms of the debate. Personal attacks and insults go beyond the definition of “intrusive interruption” that I used for this study. While counting the interruptions I excluded two heated moments: in the first, two participants (Ayşe Böhürler and Meral Beştaş—please see Table 5.1) talked over each other

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Table 5.1  Participants and their political positions Participant

Political position in 2015

̇ Balçiçek Ilter (moderator)

Liberal secular journalist. She started her career in the media in 1990 in Cosmo Magazine and in 2002 she became Sabah’s (then a leading secular newspaper) first female editor-in-chief. She was at Habertürk in 2015. Ayşe Böhürler Pro-AKP AKP founder (founded in 2001) and journalist in Yeni Şafak, which gives Erdoğan unconditional support. She has been writing in the newspaper since 2006. Berrin Pro-AKP Sönmez Islamist-feminist activist from Başkent Kadın Platformu, a religiously conservative NGO for women’s rights. Ceren Kenar

Meral Danış Beştaş

Yazgülü Aldoğan

Nur Serter

Iş̇ tar Gözaydın

Pro-AKP Journalist in Türkiye, a right wing, nationalist pro-Erdoğan newspaper. Kenar was an activist before her career as a columnist. She started to write in Taraf in 2012 and moved to Türkiye newspaper in 2013. Opposition Pro-Kurdish, vice co-chair of HDP (People’s Democratic Party)

Opposition Journalist in Posta, a mainstream tabloid newspaper. She started her journalism career in 1982 in Nokta, a popular weekly of the time. Opposition An academic, Serter was the vice president of Istanbul University between 1998 and 2004. ProKemalist, MP from CHP (Republican People’s Party). Opposition Academic and human rights advocate, dean, Istanbul Doğuş Üniversity, Faculty of Letters

Position by 2020 Left Habertürk in 2017. Since then she focuses on human interest stories. She first worked at star TV and then Kanal D. both channels are owned by pro-AKP media groups. Same as in 2015.

Still active in Başkent Kadın Platformu but moved to the opposition. At the moment represents religious conservatives critical of AKP. Ceren left journalism in 2017, saying that she will not write in any medium.2

Arrested in 2017 and released. Her party’s former co-chairs have been in jail since 2016. Serves as an MP in the parliament. Got fired from Posta in 2018 soon after the newspaper was purchased by a pro-AKP media group. Not in the parliament anymore.

Arrested in 2016, jailed for three months, released on parole. Gediz University (her workplace at the time) suspended her because of her twitter posts against the death penalty in Turkey.

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in a prolonged manner, and in the second Ceren Kenar attacked and insulted Nur Serter, and another prolonged overlap ensued where the two women talked at the same time without listening to each other. Finally, I counted only the interruptions taking place among the guests. The Opposite View and its Participants Habertürk TV’s debate program The Opposite View (Karşıt Görüş) aired on February 4, 2015, and this episode focused on women’s issues.3 Broadcast at 9  pm from an Istanbul studio, the TV debate lasted two ̇ hours and 42 minutes. The Opposite View was moderated by Balçiçek Ilter, who was at that time an experienced female journalist who also served as chief editor for one of the mainstream newspapers (Sabah) in Turkey. As a women-only episode, the program brought diverse women together and took place at a unique moment in Turkey’s recent history. Turkey had already been suffering from President Erdoğan’s increasing authoritarianism and his restrictions on the freedom of press. Gezi Protests had erupted two years prior in 2013. Following the Turkish national elections in June 2015, during which Erdoğan’s AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi/Justice and Development Party) lost the parliamentary majority for about five months, the suppression of dissent and media censorship has reached new highs.4 I find this debate program unique because it took place a couple of months ahead of the June 2015 elections before two additional waves of censorship hit the media: first, in the aftermath of this election and the second, in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt next year, on July 15, 2016. By 2018, the majority of the women seen in this episode of The Opposite View either resigned from their positions, were fired, got arrested, or were jailed (see Table 5.1 for participants and their political positions in 2015 and 2020). Even the moderator resigned from Habertürk TV by saying that “it has become impossible to say the right sentences” (Cumhuriyet 2018, September 2). Habertürk is a pro-government media organization. Yet, different from partisan pro-government media that have given Erdoğan unconditional ideological support for his authoritarian conservatism, Habertürk TV is pro-government because of its complicity due to the business interests of the owners. Instead of news and ̇ political debate programs, Ilter now does human interest stories that focus on health and lifestyle on Kanal D, another pro-government media organization.

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This particular debate deserves attention also because the participants discussed women’s issues while staying within a secular framework. With increasing religious conservatism in the media since 2015, women’s issues have been increasingly discussed only within the ambit of women’s rights in Islam. Secular feminists have been marginalized and religiously conservative women have become the lead actors in setting the terms of debate about women’s rights (Özcan 2019). ̇ Balçiçek Ilter moderated the debate in a free-style, semi-structured way. She drew the contours of the debate with her opening question: What does “new Turkey” mean for women? Women sat around a half circle, with the moderator in the middle; on one side three women closer to the AKP represented different shades of the right, and on the other side three women represented different shades of the opposition. One of the participants, Nur Serter, MP from CHP, joined from Ankara via satellite. Seven guests participated in the debate: three supporting views closer to the government, four from the opposition.

Results Are “we” in or out of Ideology? Even though the program was designed for confrontational talk, the moderator put extra effort into making this program an exception. In her ̇ opening remarks, Ilter emphasized that she wanted to create a space for women. She said: “assuming that most of the time women’s issues are discussed by men, we wanted to talk about women’s issues with women.” She consistently used the pronoun “we” to refer to women, underlining a shared sense of identity.5 Throughout the program, women constantly tried to come up with a shared sense of “we” addressing issues and problems, and searched for a space beyond ideology, with the assumption that there can exist a space outside of ideology (here, ideology is defined as something imposed on women by men). Participants blamed men for instrumentalizing women for men’s ideological and political struggles. They also used the term “ideology,” sometimes in its general sense and sometimes to refer to political ideologies in Turkey. For example, Ceren Kenar referred to patriarchy as a common element of competing political ideologies that instrumentalized women’s bodies for their own struggles.

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When it was her turn during the first round following Ceren Kenar, the journalist Yazgülü Aldoğan commented: She [Ceren] is so right […] This topic conflicts with the program’s name. […] We, women, if we are going to talk about it [women’s issues], why should we have opposite views? We all complain about more or less the same things in the end. Whatever ideological position, in quotes, that is … as you [Ceren] have just said, this ideology is imposed on us by men, it’s about being used by men. […] Seriously, why should we have opposite views? Why should Ayşe and I be on the opposite sides? We want the same things. We want equality, use our rights properly, employment with good conditions, equal pay. Motherhood is of course a beautiful thing […] but we don’t want it to be imposed on us as a career. […] Who wants to spend all her life by taking care of the kids at home? (0:14:15–0:16:28)

Yet, the attempts to create a space for women without the influence of ideology, political or otherwise, quickly broke down when women started to discuss concrete policies. While women tried to push political ideology away to create common ground on the basis of womanhood, disagreements over the AKP government’s policies on gender immediately broke the sense of “we” and women found themselves dealing with irreconcilable differences and disagreements. The moderator remained committed to minimizing confrontations throughout the program. At the very end, when two of the participants (Nur Serter and Ceren Kenar, 2:36:20–2:37:59) started to exchange attacks and insults, the moderator intervened to say “please, let’s at least not conclude like this” and gave the turn to Iş̇ tar Gözaydın who had been the least controversial participant. Throughout the debate, Gözaydın did not interrupt the other participants even once, a point that I turn to in the next section. The Interrupters The frequencies of interruptions indicate differences of power among women. I argue that political power is the key to understand these differences. When a party is in power, it gives its members and supporters political power and this becomes exacerbated when the party in power is authoritarian and keeps control over the decision-making processes in the country. Political power also entails real-life experience in politics, length

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Table 5.2  Overall talk time of pro-AKP women and women critical of AKP

Minutes in total

Pro-AKP

Critical of AKP

Three participants (Böhürler, Kenar, Sönmez) 60 mins 2 sec

Four participants (Aldoğan, Beştaş, Gözaydın, Serter) 65 mins 45 sec

of involvement and membership in a party and experience in law making. By these accounts, the three women engaged in politics—Ayşe Böhürler, Nur Serter, and Meral Danış Beştaş—talked more than the others. Even though the moderator succeeded in giving equal time to pro-AKP women and women critical of AKP in total (Table 5.2), the women with political power in each group talked more than the women without such power. The frequencies show that Ayşe Böhürler, one of the founders of the AKP and a columnist in a pro-AKP newspaper, was the main interrupter. She interrupted the other women 27 times throughout the program (Table 5.3). Even counting the times that she got interrupted, she still has the highest interruption score. Nur Serter, the member of the Republican People’s Party, represented the “old Turkey” during the program and even though she had the highest talk time, she got interrupted 17 times, attacked, insulted, and ridiculed with laughs and facial gestures. Meral Danış Beştaş, the member of the pro-Kurdish party, on the other hand, worked hard to stay even but could not. She got interrupted 18 times, more than anyone else, and even though she pushed back, the number of times she got interrupted exceeded the number of times she interrupted the others (Table 5.3). One could say that, as a member of a marginalized ethnic group, her experience in politics empowered her to have a voice in spite of constant attempts by the others to dominate the conversation. Journalists and activists followed the politicians in terms of talk time. It is hard to know why Iş̇ tar Gözaydın, who joined the program as an academic, received less than eight minutes in a program that lasted more than two and a half hours. She might have stayed passive because other women on the opposition might have made her points. It may also be because the moderator assigned her a mediating role, as indicated by the moderator’s turn to her when Ceren Kenar and Nur Serter started to talk over each other. Even though the moderator wanted to close the program with Gözaydın’s mediating and conciliatory voice, Ayşe Böhürler from the AKP interrupted the moderator to regain the floor to say the last words.

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Table 5.3  Participants by intrusive interruptions and talk time Participant Political Interrupted position in 2015 the others (A) Ayşe Böhürler Meral Danış Beştaş Berrin Sönmez Ceren Kenar Yazgülü Aldoğan Nur Serter Iş̇ tar Gözaydın

Pro-AKP Journalist and AKP founder Opposition Pro-Kurdish HDP Pro-AKP Islamistfeminist activist Pro-AKP Journalist Opposition Journalist Opposition Pro-Kemalist CHP Opposition Academic

Got Interruption Talk time interrupted score (B) (A minus B)

27

8

19

24 min 19 sec

14

18

-4

26 min 21 sec

12

4

8

16 min 21 sec

3

4

−1

19 min 22 sec

2

3

−1

14 min 35 sec

0

17

−17

31 min 29 sec

0

0

0

7 min 45 sec

Yazgülü Aldoğan, as one of the participants with less talk time, jumped in after Böhürler and countered her to say “it’s not only men, women also engage in discourses that demean other women” (2:40:50–2:41:00). In spite of the moderator’s efforts, the program ended with an ironic twist that underlined the differences among women and women’s own participation in women’s oppression. Oppression or Social Policy? Strategies to Justify the AKP’s Policies of Gender Do the statements of AKP representatives constitute oppression for women? This question occupied women throughout the program, and they could not agree on what constitutes “oppression” for women and “who” is the oppressor. In January that year, during his visit to a women’s

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hospital, AKP’s Minister of Health Mehmet Müezzinoğlu called women to focus on motherhood as their primary career. The participants discussed this and similar statements by the AKP representatives, and disagreed on whether these were “public statements” or just the personal views of AKP members. While the women on the opposition blamed AKP representatives’ numerous sexist statements for creating a permissive environment for violence against women, Böhürler and Sönmez defended the AKP by insisting that these statements have no power and influence over women’s lives. The minister had made his comments on motherhood in a mediatized public visit. Yet, Böhürler repeatedly called his remarks “his personal view,” and an “unlucky” statement. Pro-AKP women distinguished between the words and the actions of the AKP representatives. They argued that these words did not create an immediate outcome for women (for an example, see Sönmez, 00:59:51–1:00:40). Women did not act upon those suggestions, so, why bother with them? The fact that women did not immediately start leaving their jobs and pick up motherhood as a career was shown as an evidence that there is no need to problematize these statements. Böhürler defended Müezzinoğlu by pointing out that the women in his family are not constrained with motherhood. Böhürler criticized the participants who were bothered by these statements for taking them out of their context by ignoring the private lives of the AKP representatives (1:11:52–1:13:04). For her, these men’s actual family lives did not necessarily mirror their discourse about women. In other words, while dismissing the other women’s concerns about such sexist statements, she also defined in what context women should interpret these statements. Framing the public statements of the representatives as “personal views” (00:39:40–00:39:56) is one of the rhetorical strategies that Böhürler resorted to in order to deflect criticism away from the AKP.  Instead of questioning the AKP minister’s statement, she put the blame on women critical of AKP for ignoring the context or not acknowledging the “truth.” In the following excerpt, Beştaş attempted to call attention to Böhürler’s pro-AKP bias by questioning the moderator’s decision to invite Böhürler to the program as a journalist, not as an AKP representative. Böhürler responded by alluding to the “truth:”

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Böhürler [on … the Minister of Health … he is a doctor, he goes Müezzinoğlu’s everywhere with his wife […] he is a father whose comments daughters studied medicine and work as doctors about […] if he were to think in those terms […] he would motherhood not want them study and have careers […] While as a career]: evaluating this comment, it is necessary to see his perspective too […] by looking at his own life trajectory and behavior […]. I know he appointed a lot of women to higher positions in the Ministry of Health. … I mean, on the one hand, he encourages women, both in his own ministry and family circles […], but on the other hand … this comment, an unlucky comment and said at that moment in the context of strengthening the motherhood. … I think … a comment that does not deserve much attention. […] Beştaş: I, as a citizen, don’t know the Minister of Health’s relations with his wife and daughters, the people do not know about it either. We are interested in what he says as a Minister and his comments on motherhood being a career created a serious discussion among women’s organizations both in Turkey and abroad. To me, that discussion was justified. […] I’d like to say something in parenthesis. […] Right now, there is no one here representing the government. I’m here to represent HDP, CHP is here. It becomes something else, when others, for example Ms. Ayşe or someone else, get defensive in the name of AKP. Our journalist friends … we usually experience it in the debate programs in which we participate. We go there to represent the parties and find journalists [defending AKP] ̇ Ilter: [interrupts]: We did not call them to represent the party …. Böhürler [interrupts]: […] telling a truth that we know is not defending. […] Beştaş: […] [to Böhürler] … how should I put it … you are a journalist, but, being in such an intense defensive attitude ….

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Böhürler:

I’m not defending anything, I’m telling something that I know is true. (1:11:55–1:14:42) Böhürler resorted to similar allusions to “truth” to minimize or counter her opponents’ views. During the program, Ayşe Böhürler and women critical of AKP disagreed on several points about AKP’s policies on reproductive rights, marriage, family, and the source of violence against women. In such moments, Böhürler consistently denied the other women’s experience in subtle ways and tried to establish her point of view as the unbiased view. Böhürler dismissed Yazgülü Aldoğan’s concerns as “exaggerated” (00:26:42) or “reading on the surface” (00:20:30–00:20:31). When Meral Beştaş criticized the party’s population policies and the policies that encourage marriage, she blamed her for having “selective perception” (00:37:54 and 00:39:42). This way, Böhürler positioned herself as someone whose perspective was not selective, but cast Beştaş’s perspective as partial and biased. Beştaş: Böhürler: Beştaş: Böhürler: Beştaş: Böhürler: Beştaş: Böhürler: Beştaş: Böhürler: Beştaş: Böhürler:

Now the government […] wants an increase in population. But, not only that, it says “marry early,” and rewards early marriages. Where does it say it? Please, don’t do it, no dear. Yes, it is the new legislation, it is passed. No dear …. Was it 26? Early … meaning … if you marry until this age you get this benefit …. […] No dear, it is about the youth in the university. You are talking about a benefit given to students while studying at the university …. Yes, that’s it. What does it mean? Doesn’t it mean to encourage a university student to marry? Do you perceive it this way? It’s not me, the society perceives it this way. I see this as a social policy that aims to give relief to society. It’s not just me. If it is really about giving benefits upon marriage, why only 20s? It should be given to everybody. […] and what’s wrong with this? For example? What’s wrong with this?

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Beştaş:

what is being done here … denying agency to women, not making her own decisions …. Böhürler: Is it by force? … for example, a young girl studying at the university, how come [she] doesn’t have agency? Really …. Beştaş: We defend democratic family in HDP. […] Böhürler: So, you’re then saying that young girls should not marry before they are thirty? Beştaş: […] I don’t distinguish between girls and women. I’m saying that it should be a woman’s decision to marry whether 18, 25, 50 or 40. Böhürler: Of course, it is like that […] Who makes the decision here? Beştaş: […] before a certain age …. ̇ Ilter [to Beştaş]: Do you mean, giving this benefit is the same as telling them [young people] to marry? Beştaş: Absolutely. Let’s make a survey among women … what does that mean …. Böhürler: I see selective perception here, reading it this way … this is a reading stretched too far. Beştaş: I read it this way. ̇ [Ilter interrupts to switch to another participant.] Böhürler: I want to add something. ̇ Ilter: Okay. Böhürler: These population policies do not give results earlier than thirty years. […] Turkey does population planning by foreseeing the coming thirty, forty years and here threechildren [comment] is necessitated by this discourse, it is something said as part of this strategic planning. Seeing this as an intervention into a woman’s life is an extremely selective perception. (00:39:40–00:39:56). Earlier during the debate, the pro-AKP women approached the headscarf ban as a clear violation of women’s rights. Yet, they did not see AKP’s policies on abortion and marriage as interventions into women’s bodies and as violations of women’s rights. When Beştaş questioned the AKP government’s population policies, which have restricted access to

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abortions and emphasized that women should have at least three children, Böhürler fiercely defended these policies because for her they did not represent an intervention on women’s bodies. She saw them just as “social policy,” “population policy” or “strategic planning,” and justified government intervention. Interestingly, the headscarf ban could also be easily justified with reference to “social policy” or could be framed as a measure necessary for women’s empowerment. As a woman defending the party in power, Böhürler fell into a clear double standard: when an issue has involved her, she talked about it as a women’s rights issue, but when an issue involved women with different lifestyles and politics, she talked about it as a “social policy” issue and justified government intervention. In this telling example above, women from different political convictions framed the same issue in ways that generated totally different consequences for women.

Concluding Remarks In this contribution, I have argued that political power is critical in reproducing inequalities and power asymmetries among women. Such asymmetries become more pronounced in an authoritarian climate. In the particular program that I analyzed, women critical of AKP shied away from directly criticizing Erdoğan and avoided mentioning him and his party’s name most of the time. In the few instances that they did it, they were very polite and cautious not to come across as offensive.6 Women with more political power interrupted the other women more and dominated the conversation. They minimized the other women’s concerns and failed to acknowledge their “truths” and experiences. It proved impossible for women to find “common ground.” Any attempts to establish common ground were followed by attempts to dominate the conversation. Women committed to different political projects named the same issues in different ways, leading them to opposite conclusions. The findings also hint at the intersections between gender and class. While bringing a relatively diverse group of women together and revealing the power dynamics among them, the program also signaled the Turkish media’s bias in favor of educated middle-class women in designing a political debate program. Elite women from the left and the right debated women’s issues for more than two and a half hours. The perspectives of poor women, housewives, and women living in rural areas, women working in agriculture, care-taking, and other precarious jobs were missing

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from the program. Female politicians, journalists, and academics assumed the power to speak on behalf of women in Turkey and represent their interests.7 It is tempting to say that having access to media power was probably the only common ground for the women who joined the debate. It is debatable whether this may be a valid starting point to build solidarities and sisterhoods among women.

Notes 1. YouTube (2016, March 5). bell hooks: “I can no longer be a Hillary Clinton supporter!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w4PQvfrw1E. Accessed September 15, 2019. 2. T24 (2017, July 17). “Ceren Kenar, Türkiye gazetesinden ayrıldı: Gazeteciliği bırakıyorum.” https://t24.com.tr/haber/ceren-kenar-turkiye-gazetesinden-ayrildi-gazeteciligi-birakiyorum,414737 Accessed April 5, 2020. 3. YouTube (2015, February 12). Habertürk. Karşıt Görüş—Kadınlar/4 Şubat 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CBjqEsEe4I&t=9s. Accessed October 7, 2019. 4. For more information on the transformation of media during the AKP, see Yesil 2016. 5. For very interesting discussions on women’s programs and “women’s voices on TV” in Turkey, please see Şanlı’s work (2016). 6. For a discussion on politeness and power, see Eliasoph (1987). 7. This is not to say that lower-class men have better access to media and have more media power.

References Anderson, K.  J., & Leaper, C. (1998). Meta-analyses of Gender Effects on Conversational Interruption: Who, What, When, Where, and How. Sex roles, 39(3–4), 225–252. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018802521676. Arat, Y. (2016). Islamist Women and Feminist Concerns in Contemporary Turkey. Frontiers, 37(3), 125–150. Aries, E. (1996). Men and Women in Interaction: Reconsidering the Differences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barnett, R., & Rivers, C. (2006, March–April). Men and Women Are from Earth. The Women’s Review of Books, p.  15+. Literature Resource Center. Retrieved September 29, 2019, from https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A144293954/ LitRC?u=tulane&sid=LitRC&xid=3e105824.

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Boucher, A. (2017). Power in Elite Interviewing: Lessons from Feminist Studies for Political Science. Women’s Studies International Forum, 62, 99–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2017.05.003. Çağatay, S. (2018). Women’s Coalitions Beyond the Laicism–Islamism Divide in Turkey: Towards an Inclusive Struggle for Gender Equality? Social Inclusion, 6(4), 48–58. Cameron, D., & Shaw, S. (2016). Gender, Power and Political Speech: Women and Language in the 2015 UK General Election. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ̇ ̇ Cumhuriyet. (2018, September 2). Balçiçek Ilter Habertürk’ten ayrıldı: Inandığ ım, savunduğum doğrular bir bir yanlış çıkmaya başladı. http://www.cumhuriyet. com.tr/haber/turkiye/815941/Balcicek_ilter_Habertürk_ten_ayrildi__inandigim__savundugum_dogrular_bir_bir_yanlis_cikmaya_basladi.html#. Edelsky, C., & Adams, K. (1990). Creating Inequality: Breaking the Rules in Debates. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 9(3), 171–190. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0261927X9093001. Eliasoph, N. (1987). Politeness, Power, and Women’s Language: Rethinking Study in Language and Gender. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 32, 79–103. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. New York: Longman. Foss, S. K. (2018). Rhetorical Criticism, Exploration and Practice. Long Grove: Waveland Press. Fürsich, E. (2012). Analyzing Text: The Cultural Discourse in Ethnic Food Reviews. In F.  Darling-Wolf (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies (pp. 338–357). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Gill, R. (2007). Gender and Media. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hess-Lüttich, Ernest W.B. (2007). (Pseudo-)Argumentation in TV-debates, Journal of Pragmatics, 39(8), 1360–1370, https://doi.org/10.1016/j. pragma.2007.04.008. Retrieved September 29, 2019. Hirschman, L. (1994). Female–male Differences in Conversational Interaction. Language in Society, 23(3), 427–442. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0047404500018054. Holmes, J. (1992). Women’s Talk in Public Contexts. Discourse & Society, 3(2), 131–150. Hooks, B. (1986). Sisterhood: Political Solidarity Between Women. Feminist Review, 23(1), 125–138. Hutchby, I. (1992). Confrontation Talk: Aspects of ‘Interruption’ in Argument Sequences on Talk Radio. Text—Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse, 12(3), pp.  343–372. Retrieved 29 Sep, 2019, from https://doi. org/10.1515/text.1.1992.12.3.343 James, D., & Drakich, J. (1993). Understanding Gender Differences in Amount of Talk: A Critical Review of Research. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Oxford Studies in

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Sociolinguistics. Gender and Conversational Interaction (pp.  281–312). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Jan, J.  M., & Mohajer, L. (2012). Interruption as Power Ploy in Women’s Conversation. Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 20(4), 1193–1208. Kimmel, M. (2013). The Gendered Society. New York: Oxford University Press. Özcan, E. (2019). Mainstreaming the Headscarf, Islamist Politics and Women in Turkish Media. London: I.B. Tauris. Şanlı, Ş. (2016). Women and Cultural Citizenship in Turkey: Mass Media and ‘Woman’s Voice’ Television. London: I.B. Tauris. Shaw, S. (2000). Language, Gender and Floor Apportionment in Political Debates. Discourse & Society, 11(3), 401–418. https://doi.org/10.117 7/0957926500011003006. Simga, H., & Goker, G. Z. (2017). Whither Feminist Alliance? Secular Feminists and Islamist Women in Turkey. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, 23(3), 273–293. https://doi.org/10.1080/12259276.2017.1349717. Tannen, D. (1994). Interpreting Interruption in Conversation. In D.  Tannen (Ed.), Gender and Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press. Unal, D. (2018). The Abortion Debate and Profeminist Coalition Politics in Contemporary Turkey. Politics & Gender, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S1743923X18000703. Wharton, A. S. (2012). The Sociology of Gender. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Yemenici, A. (2002). Analysis of the Use of Politeness Maxims in Interruptions in Turkish Political Debates. In A. Bayraktaroğlu & M. Sifianou (Eds.), Linguistic Politeness Across Boundaries: The Case of Greek and Turkish (pp.  307–340). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Yesil, B. (2016). Media in New Turkey: The Origins of an Authoritarian Neoliberal State. Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Zimmerman, D. H., & West, C. (1975). Sex Roles, Interruptions and Silences in Conversations. In B.  Thorne & N.  Henley (Eds.), In Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance (pp. 105–129). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

CHAPTER 6

Women’s Fragile Trust: Safety, Familiarity, and Secrecy in the Marriage Show Feyza Akınerdem

Introduction I was upstairs, in an empty room near the changing rooms, writing field notes. A woman entered the room and asked a question about the show. “I am not a staff member,” I replied. She then asked whether I was a candidate or not. I explained to her that I am a researcher. She got excited. “I need to talk to you,” she said. Then the story came out: She had finally decided today to come to the studio, after a year of thinking and the staff trying to convince this very reluctant candidate to participate in the show: “They occasionally call me, and I tell them I will come, I mean, I am coming. Then I change my mind, they call again and ask why I didn’t come, do you see?” She also said that indeed, several times she had come to the studio building, but in none of her previous visits had she decided to venture on stage. She still seemed very hesitant and asked my opinion about the show. “I don’t think it’s right to influence your decision,” I replied, “but may I ask you some questions, so that I can help you to make your mind up about the show?” She agreed. (Personal communication, March 2012, age 45)

F. Akınerdem (*) Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey © The Author(s) 2020 Y. Kaptan, E. Algan (eds.), Television in Turkey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46051-8_6

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The marriage show was a popular matchmaking format aired three hours live during daytime in Turkey between 2007 and 2017 on various national networks with different titles. The format, at first sight, was quite simple: women and men applied to the show and if selected as a participant, came on the stage and announced their willingness to get married and preferences for potential suitors. Candidates and suitors met on the stage, and the whole process of dating, courtship, engagement, and wedding was monitored in the show through live footage and edited videos. If they decided to get married, the wedding ceremony took place on live broadcast. A closer look at the show though may explain Sevil’s motivation as well as reluctance about going to the show as I quoted in the excerpt above. Among the shows aired on different national networks, I conducted ethnographic research between 2011 and 2012 in ATV Yenibosna Studios in Istanbul where the show titled “Esra Erol’da Evlen Benimle” (Marry me on Esra Erol’s Show) was produced. Esra Erol was the host and the brand name of the show. One of the main focuses of the research was female candidates’ participation and preparation processes. As the excerpt from my encounter with a female candidate shows, some participants approached me to talk about the show during the research process. Perhaps they were thinking aloud while speaking to me, a non-judgmental listener compared to the staff members who were meant to evaluate them as potential or existing participants of the show. During these encounters, I witnessed candidates’ hesitation about the show and their endeavor to establish trust. The subjects who collaboratively produced and participated in the show invested different expectations and concerns in the show. The daily concern for the staff was managing the live broadcast while for the candidates the possibility of building a new life was at stake. Given that the format was based on marriage, candidates’ concerns about the possibility of success or failure to build that new life began from the very moment they decided to come to the show. Their movements into the flow of the marriage show entailed complicated processes of decisions, negotiations, and struggles with their family members, friends, or anybody in their lives who would be affected by their decisions. As a mother of two young people in their 20s, Sevil told me how she negotiated with her children: “My daughter supported me indeed, but my son,” she stopped for a few seconds before continuing, “it is difficult to be the mother of a son, you know.” She also added that “one also thinks about what other people—I

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mean the neighbours or relatives—will say. Not an easy decision. Never easy” (Personal communication, March 2012, age 45). Sevil’s account of her decision also demonstrates how her decision was not only based on her negotiations with her family, but also with herself. She described her reluctance as follows: Just look at me, how many times have I come here and gone back, and come again. I see the set and ask, oh my God, what am I doing here? Is this the right thing? I ask myself so many questions. (Personal communication, March 2012, age 45)

The marriage show was an uncanny place which was not easy to step into, as much as it was a popular and desired venue for getting married. It was uncanny because there was a public debate on the format throughout the ten years of its broadcast. Getting married on television itself was criticized for being inappropriate and voyeuristic (Akınerdem 2019, Algan 2010). These criticisms enhanced viewers’ hesitance about going to the show. Nevertheless, once they entered the venue, many of them expressed how they trusted the show as a pathway to marriage. After observing that was the case for many women I interviewed, I reached the argument that women’s quest for trust and their endeavor to establish it were related to two aspects of the show: First, the marriage show was a format which followed the generic conventions of the reality show genre, which can be described as a popular cultural/aesthetic response to the atmosphere of insecurity (Akınerdem and Sirman 2019) at a global level. Studies on reality show genre in various contexts point to the genre’s emphasis on individual success and flourish in response to the neoliberal condition, or more specifically, the (welfare) states’ withdrawal from providing individuals with a secure living environment (McCarthy 2007, Ouellette and Hay 2008, Skeggs and Wood 2012). The marriage show promised marriage as a life-making strategy against the feeling of living lonely and precarious. Of course, marriage by no means can be regarded as a new strategy for survival. This takes us to the second aspect of the show which is related to women’s quest for trust in and through marriage. In Turkey, where the social at all levels is organized as a “family regime” (Akınerdem 2019), marriage is regarded as the dominant form of having a proper and worthy life. Being single in Turkish context entails a strong sense of lack and insecurity, leaving individuals financially vulnerable (see Özar and YakutÇakar, 2013) and making them “much more likely to be suspected of a

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political crime or other felony” (Sirman 2005, p.  60). Therefore, both men and women living in Turkey expect to have a secure life through marriage. Whether marriage really provides people with a secure life is beyond the frame of this chapter. What I would like to emphasize is that, Esra Erol, the host and the brand name of the show, turned this quest into a popular television show which lasted more than ten years. The show’s secret resided in its attentiveness to the normative construction of the family regime. In this way, I argue, the marriage show exceeded the confines of the reality show genre’s promise for individual success, and became a venue where the feelings of trust and security were sought and, to some extent, maintained. In this chapter, I would like to show how the show’s promise of security leaned on a fragile agreement of trust among the female participants of the show, based on my fieldwork. I conducted 74 recorded interviews and many unrecorded conversations with candidates, staff members, and studio audience throughout my regular visits to the show’s studio which was located in Yenibosna, Istanbul. The candidates’ names are anonymized. During my visits, I usually spent time in the female candidates’ spaces where they prepared and waited for going to the stage. My focus on women’s accounts throughout their participation in the show stemmed from being restricted to their space because of the homosocial organization of the studio. The male and female candidates of the show were meant to meet only on the stage to keep the excitement of seeing each other on live broadcast for the first time. I was motivated to elaborate on this feeling as soon as I realized that the control over women’s encounters with men in the show’s studio was indeed a source of trust for them. There were three main themes which were almost common to female candidates’ diverse accounts of their motivation for trusting and coming to the show: familiarity, safety, and finally secrets and secrecy. In addition to these, they expressed the strongest trust toward themselves and in this way showed the fragility of their agreement on the show as a trusted pathway to marriage. I argue that their accounts of trust entailed their endeavor to establish one’s self as a responsible subject on the path to marriage, and within the routine of the marriage show. It was because they were respectable and honorable women who sought and found trust in the show. They trusted this venue to seek a marriage partner. This was indeed a loop of trust. In other words, trust could only have led women to real happiness and safety had the marriage itself been stripped of the very structural inequality and, consequently, the violence it produces. However, rather

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than questioning the existing structure of marriage and family, the marriage show’s “harmful” effects on the family values were widely questioned in public, and ultimately all of the matchmaking formats were banned by an emergency decree in 20171 with the aim of protecting the Turkish family. It is crucial to underline that while the show’s harmful effects on the existing family structure, as I analyzed elsewhere (Akınerdem 2019), were a highly questionable accusation, the show’s promise was not easy to accomplish, and the marriage show could not always provide its participants with a pathway to a happy and secure life. While many people found their (soul)mates on the show’s stage2 and shared their happiness with the general public, failures to do so were part of the routine. Moreover, the murder of a woman, Selime G., in August 2014 by a man she had met and married on the show was an “emblematic case,” to use a concept coined by Eldén and Ekal (2015)3: We introduce the concept of emblematic cases to speak of femicide cases (kadın cinayetleri in Turkish) that are given symbolic meaning that reach beyond an individual story. These emblematic cases are evoked through various stories of individual cases, which the media hereby defines as belonging to the same kind, and the cases thus become important in discussions of how the issue of violence against women is framed in the media context of Turkey. Through these cases, not only women’s groups, but now the media itself raises demands for greater state responsibility and involvement in the struggle to end violence against women. (Eldén and Ekal 2015, p. 126)

Likewise, the killing of Selime, besides being a tragic end to a woman’s life, clearly showed that women’s quest for safety on their way to marriage exceeds the need for securing happiness and indeed is a matter of life and death. The marriage show could by no means have guaranteed safety in a context where women are very often vulnerable to violence in the family and the value of their lives is usually juxtaposed with the family values. Although proving this point exceeds the aim of this chapter, it is crucial to underline that women’s endeavor to establish trust at various levels, however fragile the outcome is, is an index of a concrete need for safety in their lives in general. To move on to my analysis, I will describe the marriage show as a reality TV format, and point out how its promise of marriage as a contemporary life-making strategy differentiates the show from its global counterparts. Later on, I will explore female candidates’ registers of trust and conclude

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that trust entailed a fragile agreement among the female participants of the marriage show who wanted to make themselves and the show trustworthy because they sought a safe and trusted pathway to marriage, which was indeed a difficult venture.

The Marriage Show’s Promise Reality television is an invention of the television industry beginning from the 1990s, in response to improvements in technologies of production (Chalaby 2015), diminishing state control over television content (Kuhn and Stanyer 1999, Öncü 2000), and the evolution of the audience into consumers to be entertained rather than citizens to be educated (Ang 1991, Hill 2005, Syvertsen 2004). It involves the formulation, circulation, and adaptation of formats based on ordinary people’s participation (Chalaby 2015, Hill 2005, Skeggs and Wood 2012). There is no doubt that, besides being a profitable commodity in the global media sector, reality television is a popular aesthetic form that proposes ways of survival to audiences who cope with different levels of difficulties stemming from neoliberal socio-economic (dis)organization of life at a global scale. I would like to highlight some aspects of the genre concerning the age of insecurity. Reality TV is one of the outcomes of neoliberal condition, particularly in relation to the welfare state’s withdrawal from supporting its citizens and leaving survival and amelioration as the individual’s responsibility (Ouellette and Hay 2008). Those who are less able to survive in the new, flexible job market may “choose” to come to the reality show’s stage: tell your story, improve your appearance, show your endurance, and defeat others who are not able to demonstrate and reflect on their capabilities. The conditions which make the usual, taken-for-granted ways of living unpredictable leave individuals vulnerable to feelings and conditions of insecurity. How to manage the house, how to become a family, how to marry, how to find a job, how to support oneself in a lonely life, and so on are all questions which demarcate the feeling of insecurity stemming from “a crisis condition within the ordinary” (Berlant 2006, p. 194). Television frames structural uncertainties into reality show formats, which provide prescriptions for successfully curing the failures which stem from systemic damage in the conduct of everyday life. And the questions I counted above—how to manage the house, how to become a family, how to marry, how to find a job, how to support oneself in a lonely life, and so on—all these titles turn to be reality TV formats which invite individuals to try

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their chance at achieving specific goals according to the format. Conventions (of governance, control, and value) and fragilities (insecurity and unpredictability) come together to orient the flow of ordinary people to the reality show’s stage. The marriage show was a reality show which was an adaptation of matchmaking formats into the Turkish context. However, the show’s emphasis on marriage distinguished the show from other (global) reality show formats. First, as Algan (2010) points out, the show was “not edited to increase the tension or drama like we see in dating reality shows in the West, i.e. the Bachelor” (p.199). Rather, the marriage show format was supposed to keep the tension at an acceptable level. Elsewhere I analyzed how an equivalence between candidates and suitors, which was measured according to the family regime in Turkey, was maintained during the production and broadcast of the show to avoid inappropriate encounters on the stage (Akınerdem 2019). I also observed that the staff members worked on participants’ appearances and stories before and during the broadcast to control the level of sensationalism on the show. What I would like to emphasize here is that the marriage show attracted the audience by demonstrating a concern for the propriety of marriage candidates and the conduct of matchmaking for overcoming the notorious fame of finding one’s marriage partner on TV. Second, rather than putting participants into a competition of survival within which one among all could succeed, the marriage show promised success for all participants who were willing to find their soulmate. This was quite different from being a member of a team and following the rules of a game to demonstrate individual capabilities and to succeed as an individual for instance in the Survivor format. Likewise, it was also distinguishable from Bachelor/Bachelorette formats, because “we don’t see many people competing for one person’s love” in the marriage show. These formats put the emphasis on romantic love and sexual enticement which contradicted with the marriage show’s claim to be “serious.” The marriage show promised its participants having families “just like our fathers and mothers,” as the host of the show, Esra Erol, put it (Personal communication, 17 May 2012, quoted in Akınerdem 2019). Elsewhere, I dwelled on rules and conventions of the format which put in service of maintaining and negotiating the normativity of the family in Turkey (Akınerdem 2019). Here, I would like to show female candidates’ efforts to maintain trust in the show to ease the feeling of insecurity, which is both an outcome of a global condition and the family regime in Turkey.

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The Fragile Agreement Among Female Participants I built my analysis on the female candidates’ answers to my questions about their decisions to come to the show, making Sevil’s account the central focus among the more than 30 women I met in the marriage show’s studio. These women’s age, socio-economic status, occupation, marital history, number of children, and city of residence varied. What I find crucial is, as I demonstrate below, the issues and reluctances about trusting the show, and the tension between the feeling of security and insecurity were common to these women’s accounts of trust. Sevil was a 45-year-old woman, mother of two, who lost her husband 16 years ago at the time of my research. I chose her account because I had the chance to talk with her longer and because her account corresponded with the concerns and hesitations of other candidates. It is also crucial to note that not all candidates were as reluctant as Sevil. Indeed some of them were clamoring to get on stage, even trying to coerce the staff into putting them on, and exhibiting their disappointment if their turn did not come during that broadcast day. But it was when the reluctance was greater, as in the case of Sevil, that doubts and ambiguities became more visible and consequently a need for maintaining trust was palpable. This need and its fulfillment were expressed through the registers of familiarity, safety, and secrets and secrecy. The reality show genre’s exploitation of the feeling of insecurity for luring the audience must have enhanced the feeling of suspense for women who wait in the backstage. Nevertheless, in the following sections I will show how this very stage, as well as the host and the format of reality television also were sources of trust for women. Finally, they expressed their trust in themselves, which in a way was indicative of the fragility of trust toward others on the show. All registers merge into women’s endeavor to register themselves as respectable and honorable women who were worthy of marrying. Therefore, their trust in themselves also makes accountable their trust in others. In the end, though, neither trust toward others nor trust in themselves can change women’s structural vulnerability in marriage. I will clarify my point by visiting these registers respectively below. Familiarity When I asked Sevil “How did you decide to come to the show?,” she said that she was convinced to come to the show because she trusted Esra Erol:

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Trust, I mean I trust Esra. We know what she does, where she came from, where she goes. We watch her, we support her. I mean that. She gives such a sense of trust. Trust is very important for me. I cannot trust everybody, I am a Taurus. (Personal communication, March 2012, age 45)

In later parts of our conversation, Sevil asked me about other candidates’ opinions of the show. I told her that they, like herself, very often expressed their trust in Esra Erol. She cheerfully replied: Yes, we trust her, don’t we? Yes. Esra is like, how can I say, there is something spiritual, something related to God’s mercifulness in her. Like talking [sincerely], there is an essence in her, we feel it. (Personal communication, March 2012, age 45)

It is clear her trust has to do with familiarity, that is, knowing Esra’s background, the route she took on her way to becoming a beloved television personality. Here, I reference Sara Ahmed’s account of recognizing the familiar in the stranger (Ahmed 2000). According to Ahmed, the subject is constituted through her/his capacity to differentiate between others as familiars and strangers, and to calculate how and to what extent to get close to them. While stepping into a new place, a new community, a new routine, and among new people (other candidates, program staff), Esra Erol stands out among them as being more familiar and less of a stranger, and thus safe to get closer to on a relative scale. So, by coming to the show, they get closer to Esra Erol, who they feel they know and who feels like a family member. As one of the other female candidates, Leyla, puts it: Esra hanım [an honourific for women] is such a modest and unpretentious person. She is like my daughter. I always watch and admire her. (Personal communication, November 2011, age 56)

Another candidate, Nida, who was quite critical of the show, stated that she had decided to come on because she trusts and only trusts Esra Erol: Let’s put the show aside, Esra Erol feels much more trustworthy than the show. I participated in the program solely relying on her. (Personal communication, April 2012, age 36)

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The candidates were motivated sometimes by finding traces of familiarity in Erol’s story, and sometimes by finding some energy/spirituality in her, which could only be intuitively felt. Thus, their feelings for Esra Erol attracted them to the show, and as they were attracted, they maintained their feeling of trust toward its central figure. Esra Erol’s background, as narrated and performed on TV, enhanced this feeling of familiarity. She came from a lower-middle-class family in Kütahya, a small city in western Turkey. She is one of the three daughters of a retired policeman. She started her career at a local television channel in Kütahya and eventually became one of the most famous daytime television hosts in Turkey. Thus, she has an ordinary background, which participants recognized as familiar. Indeed their participation in a TV show and Erol’s success as a TV host stemmed from the same socio-cultural change in Turkey. The commercialization of the television industry in 1991 opened up pathways for people from diverse backgrounds and ordinary lives to come onto the television screen. Esra herself made her way through these pathways. Her ordinary life unfolds into an extraordinary success story as a talk show host. This was what Sevil and other candidates and audience members knew and supported about her. Knowing also implied a desire to be close to the life that Esra Erol lived/performed, which goes parallel to the show’s promises. In other words, women trusted her not only because her life story extended from ordinariness to fame, but also because it was the story of a successful marriage. Erol married her fiancé on the show. As a happily married woman, she also announced her pregnancies in the show. After giving birth, she shared her feelings via a short video broadcast on the show. I suggest that Esra Erol’s ordinariness is an effect which results from the form of self-­ narrative employed, which gradually entered into televisual representation after the 1990s and during the 2000s as well as from the content—what she encounters, lives, feels, and so on. In her study on Oprah Winfrey, Eva Illouz dwells on the presentation of Oprah’s autobiography in both the form and content of her show. Illouz suggests that, by narrating her autobiography on the air as a story beginning with failure, that is, “lack of self-esteem, sexual abuse, and overweight,” which she successfully overcame, Oprah has proven to her audiences that “television can and does change lives” (2003, p. 38). This resonates well with Esra Erol’s story, not only for becoming a success story for the audiences, but also for performing “the ideal woman/wife/mother” on the stage: she almost proved that television can and did have the power to facilitate successful marriages.

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Thus, like Oprah, she became “her own ideal-typical guest” (Illouz 2003, p. 38). However, there was also an important difference between Oprah and Esra Erol which largely stemmed from the difference between the formats of the two shows. Oprah’s format is based on narratives of failure that subvert “the politics of secrecy that is fundamental to the middle-class nuclear family, the violent side of which Oprah experienced directly” (Illouz 2003, p. 26). In other words, as the basic form/ingredient of the format, Oprah narrates a success story at the expense of revealing the secrets of the (middle-class) family. On the contrary, Esra Erol, as the host of the marriage show, performed the proper subject of marriage and as a result, she did not violate the “strong ideological separation between secrecy and exposure” (Illouz 2003, p. 26). As the ideal-typical guest, she performed the ideal-typical woman/spouse/mother, who would be a model for the candidates. Thus, there is no subplot of failure in her autobiographical account, not even a trace of dissatisfaction about her achievements, her familial relations, her marriage. As such, I suggest that Erol performed the desirable at a level of reachable, touchable closeness. Audiences just needed to take the pathway that the show opened up to get closer to Esra Erol—to get closer to the possibility of a good marriage. Safety The candidates knew neither the potential suitors nor what they would encounter during the matchmaking process. This fostered a difficult sense of insecurity which they addressed, first of all, by citing the show’s security process. I observed this process as a researcher who searched for consent and clearance to come to the show. They did not allow anyone into the building without booking and there was a strict security check at the entrance. Before going to the stage, candidates were required to show their national ID cards which show their age and marital status. Besides, when candidates called in the show to participate, the staff asked many personal questions about their lives, past marriages, the parent’s consent, and so on to prove the caller’s suitability to participate in the show. Because all participants were subject to this process, they were sure that others passed through these checkpoints as well: You can choose one among the suitors here. It is democratic, which is good. But it is also difficult to believe. He comes, then, what will come out about him? I have questions in mind, yes. However, it is the case for the outside as

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well, isn’t it? It is much safer here, at least they have to show their national ID cards. (Personal communication, Sevil, March 2012, age 45) You don’t feel as guaranteed even in your house. I mean, there is a security check here. Everything is perfect. They never mix men and women here. Everything is so natural and good. They’re doing a difficult job here. It is never as seen from outside. They take care of [people] one by one. It’s really hard; there are lots of employees. They work with a crowded staff. I say, may God grant all of us hayırlı kismet (good fortune). (Personal communication, Gül, April 2012, age 63).

Women both needed to feel safe and wanted to trust a man they met in the marriage show studio, whom they would have spent time with outside of the studio and might have married. The formal procedures of security including the national ID card check made the venue safer for them. Although the information one could have found on an ID card was limited—it neither proved one was not wanted by police nor guaranteed their marital or any other relationship status—their comments on the security procedure pointed to a need for credentials to feel safe. However, the anxiety of meeting strangers was not eased simply by security and background checks. Women also needed to know they were safeguarded. As I quoted above, Gül was feeling even safer than at her own house. For her, the feeling of being cared for and protected was never a guarantee (even) at home. On the other hand, the feeling of being safeguarded in the show was based on the homosocial organization of the format—that male and female candidates did not see each other backstage before the live broadcast—and therefore the prevention of perilous encounters with men. Although this was a requirement of the format, it nevertheless conjured up the code of honor as Gül, as a woman, knew from outside the studio. A twist should be underlined here: what to expect and how to protect one’s honor and reputation must have become even more ambiguous in the studio, because many conventions of matchmaking and marrying were left outside. Instead, many other subjects, that is, the program staff, as well as many new conventions, such as enhancing unpredictability on the stage, were involved in the process. Here I would like to quote Sirman’s (2004, 2014) description of honor at two levels. At a structural level, she refers to honor “as a way of dealing with relationships that are ambiguous” (2014). Further, at the level of the self, she defines the concept as “the identity of the person vis-à-vis others and the

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sense of worth that a person has of himself or herself; it is the internalized form of a person’s social standing” (2004: 44). This sense of worth, nevertheless, is usually reassessed and maintained when the codes that define the propriety of women and men become ambiguous, for example, on a television show. I argue that this ambiguity encouraged Gül to redefine the procedures of the format according to the code of honor by appealing to the format’s conventions. I argue that, women’s investment in the code of honor throughout their encounters with men brought about further investments in the feeling of trust, which I address in the next section. Secrets and Secrecy The production of the marriage show, like other television programs, was based on making decisions on what to reveal and what to hide, starting from the staff’s selection of the candidates to the director’s selection of the live picture in the control room. This was one of the sources of trust for women as well. Ayla, a female candidate, highlighted the popularity of the show and how the decision to come to the stage required courage: This is er meydanı (a square of manhood). I mean, one cannot keep secrets here. Those who’re not ready to get married, those who left mistakes in their past cannot succeed on the show. Sometimes they do, they tell lies, but it is discovered soon. (Personal communication, April 2012, age 48)

Ayla pointed out using the gendered phrase er meydanı4 that not everybody could dare to appear on a popular TV show, not if their life story was not appropriate to share in public. Nor could they tell lies for so long. The marriage show made it possible for personal stories to be told and judged in public and therefore those who came to the show for getting married could not get away with misrepresenting themselves or their pasts live on camera. Those who knew the participant could easily call in the show and reveal the truth. Indeed, refutation calls from those who knew a participant and who pointed to lies (s)he told on the stage were part of the routine of the show, which, according to Ayla, elicited trust toward the show. I would like to note that Ayla used the phrase er meydanı to point to the public witness in the show, which implies that there is a gender aspect to courage. Female participants expect suitors to be a man, in other words, to be blameless and courageous enough to come to the show. As I pointed out in the previous section, while women tried to protect their reputation

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and honor, they expected men to demonstrate that they are blameless and courageous enough. In both cases, honor was coded in a relational and unequal way for women and men through the format of the marriage show. Likewise, another female candidate, Bahar, frankly expressed that she, as a woman, needed to trust men and believed that the show would provide her with it: Besides, I don’t trust any of the men around me, because, sorry, but all of them are egocentric self-seekers. Therefore, I decided that it is better to find someone from the marriage show. (Personal communication, April 2012, age 23)

She trusted the show because she did not trust men in general, so she thought it was better to find a marriage partner with the help of the show. She was a woman of 24 who had been forced to marry at the age of 16, and who was thrown out of the house by her husband after giving birth to her child. She made such an impression on me as she told how she had been abandoned by both her own family and by her husband, about what she encountered during those five years, and how much she missed her son. At the time of the interview, she shared the house of an elderly man whom she called “my stand-in uncle,” and whom she had coincidentally met in another TV show’s studio—the only man, as she said, whom she could trust in life. It is not a surprise that women do not trust men because they are subject to male violence to varying degrees of intensity and there is no mechanism that would protect them from the closest family members. While expressing the inequality between men and women based on their experiences, women expected to find out better men who went to the stage of a popular television show, and thus who they could trust. They differentiated between the show and the outside by emphasizing public witness in the marriage show as a strategy for navigating women’s structural insecurity. In conventional matchmaking procedures, secrecy is built up around the groom-to-be: here instead the women decided to trust that the marriage show would have uncovered for them about men what might otherwise have remained hidden before the wedding. Therefore, their accounts of trust revealed that they wanted to marry in order to be safe in life, they wanted to marry through a safe pathway, and they wanted to find trustworthy mates. It is crucial to note here that I do not argue that public witness in the show was capable of subverting the patterns and structures

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of secret and secrecy, but the female candidates expected, and what is more, asked the show to reveal these secrets in order to improve their position of insecurity within the existing family structure. There is another point regarding secret and secrecy in the marriage show’s format, which seems contradictory but is indeed complementary to my analysis so far. In addition to the secrets participants expected to be revealed, the show’s format also enabled them to keep secret things they would prefer not to reveal, as Bahar’s account of trust demonstrates: I think it is much more sensible to marry here. They investigate everything. I said from the beginning that I have things that I don’t want to tell, and they arranged everything accordingly. (Personal communication, April 2012, age 23)

After noting that the show investigated people’s secrets, Bahar stated that she trusted the show because she was able to negotiate which elements of her story she would or would not have revealed with the staff backstage before the live broadcast. Thus, the framing of her personal story for public consumption was a source of trust. The show gave her a sense of control over her participation, and thus the opportunity to use her appearance on the show to pursue a happy marriage on her terms. The female candidates at once entrusted their secrets to the marriage show and trusted the show that it would uncover what may potentially be hidden from them. The candidates’ stories, movements, and encounters were thereby framed in such a way as to allow some secrets in while keeping others out. I suggest that both aspects of trust were made possible within this format and in this way, the show drew a limit to sensationalism and prevented candidates from going dirty. Thus, while allowing its participants to demonstrate themselves of trustworthy, honorable, and courageous marriage candidates, Esra Erol’s show was registered as a trusted, popular, and proper pathway to marriage for a decade in Turkey. Trust in One’s Self Besides those who they encountered and how they were treated in the studio and on the show, women put trust in themselves as they moved into the show through uncanny routes to meet strangers for getting married. Here I would like to think through Luhmann’s definition of trust as a situation wherein one “choose[s] one action in preference to others in spite of

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the possibility of being disappointed by the actions of others” (2000: 98). According to Luhmann, trust entails a subjecthood that acts and moves within the world by foreseeing, calculating, and taking the risks. I do not assess the candidates’ feelings of trust based on whether they calculated the risks of moving into the flow of the show. As I stated, their accounts of trust were retrospective assessments and narrations of the moment of decision. This might have or have not entailed a forecast of risk. On the other hand, I argue that these accounts of trust entailed an endeavor to locate one’s self as a responsible, respectable, honorable subject on the path to marriage, and within the routine of the marriage show. Thus, a sense of selfhood based on an assessment of risk is at play at the moment I ask them about their decisions. As such, the accounts of trust in one’s self were part of the constitution of the subject concerning the normativity of marriage and the marriage show. I will clarify my point by addressing candidates’ accounts of trust in the self. As I quoted in the Safety section above, by saying “You don’t feel as guaranteed even in your house,” Gül marked the marriage show as safe. She also marked herself as a respectable woman by asserting that she was part of a human flow which was controlled homosocially, and she acted within the limits of morality. She, in other words, demonstrated “a desire for safe-keeping” (Ahmed 2000). As Ahmed states, “where ‘one’ goes or does not go determines what one ‘is,’ or where one is seen to be determines what one is seen to be” (2000: 33). Female candidates’ concern with marking themselves as respectable women acting following the norms that define where a woman should go or with whom a woman should appear becomes apparent in registers of trust. I will turn back to Sevil’s account to clarify my point. It was when we were talking about her life, her struggles with her children, and her ending up in the marriage show studio, she added: Yes, I succeeded. So I am blameless (alnım ak), I can even appear on television. I succeeded, with my honor, my dignity, my good reputation, my beauty. (Personal communication, March 2012, age 45)

It was because she had succeeded in faultlessly performing the role of the proper woman throughout her whole life that she was comfortable with appearing on a television show. She not only trusted the show’s procedures, staff, and the host, but also her reputation to put herself under public scrutiny on the stage. Thus, I argue that the candidates marked the

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space they entered, wandered, and inhabited as safe, and thus trustworthy by marking themselves as trustworthy and respectable individuals. At the same time, they secured their trustworthiness and respectability by marking the space/procedures of the show as secure and safe. The accounts of trust in one’s self were at the same time accounts of risk at various levels, that is, regarding conventional matchmaking processes, regarding life at home, regarding the official discourses on morality and honor, and so on. The decision to go on the marriage show, by all accounts, was a quest for the best, most trustworthy, safest pathway to marriage possible. Indeed the decision to get married was a question of trust if we consider the critical stance of the candidates toward the structures, institutions, and norms regarding marriage. Nevertheless, the show gave its participants a sense of safe path, not because it was outside the conventional forms of matchmaking. Rather, it was a show which was formulated within the normative limits of marriage and the family. This was also apparent in candidate accounts, that by constantly talking about how they trust the host and the format’s procedures, they registered the show as an uncanny space and route to marriage, like all other routes. This was best depicted in Meral’s words: F: How do you think people trust those they meet here? M: Who can you trust in life, at all? What is the difference between someone you met here or on the street or in your school? Do you think that they are trustworthy? No, they’re not. Or you can never know what life will bring. I gave birth to two children, I had a wonderful marriage, a wonderful job, then, what happened? I have nothing now. What can I trust? Nothing. [She stares upwards as if pointing to God] He writes. He kicks, and you fall down. This is life. You can’t trust people here. However, at least, as a woman, you can intuitively make a rational choice of a spouse. But if you just look at his appearance or his wallet you can’t make a good marriage. He would put you through the wringer then. (Personal communication, June 2012, age 50) Meral’s account, like many others, was a thick and unique register of trust in one’s self. This time she revealed the vulnerable position of the individual and thus emphasized: “the possibility of being disappointed” (2000: 98), which is, for Luhmann, a marker of a situation of trust. At this level, trust entailed a risk forecast, that is, regarding conventional

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matchmaking processes, regarding life at home, regarding the official discourses of morality and honor, and God’s will. The decision to go on the marriage show was a quest for a safe path while also knowing that this path was full of unpredictable obstacles. One could learn how to deal with these only by following her intuitions. Thus, Meral trusted no one but herself in the end.

Conclusion In this chapter, I tried to maintain that trust is a fragile agreement among the female participants of the marriage show who wanted to make themselves and the show trustworthy because they sought a safe and trusted pathway to marriage. This was a difficult venture in a context where marriage itself would be a source of violence and disappointment especially for women. I have followed the registers of trust which pass through different forms of speaking about one’s self, other subjects, and other aspects of the show. None of these registers precedes the others, so there is no real and single source of trust. Rather, it is through a coming together of these accounts that the show became a trusted path to marriage, and people who met each other in this venue were trusted—to some extent. They trusted those who were in the human flow of the show because if one was within the human circle of the studio, he/she had been deemed a trustworthy person since the format and the people who produced and implemented it were deemed trustworthy. And as part of this loop, they trusted the format and the staff because they trusted themselves, because they were there, in the human flow of the show, as respectable people. This loop shows how trust is a register that signifies the motivation for the decision: the decision to move into the flow of the show, when everything (the conventions of the TV show) and everybody (candidates, staff members) were indeed unfamiliar to each other within the medium of reality television. Trust enabled them to articulate their desires and motivations about the show and marriage when everything was ambiguous. Candidates expressed their desire to get closer to a familiar narrative of success and their motivation for producing a narrative of a self capable of taking a route to success and happiness through a trusted way. Nevertheless, how to forge a safe path to marriage through these manifold narratives, sensibilities, and trajectories in an atmosphere of flux is still an unanswered question. I maintained this atmosphere at two levels: insecurity as the atmosphere of insecurity at a global level and the family which

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is imposed as the only form of safe living, yet, which is in effect the main source of violence and insecurity in the Turkish context. Under these circumstances, I argue, trust in these women’s accounts was an expectation to make a life story speakable, a suitor approachable, the host familiar, and the subject and her acts proper within the limits and possibilities of a context where the family was by all means regarded as the ultimate source of security and livelihood. Nevertheless, the conventions of reality television enhanced the expectation of trust, as well as highlighted the fragility of this expectation. Due to the accelerated pace of the show’s flow and the unpredictability of the format, candidates stopped at every encounter and reassessed that particular moment: “How can I trust at all?” During my short acquaintance with Sevil, I observed her reluctance in nearly all these moments. I accompanied her while she shot her footage (April 2012), where she was much more hesitant to share her story than she had been with me: “Is it right to tell this or that on stage; and more than this, do I feel good about telling this story?” (Personal communication, April 2012). She asked my opinion about her dress just before going on stage: “Do I look good enough to appear on television even after all that shopping?” Finally, when a suitor approached her, she was still reluctant: “He seems to be a good person to marry, but how can I have a life outside of the circle of the show? How can I trust him?” Finally—I don’t know why—Sevil decided not to marry him and left the show. This kind of uncertainty backstage enhanced the glare of unpredictability on stage, which shaped negotiations between candidates, suitors, and the larger public. This was the main tension upon which the show was produced: the family is the only solution to the problems it caused. This tension was so profitable for the media market that the show lasted for a decade. The marriage show’s success was measured by its high ratings and uninterrupted success. Yet, for women, the show could not ultimately realize its promise. The woman’s killing which took place in August 2014 by a man she met and married on the show clearly showed that the women’s demand to feel safe was a matter of life and death, and the marriage show failed to provide this. Besides being a tragic end to a woman’s life, the event triggered public criticism toward the marriage show: “this is what you expect if you trust someone you meet on the show,” “how can Esra Erol take on the responsibility of marrying people on the show, given that three women per day are killed by men in Turkey?” were two common criticisms that circulated on social media, discussion programs, and feminist networks. Yet, despite the show was banned as the result of an emergency decree

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issued in 2017, with accusations of harming the Turkish family values, sexual violence and other crimes against women remain prevalent, urgent, and complicated problems that are neither caused nor resolved by means of banning television formats that seek to maximize profit by commercializing tensions and uncertainties.

Notes 1. Emergency Decree Laws No. 689–690 have been published on the Official Gazette Number 30052, 29.04.2017. (www.resmigazete.gov.tr/ eskiler/2017/04/20170429M1.htm, date accessed 19 August 2018). 2. 340 couple got married and 64 children were born out of these marriages according to the records of the marriage show in ten years between 2007 and 2017 as of the last live broadcast on ATV, July 2017. 3. Women’s killings in Turkey is an alarming topic due to high statistics and the emblematic cases widely disseminated on social media. I chose these numbers to provide a snapshot of the situation: According to Bianet news website, at least 284 women in 2015, 261 women in 2016 290 women in 2017 and 255 women in 2018 were killed by men. More than half of these men were close family members of or in relationship with the women they killed. Data retrieved from http://bianet.org/kadin/bianet/133354-bianet-siddet-taciz-tecavuz-cetelesi-tutuyor, Access date: 28.01.2020. 4. Er meydanı: The place where heroism, courage, power, and talent would show up. Translated from Turkish Language Institute Dictionaries (TDK Sözlükleri). Available at: https://sozluk.gov.tr Access date: 28.01.2020.

References Ahmed, S. (2000). Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. Oxon, New York: Routledge. Akınerdem, F. (2019). Tailored for Marriage Ready for the Stage: Framing Turkey’s Family Regime on the Marriage Show. In J.  Kay, M.  Kennedy, & H. Wood (Eds.), The Wedding Spectacle Across Contemporary Media Cultures: Something Old, Something New (pp. 109–121). London: Routledge. Akınerdem, F., & Sirman, N. (2019). From Seekers of Truth to Masters of Power: Televised Stories in a Post-truth World. South Atlantic Quarterly, 118(1), 129–144. Algan, E. (2010). The Gendered Politics of Care: Redefining Marriage and Gender Roles on Turkish Reality Television. In L.  Baruh & J.  H. Park (Eds.), Reel Politics: Reality Television as a Platform for Political Discourse (pp. 198–212). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Ang, I. (1991). Desperately Seeking the Audience. London and New  York: Routledge.

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Berlant, L. (2006). Cruel Optimism. Differences, 17(3), pp.  20–36. Retrieved September 22, 2013, from http://differences.dukejournals.org/cgi/ doi/10.1215/10407391-2006-009. Chalaby, J.  K. (2015). The Format Age: Television’s Entertainment Revolution. London: Polity. Eldén, Å., & Ekal, B. (2015). From Icons to Emblematic Cases: The Media and Murders of Women in Turkey. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 8, 24–25. “Er meydanı” [Def.1] Türk Dil Kurumu Sözlükleri. Retrieved January 28, 2020, from sozluk.gov.tr. “Erkek şiddeti çetelesi”. Retrieved January 28, 2020, from http://bianet.org/ kadin/bianet/133354-bianet-siddet-taciz-tecavuz-cetelesi-tutuyor. Hill, A. (2005). Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. Oxon, New York: Routledge. Illouz, E. (2003). Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery: An Essay on Popular Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Kuhn, R., & Stanyer, J. (1999). Television and the State. In Television Broadcasting in Contemporary France and Britain. New York and Oxford: Berghahn. Luhmann, N. (2000). Familiarity, Confidence, Trust: Problems and Alternatives. In D.  Gambetta (Ed.), Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations (pp. 94–107). London: Blackwell. McCarthy, A. (2007). Reality Television: A Neoliberal Theater of Suffering. Social Text., 25, 17–42. Öncü, A. (2000). The Banal and the Subversive: Politics of Language on Turkish Television. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 3(3), 296–318. Ouellette, L., & Hay, J. (2008). Better Living Through Reality TV. Malden, London: Blackwell. Özar, S., & Yakut-Cakar, B. (2013). Unfolding the invisibility of women without men in the case of Turkey. Women’s Studies International Forum, 41, 24–34. Sirman, N. (2004). Kinship, Politics, and Love: Honour in Post-Colonial Contexts–The Case of Turkey. In S. Mojab & N. Abdo-Zub (Eds.), Violence in the Name of Honour: Theoretical and Political Challenges (pp. 39–56). Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University Press. Sirman, N. (2005). The Making of the Familial Citizenship. In E. F. Keyman & I.̇ Ahmet (Eds.), Citizenship in a Global World: European Questions and Turkish Experiences. London: Routledge. Sirman, N. (2014). Contextualizing Honour. European Journal of Turkish Studies. Social Sciences on Contemporary Turkey, (18). Skeggs, B., & Wood, H. (2012). Reacting to Reality Television: Performance, Audience and Value. Oxon, New York: Routledge. Syvertsen, T. (2004). Citizens, Audiences, Customers and Players: A Conceptual Discussion of the Relationship Between Broadcasters and Their Publics. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 7(3), 363–380.

CHAPTER 7

Representing Female Detectives in Turkish Police Procedurals Ayşegül Kesirli Unur

Introduction Police procedural genre began to be formed in Turkey at the end of the 1980s by means of the pioneering works such as Kanun Savaşçıları (Crime Fighters, TRT, 1988) and Iż Peşinde (In Pursuit of a Trace, TRT, 1989). For being discursive formations which are shaped out of complex connections of historical contexts, intertextual relations as well as culturally specific practices of production and reception (Mittell 2001), Turkish police procedurals are developed by combining globally dominant conventions of the genre with local ways of doing television. As the police procedural genre is formed in the local context through this interplay with the global, inherently masculine attributes of the genre (Feasey 2008) are also appropriated. In the conventionally masculine universe of the genre which conveniently reflect the patriarchal values that pervade Turkish society for a long time, female police detectives could only find secondary roles. Whereas their male colleagues run the investigations in the field, women in Turkish

A. Kesirli Unur (*) Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey © The Author(s) 2020 Y. Kaptan, E. Algan (eds.), Television in Turkey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46051-8_7

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police procedurals are frequently represented as being stuck in the police station, waiting for the moment when they would be given more active roles. When they have these more active roles, their vulnerability is underlined in almost every occasion. For instance, in the longest running Turkish police procedural, Arka Sokaklar (Backstreets, Kanal D, 2006–) which revolves around the investigations of a mixed gender special unit, all the prominent characters are constituted of male detectives. In this dominantly masculine setting, the young, thin and beautiful female detectives are portrayed as active members of the team, getting into gun fights side by side with their male colleagues. However, their vulnerability is always emphasized in every occasion whereas power and endurance are frequently defined as masculine features in the series. This vulnerability is solidified through the temporality of female detectives like Zeynep (Gamze Özçelik) and Elif (Çağla Kubat), who immediately die after an attack almost like fulfilling a convention of the series as their male colleagues such as Rıza (Zafer Ergin), Mesut (Şevket Çoruh) and Hüsnü (Özgür Ozan) escape death several times even when they are seriously wounded. Another popular example, Behzat Ç.: Bir Ankara Polisiyesi (Behzat Ç.: An Ankara Police Procedural, Star TV, 2010–2013), reproduces a similar kind of masculine discourse despite its more critical approach to the social realities of Turkey. Masculinity is performed through the physical gestures of the main characters and their use of various slangs in their everyday conversations. In this masculine environment, female police officers have struggles to be seen and heard. The main character, Behzat (Erdal Beşikçioğlu), recurrently iterates that homicide bureau is not a proper place for women by pointing the finger at the permanent member of the bureau, Eda (Seda Bakan), who is rarely allowed to be in the field. Although the series is righteously celebrated for touching highly debated social and political issues in the Turkish context including homophobia and transphobia, its depiction of female police officers remains problematic. By building on this background, this chapter intends to examine the representations of female police detectives in three contemporary Turkish police procedurals, Kanıt (The Evidence, Kanal D, 2010–2013), Cinayet (The Killing, Kanal D, 2014) and Şahsiyet (Personality, Puhu TV, 2018), in which female detectives are given prominent roles and depicted as relatively independent figures in comparison to the conventional portrayal of women in other genres of Turkish TV dramas. This relative independence could be acknowledged as a significant feature of these series and be linked

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to the continuous impact of feminist debates on police procedural genre in the global context. Under the influence of these debates which gradually transform the genre by challenging the representations of hegemonic masculinity, female detectives in these series are portrayed as empowered figures who try to make it in a dominantly masculine work environment in an inspiring way. However, their empowerment is frequently undermined when traditional gender norms and values are reiterated in the narratives in an attempt to turn these women into non-threatening figures in the Turkish context. This chapter is mainly concerned with this ambivalence which complicates the depiction of female detectives in Turkish police procedurals. By making close readings of the series that are selected for this study, the chapter intends to focus on the portrayal of the female detectives’ subjectivities and the narrative strategies that are used in depicting these characters (Lotz 2001, p. 109). Despite its highly debated status as a methodology in television studies (Creeber 2006), as Janet McCabe and Kim Akass (2006) state, in the current state of feminist television criticism, “[d]ense, close textual readings are used as a key critical strategy, allowing authors to expose multi-layeredness, to locate the contradictory readings -liberal feminism, antifeminist, postfeminist- often operating in one text” (p. 116). By being encouraged by McCabe and Akass’ statement, this chapter aims to relate the ambivalent representations of female detectives in the chosen case studies with the multiple, coexisting and contradictory reflections of feminist ideas that still interest police procedural genre in both the local and global contexts. First of all, the chapter focuses on the past and current debates about the depiction of women in police procedural genre. By associating these debates with the highly contested meanings of postfeminism, it leads the discussion to argue the impact of this contemporary sensibility on the representation of women in police procedurals. As the next step, the chapter focuses on the conventional portrayal of women on Turkish TV series and discusses the relatively independent position of female detectives in this equation. This position which simultaneously challenges and conforms traditional definitions of womanhood in the Turkish context is approached in the chapter as a reflection of the continuous interplay between global trends and local dynamics in the formation of Turkish police procedural genre. By means of this approach, the chapter intends to discuss the portrayal of female detectives in the case studies in relation to

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feminist, antifeminist and postfeminist debates which interestingly coexist in the narratives in contested manners.

Female Detectives in Police Procedural Genre Kim Toft Hansen et al. (2018) say that crime dramas could be described as “the most culturally sensitive and nuanced” (p. 1) among the popular genres due to the fact that they are mostly inspired by social situations and cultural shifts. Choosing the police precinct as a setting gives crime dramas an additional motivation to make a social commentary, especially in relation to gender issues since “television often used the workplace as a site for presenting and debating feminist discourses” (Lotz 2001, p. 107). Police procedural TV series conventionally depict police precinct as a masculine space. As Rebecca Feasey (2008) emphasizes, by responding to social and political change, the genre’s approach to gender issues gradually has been modified. Yet police procedural genre has never completely given up on its masculine features and in this dominantly masculine setting, women frequently appeared as something challenging for hegemonic masculinity (pp. 80–83). In her genealogical approach to crime drama, Sue Turnbull (2014) leans on the contesting debates that grew around the representation of women in several crime dramas, mainly from the United States and the United Kingdom, in different time periods. Apart from looking at the controversial portrayals of sexy female action heroes in crime dramas such as Honey West (1965–1966), Turnbull focuses on the issues of “equality at work” and “women’s work” which have been briefly touched upon in popular crime dramas like Charlie’s Angels (1976–1981) and Police Woman (1974–1978) in the 1970s and became a significant concern of the genre with Cagney & Lacey (1981–1988) in the 1980s. As Turnbull underlines, in both Charlie’s Angels and Police Woman, female police officers are portrayed as being undervalued and assigned to menial jobs and desk duty because of their gender. Despite the controversies surrounding the portrayal of female characters in these series, Turnbull sees them as a direct influence of the social and political climate of the 1970s when women demanded equal opportunities in the workforce (p. 161). Beginning from the1980s, these kind of concerns are solidified in the “equal opportunities” discourse that is mentioned by Charlotte Brunsdon in her research on British police procedurals.

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According to Brunsdon (1998), the case which was opened by the highest ranking police woman in Britain, Alison Halford, created the basis for the “equal opportunities” discourse in police procedural genre. After she applied for a promotion and was refused nine times as less qualified male officers were immediately promoted, Halford filed a report regarding sexual discrimination in the police force. This report has been the major influence on the production of the celebrated British police procedural, Prime Suspect (1991), which addressed the discourse of “equal opportunities” by depicting the rise of the main character, Jane Tennison, from “that bitch” to the “guv’nor” (pp. 227–233). Although Tennison’s thorough investigation, professionalism and investment of her “feminine” knowledge in the case invert the generic traditions of the genre, in Glen Creeber’s terms, Tennison becomes “infected” by the masculinity of the narrative that she enters (Creeber 2001, p.  162). Besides, as Turnbull (2014) states, despite the ground-­ breaking step that Prime Suspect took in depicting the systematic misogyny in the police force, the series could not escape from portraying Jane Tennison as a lonely, alcoholic woman in its 2007 finale, The Final Act. Turnbull relays that the show’s creator, Lynda La Plante, who stopped writing the script after Prime Suspect 3 was also not pleased with the place that Tennison ended up with in the finale (p. 176). Elsewhere, Charlotte Brunsdon (2013) focuses on the changes that Jane Tennison as a character encountered within the 15 years of its lifetime on air, especially regarding her relation to the feminist discourse. She emphasizes that when the time came to the 2007 finale Tennison who has been approached as a feminist figure due to her struggle against misogyny and fight for equal opportunities in the workplace already began to be seen as representing some aging forms of feminism. For Brunsdon, cultural shift that is related to controversial conceptions of “postfeminism” has something to do with this approach to Tennison and the state that she ended up in. By mostly conforming Rosalind Gill’s assertions about postfeminism (Gill 2007) and getting inspiration from Judith Butler’s theories, McRobbie (2009) defines the influence of feminism on contemporary popular culture as a “double entanglement” which point at “[…] the co-­ existence of neo-conservative values in relation to gender, sexuality and family life […] with processes of liberalisation in regard to choice and diversity in domestic, sexual and kinship relations […]” (p. 12). By borrowing the term from Jean-Luc Nancy, McRobbie states that in the era of

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postfeminism, the new sexual contract works on the “pretence of equality” (pp. 55–56). On the one hand, there seems to be great improvements in women’s lives in social, cultural and economic terms. On the other hand, womanhood is simultaneously redefined by political forces in order to be aligned with neoliberal values, giving way to a “post-feminist masquerade” which is regulated by the beauty and fashion matrix of the commercial domain. In psychoanalytical terms, McRobbie (2009) explains that the duties of the patriarchal symbolic order are decentered and delegated to the commercial domain. This delegation invites women to an everlasting process of self-judgment and self-improvement conforming the newly introduced norms of femininity under the impression of freedom of choice.1 Additionally, as McRobbie (2009) asserts, this new sexual contract redefines the terms of performing womanhood in various places including the work environments which are inherently demarcated as masculine domains. In order to be aligned with these terms, the working women have to constantly work on themselves in order to be not mistaken as an “aggressive feminist” and avoid to be described as competition to men. In this way, they also still achieve to be seen as desirable to men to conform the myths of heterosexuality. This process of self-improvement which also encompasses discourses of education and employment in a global sense replaces the idea of solidarity among women and not only exhilarates female individualization but also intensifies hierarchies and inequalities regarding class, race and ethnicity. As she concentrates on two post-Tennison police procedurals, Murder in Suburbia (2004–2005) and The Ghost Squad (2005) which carry a postfeminist sensibility, Charlotte Brunsdon (2013) observes that “[n]o-one in these work worlds is going to make a fuss about the treatment of women, and all are familiar, however cynically, with the discourses of equal opportunity and antidiscrimination” (p. 15). The ideas of feminism have granted the young female protagonists of these series who are mainly differentiated by being contrasted with a Jane Tennison-like older figure their positions in the police force but their other responsibilities in the society have not diminished (Ibid.). As concluding this section, it could be asked if there is any hope to reach the much-yearned gender representations on television in the near future. In this respect, Turnbull (2014) sees the female detectives of contemporary Scandinavian crime dramas, Forbrydelsen (2007–2012) and Bron/Broen (2011–2018) as the inheritors of Jane Tennison of Prime

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Suspect with their taken-for-granted equal positions in the police force and the very little attention that they pay to their physical appearances (p. 182). Alternatively, Charlotte Brunsdon (2013) highlights the diversified depiction of female detectives in contemporary British police procedurals like Vera (2011–) and Scott & Bailey (2011–2016) which increase the visibility of women cops on TV (p.  17). However, as Turnbull (2014) reminds, there are still far more examples that raise concerns about the representation of female detectives on television (p.  183). So, it can be said that gender continues to be a major issue in discussing the attributes of police procedural genre.

Culturally Specific Experience of Female Detectives Since global conventions and trends are highly significant in creating new television contents in different locations, the recurrently debated feminist and postfeminist discourses in popular police procedurals worldwide are expected to have an effect on Turkish variations of the genre. However, the local experiences of womanhood and the feminist debates that grew around this experience change the narration of these discourses in the Turkish context. According to Yeşim Arat (2010), after the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 by following the ideals of Westernization, gender inequalities intended to be abolished with the 1926 Civil Code, which was celebrated by the educated, urban women at the time. In the 1980s, feminists started to question the civil code by asking whether women were “political actors or symbolic pawns” in the making of the nation-state. They mostly questioned the women’s role in the household and the article of the 1926 code that appoints the husband as the head of the family which was meant that the husband would be the breadwinner and the dominant partner in the marriage. The 1926 code gave the right to choose the place of residence for the family, be the guardian of the children and the family property to the husband whereas the wife was only considered as the helper of the husband. In this sense, women’s labor was not recognized by law and in case of divorce, women would have left the marriage with nothing. Following this critique, women who criticized the civil code initiated a struggle to have a more egalitarian and less patriarchal code and stop the domestic violence in the 1980s (pp. 235–251). Discussing feminist movements and women’s struggle against patriarchy in Turkey is far beyond the means of this article. But it can be said that

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despite the many gains of the feminist movements, patriarchal norms are still going very strong in Turkey shaping women’s place in both public and private. As Deniz Kandiyoti (1987) explains, secular republican reforms had a progressive impact on women’s rights but the control over female sexuality did not cease. Although there are serious variations depending on intersecting dynamics of class, religion and ethnicity, Kandiyoti says that “[t]he corporate control of female sexuality, linking female sexual purity to male honor, the segregation of the sexes and the nature of the female life cycle, have been singled out as features that exert a decisive influence in shaping and reproducing a culturally specific experience of gender” (pp. 334–335). This culturally specific experience of gender has a great impact on the representation of women on television. Şebnem Baran (2017) gathers widespread models regarding the depiction of women in Turkish television series under three main categories that are “the modern nation-state model, the more traditional identity associated with the ancient Ottoman regime, and the newly emerging neo-conservative version of the latter” (p. 44). Baran states that in Turkish TV series, family is frequently defined in conservative terms. Although women are constructed as strong female leads, they are still mostly portrayed as being subjected to the values of a traditional system. Female characters are primarily shown as mothers or wives even if they participate in the workforce. Family is always celebrated even at the times when its traditions are challenged as the building block of the nation which has to be preserved and protected by women (pp. 44–51). In such a way to affirm Baran’s arguments, according to a recent study which was conducted in 2017, Turkish TV series are heavily based on men’s storylines even though women are as much visible as men in the narratives. Masculine themes such as violence, war, crime and mafia relations dominate 7 out of the 12 TV series that are analyzed and patriarchal gender norms are reproduced in all of them. Whereas women are mostly seen as mothers and/or wives who are sensitive, gentle and responsible from domestic works men are portrayed as vulgar, extraverted and economically independent decision makers. The ambiguity in marital status appears as a feature that is granted to men. However, the same ambiguity is shown as something unacceptable for women who are stuck between the roles of young and slim love interests and not so attractive middle-­ ̇ aged widows (Akçalı and Inceoğ lu 2018, p. 47). Based on the findings of

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this study, it can be claimed that in Turkish TV series, womanhood appears as something that is recurrently defined, judged and controlled. In Turkish police procedurals, female detectives who are already portrayed as being a part of the workforce outside the domestic space appear as highly independent figures in comparison to the more conservative and traditional depiction of women in Turkish soap operas. These women are depicted as well-educated, economically independent, predominantly single individuals who frequently live on their own. However, despite this relative independence, they are still subject to the boundaries of a culturally defined gender experience. This culturally specific experience requires not only to question the localized conventions of representing gender roles in Turkish police procedurals but also to investigate the impact of global trends like the rising influence of feminist discourses on the formation of the genre in the Turkish context. It could be claimed that the young, beautiful, independent female police detectives in Turkish police procedurals which correspond to what Şebnem Baran defines as “the modern nation-state model” reflect a feminist outlook. They appear as secular, independent, modern, intelligent women who are sexualized by being included in romantic storylines and still responsible for carrying out traditional duties of womanhood such as motherhood and heterosexual union (Baran 2017, p. 51). This “double entanglement” which could be additionally associated with the culturally specific intersections of class and ethnicity allows contradictory responses given to feminist ideas and issues to be evoked in representing female detectives in Turkish police procedurals. These characters whose independence and empowerment could be mostly defined as a feminist achievement in comparison to the conventionally depicted ways of women on Turkish TV are positioned in an ambiguous environment which functions through the pretence of gender equality in the workplace and the constant surveillance of womanhood. In this environment which does not leave much space to feminist critique, as they share the same space with their male colleagues, female detectives simultaneously make sure that they neither challenge the patriarchal norms of Turkish society nor appear as competition to men.

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Female Detectives in Turkish Police Procedurals The seeming empowerment of female detectives in Turkish police procedurals could be related to the complexities regarding the formation of the genre in the Turkish context. At the end of the 1980s when the pioneering works of the genre started to be produced in Turkey, American and Western European police procedural TV series and films were taken as models. Emin Gerçeker, who directed Kanun Savaşçıları (Crime Fighters, TRT, 1988), one of the precursors of the police procedural genre, referred to a popular idiom in Turkey in an interview and said that when they create the series they are not going to “discover America all over again.” He highlighted that they intended to use the templates that have been used in popular Hollywood and French crime films for years (“Emniyet dosyalarından,” 1988, p. 4). However, as these dominantly widespread conventions of the police procedural genre were appropriated, they were simultaneously localized in accordance with the local norms, values and tastes. This localization process created an inherent tension between the “foreign” and the “local” in the narratives of Turkish police procedurals which could still be seen in contemporary versions of the genre. This tension which frequently expresses itself in a self-reflexive manner in the series could be found in particular occasions when Turkish police officers encounter with a colleague from the United States or Western Europe and/or a Turkish colleague who is educated in one of those regions trying to implement the “foreign” methods of policing in Turkey. The tensions that grow between Emre and his colleagues in the homicide bureau in Behzat Ç.: Bir Ankara Polisiyesi or Ayça and Selim in Kanıt could be listed as examples of these situations. The influence of these globally dominant conventions on the formation of police procedural genre in Turkey has a significant effect on the depiction of female detectives in the series. For instance, one of the first female police officers, Naşide, in Iż Peşinde (In Pursuit of a Trace, TRT, 1989) who is rarely seen outside the precinct, is assigned to an undercover duty in Episode 3 as a sex worker in order to connect with a woman who is detained for selling drugs. This kind of a depiction exceedingly coincides with the representation of female police officers in Police Story (1973–1987), which is the precursor of Police Woman as well as Cagney & Lacey in which female police officers appear as being disguised as sex workers in an

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undercover job that they are assigned to by their male superiors (Turnbull 2014, pp. 162–167). For being a highly receptive genre to political developments and social situations in the global context, when the globally dominant conventions of police procedurals are localized the genre’s responses to the feminist discourses are also appropriated in Turkey. The reason of depicting relatively empowered figures in police procedurals in comparison to the more stereotyped representation of women in Turkish TV could be related to this appropriation process. However, when these kinds of figures appear in the Turkish context, the series gives way to an environment in which womanhood is constantly under question and gender equality is only a pretence.

Depicting “the Phallic Girl” in Kanıt Kanıt is a Turkish forensic TV drama which started to be broadcast on free-to-air television channel Kanal D in 2010 and lasted for 100 episodes, ending in 2013. The series revolves around the investigations of two male detectives, chief inspector Orhan (Engin Benli) and inspector Selim (Deniz Celiloğlu) who work in the homicide bureau of Istanbul. Whereas Orhan is the wiser superior in this partnership in both rank and knowledge, Selim is the younger protégé who has anger management issues and a tendency to come up to conclusions way too quickly. The duo works in close cooperation with their female colleagues in the Turkish Institution of Forensic Medicine such as the chief forensic examiners who appear to be different characters in each season and the coroner, Ece (Ece Güzel). One of the significant figures behind the production of the series is Sevil Atasoy, who is a professor in forensic medicine. Atasoy not only works as a consultant for the show but is also the narrator who appears in special segments that interrupt the course of events. In these segments, Atasoy explains the complex forensic procedures that are conducted at that minute. She additionally tells true crime stories and gives practical information about health, hygiene and safety. She functions as a strong authority figure in the narrative who knows everything about forensic medicine and has absolute control. Having this kind of a strong female figure both on screen and behind the camera makes Kanıt pay more attention to creating a gender-balanced workplace in the narrative. Most of the forensic examiners who are seen in both key and minor roles appear to be clever and hardworking young women. Among them,

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Zeynep (Sera Tokdemir), who has been the chief analyst in the forensic laboratory until Episode 56, and her short-term replacement Bahar and ̇ Gamze (Inci Demirkaya) who has filled that position in Episode 66 until the finale, are the most prominent characters. In most of the episodes, as they conventionally explain the major findings from the forensic analysis that could alter the course of the ongoing investigation to Selim, their female colleagues are seen working in the background. In her special segments, Sevil Atasoy is also seen in this diegetic forensic laboratory while she informs the audiences with a direct address. At the same time, in every episode, the coroner Ece is visited by Orhan, who meets her in the morgue in order to get the autopsy results. Despite their regular appearances which significantly contribute to increasing the visibility of women in Turkish police procedural genre, these women are almost always seen within the premises of the Turkish Institution of Forensic Medicine. In contrast with their male colleagues who actively conduct their investigations in the field, the women mostly appear as passively processing the evidence that directly comes to the institution from the crime scene. Apart from these passive positionings, whereas Ece’s romantic feelings to Orhan is implicitly implied, both Zeynep and Gamze are introduced as love interests of Selim. Therefore, almost all women in pivotal roles in the series are included in the scenarios of heterosexual romance. Ayça (Seben Koçibey), who appears as a temporary addition to the team in Episode 36, could be listed as a majorly different character in comparison to her colleagues in the Institution of Forensic Medicine for being actively involved in pursuing cases in the field side by side with the male detectives. Even though she is originally an inspector working in Izmir, she comes to Istanbul in order to look into a murder which could be related to a case she works in Izmir about a potential serial killer. Ayça, who studied criminology in the United States and worked in Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Los Angeles, is portrayed as an educated, successful and clever young woman. She could be defined as what Angela McRobbie (2009) calls “the phallic girl” who “[…] gives the impression of having won equality with men by becoming like her male counterparts. But in this adoption of the phallus, there is no critique of masculine hegemony” (p.  83). By enjoying to drink rakı and eat heavily like her male counterparts, showing her intellectual and physical competence in policing in the field and becoming a possible love interest to Orhan, Ayça

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becomes the epitome of the phallic girl who regularly performs masculine rituals and preserves her desirability while doing all these. However, from the first moment of Ayça’s appearance in the crime scene, her strong presence in the narrative causes major conflicts between her and Selim who is highly threatened by her. Although it seems like the apparent reason behind their constant debate is their diverse methodological approaches to the cases due to Ayça’s inclination to mostly rely on “American” ways of policing, gender appears as another area that creates tension between them. In most of the episodes that they work together, Selim constantly makes jokes about Ayça which frequently touch on her doing a man’s job as a woman. He insists on not giving her enough space to work in the office or allowing her to use the board on which they gather all evidence together about the case. When Ayça uses the office windows to work on the case in an attempt to create herself a particular platform in the office, Orhan is involved in the quarrel by blaming her for causing trouble. Orhan is regularly seen blaming Ayça for acting individually and recklessly as they work on the serial killer case. In Episode 40, as a punishment for her irresponsible behaviors, Orhan physically handcuffs Ayça to the office chair in order to keep her away from the field for a day and leave her behind as he continues to investigate the case outside with Selim. Despite the possibility of turning into a feminist critique about the misogyny in the police force, Selim’s continuous quarrel with Ayça and Orhan’s tacitly eroticized hostility toward her are narrated in the series as an innocent initiation ceremony, which is mostly contextualized as a comic relief or an act of romantic attachment. This “boys will be boys” attitude of the series additionally confirms Ayça’s positioning in the narrative as the phallic girl. In this way, Kanıt not only misses out on the chance of criticizing male dominance in police procedural genre but affirms this dominance by killing Ayça in Episode 49  in a shoot-out as she attempts to protect Selim from getting shot. With this act, despite turning Ayça into a hero who sacrifices her life to protect her partner, the series implicitly confirms that working actively in the field side by side with her male colleagues is not a proper job for women who actually belong to the safe premises of the forensic laboratory. Consequently, it could be claimed that Kanıt is a Turkish police procedural which is designed with local dynamics that shape the gender experience and postfeminist motives. The continuous visibility of beautiful, well-educated, hard-working women in the Institute of Forensic Medicine

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creates a “pretence of gender equality” which looks good on the television screen. However, the series does not allow any feminist critique to reflect on Selim and Orhan’s discriminating approach to their female colleague. Besides, by eliminating Ayça from the narrative in a melodramatic manner, Kanıt not only removes the potential “female” competition from the equation but also affirms the idea that women could only survive in this place within the premises of the forensic lab, passively processing the evidence and waiting for their romantic love interests to stop by.

Localizing “Sarah Lund” in Cinayet Cinayet started to be broadcasted on the same TV channel with Kanıt in 2014 and cancelled after being broadcast for five episodes. Despite its relatively short period on air, it can be considered as a highly significant step taken in terms of gender equality in Turkish police procedural genre due to its portrayal of a female detective as the main character. By being adapted from the popular Danish crime drama Forbrydelsen (2007–2012), the series focuses on the murder of a young woman. The main character, Zehra, who is the Turkish version of Sarah Lund, is assigned to the case when she is about to start a new life with her fiancée and son in Azerbaijan. For being a licensed format adaptation, Cinayet follows the script of Forbrydelsen step by step but localizes certain aspects if deemed necessary. The formation of the strong female lead which appears to be the main focus of this localization process creates a recurrent tension between the original and the adapted text. In their study on transnational format adaptations, Edward Larkey et al. (2016) find out that womanhood turns into a battlefield in localizing the popular crime TV drama Monk (2002–2009) in the Turkish context as Galip Derviş (2013–2014). The preliminary findings show that each episode of the original text has to be stretched to approximately 90 minutes in Galip Derviş with local additions or modification due to the different duration of each episode in the original and adapted versions. As the original text is modified, “womanhood” becomes the major topic that pervades the locally made additions. In Galip Derviş, “womanhood” is mostly discussed with a concentration on the private life of Hülya, who is the assistant/partner of the male detective/consultant, Galip. Larkey et  al. state that in these extensions, Hülya’s life and sexuality as a divorced mother are constantly monitored and regulated by her own mother, Pervin, who does not exist in the original version as a character (pp. 8–9).

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A similar kind of practice could be found in Cinayet. The problems that Zehra struggles to handle regarding her fiancée and her son occupy a relatively more time in the Turkish version. In this way, Zehra’s position as a female detective is balanced with her portrayal as a compassionate mother and an enthusiastic future wife. However, these conventional roles start to shatter at the end of the first episode when Zehra is stuck with the case of the missing young woman and cannot make it to the airport to accompany her fiancée to Azerbaijan. When she chooses to stay for the case, she is shown as not only missing the flight but also missing the chance to be a wife. Whereas in the Danish original, Sarah Lund makes a prompt decision to stay on the case and says to her boyfriend that she cannot make it to the flight on the phone, in the Turkish version, Zehra seems dismissive and just says she will call him back and hangs up. The fiancée’s movements in the airport, waiting for her on the gate, are shown in detail in cross-cut with Zehra’s waiting for the car to be towed from the river as in such a way to put the blame on her for ruining her relationship with her fiancée. After missing her flight, Zehra and her son are seen starting to live with her grumpy father whose apartment is full of military memorabilia. Whereas in the Danish original, Sarah Lund’s family connection is her mother, in the Turkish version this mother figure is replaced with a father. This replacement emphasizes Zehra’s need of a manly figure in her life when the promise of her heterosexual union becomes ambiguous. As they live together, apart from pursuing the case, Zehra seems to be responsible of the domestic duties at her father’s apartment like cooking for three of them and hear his father’s constant judgmental comments about her motherhood and cooking. Besides, almost in a similar manner with the US version of Forbrydelsen (Akass 2015, pp. 743–754), Zehra has to face her son’s recurrent resentment about her prioritizing the job over him and constantly judges herself about the way of her relationship with her son in a melodramatic manner. Apart from her private life, Zehra’s womanhood is also partially negotiated in the workplace. When Zehra meets with her partner, Yılmaz, the Turkish equivalent of Jan Meyer, who has much more common features with Stephen Holder in the US version of Forbrydelsen, he makes direct comments about how unusual seeing a female commissar working in the homicide bureau is. Yılmaz says that “we,” referring to all men in general, do not distinguish women from men on duty. Still he adds that homicide bureau is not for women but he appreciates Zehra’s persistence in trying to do her best in a man’s job. As opposed to Yılmaz, her colleagues in the

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homicide bureau seem like appreciating her professionalism and hard work in a way that renders her gender insignificant. However, through this contrast, instead of being a feminist critique, Yılmaz’s commentary on Zehra’s womanhood is narrated only as a marker of his being annoying and pessimistic in nature. Similar to Ayça’s depiction in Kanıt, gender becomes a matter of conflict in the workplace only in particular instances which could be coded as a separate rather than a systematic issue or sexual tension which creates the prospect of a heterosexual romantic union. In her private life, Zehra’s womanhood is always questioned either by her father or by her son. This double entanglement places Zehra in an ambiguous position, stuck between more egalitarian and traditional versions of womanhood. Besides, while her actions as a daughter and a single mother are constantly criticized, Zehra does not give any serious response to these judgments and her melodramatic reactions as well as remorse toward “not being able to have it all” eliminates any potential feminist critique in the narrative. For being a pioneer in depicting a female detective as its protagonist in the Turkish context, Cinayet had a great potential to be a feminist text which would transform the police procedural genre in the Turkish context. However, by placing Zehra in an almost antifeminist environment, the series creates an ambivalence toward the feminist discourses that influence the police procedural genre in the global context. Besides, as Yeşim Kaptan (2018) mentions in her study on the reception of Cinayet, the cancellation of the series was mainly attributed to its female protagonist in the Turkish press which ended up with the demonization of leading actor, Nurgül Yeşilçay, with additional comments on her personality and private life, despite the fact that the series was cancelled due to low ratings as it was reported by the channel (p. 199). Together with the textual connotations and this contextual information, it could be claimed that the cancellation of Cinayet reinforces the perception of the police procedural as a dominantly masculine genre in the Turkish context.

Victimizing the Female Detective in Şahsiyet Unlike Kanıt and Cinayet, Şahsiyet could be defined among the forerunners of the new wave of Turkish police procedurals that appear on the recently established local video on demand (VoD) platforms like Blu TV and Puhu TV. Conventionally, every episode of Turkish TV series on freeto-air channels lasts approximately 150 minutes and each season is

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constituted of 45–50 episodes. Besides, due to the regulations of Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK), which are vaguely defined in the 8th article of the law number 6112, the depiction of tobacco products, alcoholic drinks, political situations, sexual intimacy and violence is strictly monitored in these series. Selin Tüzün Ateşalp (2016) explains that under these circumstances, auto-censorship is a highly common practice in Turkish television industry (p. 32). On the contrary, at the time of their establishment, TV series on these VoD platforms have been celebrated for following a different format in comparison to their equivalents in the free-to-air channels. Each episode of these TV series is approximately 60 minutes long and there are 8–12 episodes in each season similar to the productions of other VoD platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. In terms of censorship, these “digital series,” as they have been called in Turkey, have much more freedom to show cigarettes and alcoholic drinks, use vulgar language, include sexually explicit content and touch on politically sensitive issues. Police procedural appears to be a popular genre among this new wave of Turkish TV series which carry a great potential to overcome the conventional limits regarding the representation of women in the Turkish television. By revolving around the story of a female detective, Nevra (Cansu Dere), Şahsiyet gives the impression of putting this approach into practice. The series follows the serial murders that are committed by an old man named Agah Beyoğlu (Haluk Bilginer), who decides to kill everyone who is involved in an unsolved case of child molestation which happened in a small town called Kambura after he is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Since he is going to forget committing the crimes, Agah thinks that he would also be saved from the psychic and emotional weight of his actions. When he commits the murders, Agah leaves small notes on the bodies for Nevra, who is the only female detective in the homicide bureau. Şahsiyet is a series which is highly aware of feminist ideas and issues. By revolving around the revenge of an old man with Alzheimer’s disease who tries to shake the public memory about a concealed and forgotten case of sexual abuse against female children, the series invites the audiences to remember how these kinds of cases are treated in Turkish courts unfairly. So, there is a strong sense of social and political commentary embedded in the narrative of the series. The choice that Nevra makes at the end of the series to become a vigilante instead of bringing the killer into justice supports that sense of political critique against the downfall of the justice system in Turkey. However, it seems like the series prefers to put Nevra in

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an ambivalent position by prioritizing this critique over expressing feminist ideas. In Şahsiyet, Nevra’s name first appears in a conversation between two ̇ male detectives, Firuz (Fırat Topkorur) and Sefa (Ibrahim Selim), who are depicted as they were taking a leak at the urinals. They ask each other what they are going to do with “that broad.” In their conversations, they imply that Nevra is only assigned to the homicide bureau to showcase a woman for publicity while their male colleagues in great number have been crawling to be working there. They state that it is impossible to trust a woman on the field and she should get out of there as soon as possible but first she has to let them have sex with her. Nevra is seen for the first time as she sits in one of the cabins in the women’s bathroom overhearing this sexist conversation through the ventilation in melancholy and distress. Nevra is portrayed as a modern, independent, well-educated, upper-­ class woman. As her relationship with the investigative journalist, Ateş, shows, she also freely enjoys her sexuality and does not care about the traditional norms that monitor and control women in the Turkish context. All these characteristics make Nevra not only an example of “the modern nation-state model” in Şebnem Baran’s terms but also a perfect candidate to disseminate a modernized, gender equal image of the police force in the public eye. For that reason, later in the first episode, Nevra is seen being interviewed by a national channel as all her male colleagues watch her and make fun of her. When she is asked how she feels about being the only female detective in the homicide bureau, she lies in distress by saying it is a wonderful feeling to be working in an environment in which no one is discriminated based on gender or has to deal with sexist treatment. When her male colleagues hear what she says and make sure that she does not complain about the bureau on national television, they slowly return to their jobs. Nevra, who is seen being encouraged by their disinterest, goes off the rails and states that all her male colleagues support her to a great extent in a smiling face and she tries to be worthy of their support. Lying on national television is almost like an initiation ceremony for Nevra who does not get accepted by her male colleagues but becomes someone bearable to be around because she chose not to complain about how they treat her in the force. However, the tension between Nevra and her male colleagues, Firuz and Sefa, gets much more intense when she is forced to be included in the case. When they constantly question her abilities, even her literacy, sometimes Nevra is seen pushing back. By awakening feminist ideas and concerns, the atmosphere in the homicide bureau

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highly resembles the sexist treatment that Jane Tennison has to deal with in the beginning of the 1990s in the first installment of Prime Suspect. However, in contrast with the strength and determinism of Tennison, Nevra is mostly depicted as a sensitive and vulnerable woman like a fish out of water which even makes the audience question her abilities as a police detective and employment in the homicide bureau. The camera frequently gets closer to her face to capture her reactions like sadness, anxiety and discomfort on the job not only because of the sexist treatment of her male colleagues but because of the violence and gore that comes with the job itself. For instance, when Agah leaves a note for her after committing his first murder and Nevra returns to the field from the desk job that she is assigned to, she is seen with tears in her eyes in the crime scene as her male coworkers smoothly do their jobs. Later she leaves the crime scene and vomits outside in distress. Agah plays a vital role in empowering Nevra throughout the narrative. He is depicted not only as a figure who calls out Nevra to be involved in the case but also as the one who forces her to remember her repressed childhood trauma with each act of killing. As Nevra gets closer to figure out that the murders are related to a case of sexual abuse in Kambura, she starts to be depicted as a more empowered figure. For instance, when she addresses the women in Kambura and invites them to come forward if they have ever been raped or sexually abused or talks about the difficulty of being a woman in a very conservative town like Kambura, her empowerment becomes much more apparent. In those moments, Nevra is seen getting strength from finally being able to talk out loud about these kinds of issues and have the authority to make it stop. However, Nevra’s empowerment comes to a halt when she realizes that her childhood friend, Reyhan, is not the only victim of sexual abuse but she herself is also raped by the same person. With this last minute reveal, the series places Nevra in an ambivalent position by victimizing her in a melodramatic manner. This ambivalent position becomes much more complicated when Nevra meets with Agah in the setting of an aquarium in the last episode. In this setting, Nevra is led by Agah who keeps talking and narrating the events that happened in the past in front of Nevra who silently listens to and follows him. When Nevra finds out that Agah captured Cemil, the man who raped her in the past, she takes her gun out without knowing to whom she is going to target. In the outfit of the serial killer, Nevra faces her rapist as Agah keeps talking in the background, leading her to shoot him in a very calm manner. When Nevra hesitates by stating that she is not a killer and

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Cemil has to be brought to justice, Agah starts to mansplain her how she confuses the term justice with law. Mansplaining is something that the series frequently resorts to at the moments of crisis. Nevra’s relationship with her superior, Tolga (Necip Memilli), could be described in similar terms since he is more than once seen explaining Nevra how to be a homicide detective or asking her philosophical questions which are answered by himself in long monologues without a glimpse of feminist critique. In this final scene with Agah, Nevra is portrayed as silently listening to him justifying the act of killing and crying or mumbling a few sentences as Agah keeps talking for almost three minutes and forces Nevra to choose between killing him or Cemil. The scene fades out with the sound of a gun going off without showing its target. After the intertitle informs the audiences that a year has passed Nevra is seen in dark makeup and clothes carrying a stroller and visiting his father in the nursing home where Agah also stays. As the hair, makeup and clothes sexualize Nevra, the stroller that she carries signifies her status as a mother. When she approaches Agah and lights a cigarette, the scenes that come next and show Nevra in the serial killer’s costume underline that the duo continues their vigilante killings with Agah’s guidance. Nevra’s depiction in these last moments of Şahsiyet resembles the postfeminist portrayal of strong, independent women in popular advertisements in Turkey. As he focuses on the advertising campaign of a feminine hygiene product in the context of postfeminism, Alparslan Nas (2016) explains that womanhood is celebrated in this campaign, with various kinds of empowering slogans in a feminist manner without addressing the difficulties that actual women face in Turkey on everyday basis. Under this seeming feminism, women are defined as empowered figures who could achieve having careers and families at the same time. Nas also underlines that women in the advertisement campaign “are slim, fit, young, able-bodied and ‘white’, not in the racial sense but in terms of their privileged class status and ethnic identities in Turkey’s socio-economic landscape” (p. 838). Although Şahsiyet achieves to make a social and political commentary on the realities of Turkey, its seemingly empowered depiction of Nevra in the finale which is marked by turning into a hired gun for Agah and a mother at the same time as if this portrayal represents “having it all” for her remains problematic.

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Conclusion As it is discussed in this chapter, Turkish police procedurals are formed by taking the globally dominant conventions of the genre as templates and simultaneously localizing these conventions. Reworking on gender issues becomes a significant part of this localization process since the genre’s openness to social and political commentary allows police procedurals to respond to debates about sexual discrimination and gender equality in the workplace. Beginning from the 1970s, police procedural genre has responded to the changing role and place of women within the society through the storylines of female detectives by building connections with feminist issues and ideas. In Turkish police procedurals, the culturally specific experiences as well as conventional ways of representing gender have an impact on building these connections and depicting female police detectives accordingly. As the findings of the case studies show, despite their apparent visibility, female detectives in Turkish police procedurals frequently find themselves in ambiguous environments in which their seemingly modern and empowered positions are doubly entangled with traditional roles that are attributed to them by patriarchal values. The narrations of their struggles in the workplace as innocent quarrels, single incidents, comic reliefs or sexual tension diminish the potential to associate those challenges with feminist debates. Besides, as it is seen in Şahsiyet, what has started as a feminist commentary could end up being an endeavor of creating a postfeminist outlook for the character who appears to be individually “chosen” a particular pathway. As these outcomes indicate, police procedural genre still preserves its masculine form in the Turkish context. But this form waits to be challenged by the creation of strong female leads which are shown in an environment of diversity and multiplicity.

Note 1. Feminism has historically fought for gender equality in many different ways by concentrating on various issues in different eras. Whereas the right to vote could be defined as the main issue of first-wave feminism, the second-­ wave feminism mostly focused on issues regarding female independence and sexuality as well as definitions of womanhood. According to Angela McRobbie (2009), together with the rising discourse about the unpopularity of feminism and female individualisation, feminism started to be disar-

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ticulated. Under the influence of this shifting discourse, young women are discouraged to be politically engaged with feminist struggles and the solidarity among them diminishes (p. 26).

References Akass, K. (2015). The Show That Refused to Die: The Rise and Fall of AMC’s The Killing. Continuum, 29(5), 743–754. ̇ Akçalı, E., & Inceoğ lu, I.̇ (2018). Televizyon Dizilerinde Toplumsal Cinsiyet Eşitliği ̇ ̇ Araştırması, TÜSIAD-T, 03 – 591. Istanbul: Sis Matbaacılık. Arat, Y. (2010). Women’s Rights and Islam in Turkish Politics: The Civil Code Amendment. The Middle East Journal, 64(2), 235–251. Baran, Ş. (2017). Crossing the Western Borders: Women of Son. SERIES International Journal of TV Serial Narratives, 3(2), 43–62. Brunsdon, C. (1998). Structure of Anxiety: Recent British Television Crime Fiction. Screen, 39(3), 223–243. Brunsdon, C. (2013). Television Crime Series, Women Police, and Fuddy-duddy Feminism. Feminist Media Studies, 13(3), 375–394. Creeber, G. (2001). Cigarettes and Alcohol: Investigating Gender, Genre, and Gratification in Prime Suspect. Television & New Media, 2(2), 149–166. Creeber, G. (2006). The Joy of Text?: Television and Textual Analysis. Critical Studies in Television, 1(1), 81–88. Emniyet dosyalarından. (1988). Cumhuriyet Newspaper, 28 September, p. 4. Feasey, R. (2008). Masculinity and Popular Television. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gill, R. (2007). Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(2), 147–166. Hansen, K. T., Peacock, S., & Turnbull, S. (2018). Down These European Mean Streets: Contemporary Issues in European Television Crime Drama. In K.  T. Hansen, S.  Peacock, & S.  Turnbull (Eds.), European Television Crime Drama and Beyond (pp. 1–19). Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Kandiyoti, D. (1987). Emancipated But Unliberated? Reflections on the Turkish Case. Feminist Studies, 13(2), 317–338. Kaptan, Y. (2018). A Crime Drama Between Fidelity and Cultural Specificity. In K.  T. Hansen, S.  Peacock, & S.  Turnbull (Eds.), European Television Crime Drama and Beyond (pp. 193–210). Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Larkey, E., Digeon, L., & Er, I. (2016). Measuring Transnationalism: Comparing TV Formats Using Digital Tools. VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture, 5(9), 72–92. Lotz, A.  D. (2001). Postfeminist Television Criticism: Rehabilitating Critical Terms and Identifying Postfeminist Attributes. Feminist Media Studies, 1(1), 105–121.

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McCabe, J., & Akass, K. (2006). Feminist Television Criticism: Notes and Queries. Critical Studies in Television, 1(1), 108–120. McRobbie, A. (2009). The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage. Mittell, J. (2001). A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory. Cinema Journal, 40(3), 3–24. Nas, A. (2016). Glocal Limits Of Postfeminist Advertising: The Case Of Orkid’s #Likeagirl Campaign. Journal of International Social Research, 9(45), 833–842. Turnbull, S. (2014). TV Crime Drama. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Tüzün Ateşalp, S. (2016). Nitelikli Televizyon: Medya Profesyonellerinin Perspektifinden Türk Televizyon Dizilerinde Nitelik. Galatasaray Üniversitesi ̇ Ileti-ş -im Dergisi, 25, 9–37.

PART III

On the Long Journey: The Transnationalization and Expansion of Turkish TV Industry

CHAPTER 8

Continuities and Changes in the Transnational Broadcasts of TRT Gökçen Karanfil

Introduction This chapter looks at media transnationalism as a process, and its implications on the visual broadcast media in Turkey with a particular focus on the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT). Since its establishment in 1964 and its first TV broadcasts in 1968, TRT has served as the public service broadcaster of Turkey. TRT was the sole broadcaster of the country until the early 1990s when cathartic events broke its monopoly. In this sense, the turn of the 1990s marks a monumental time in the history of Turkish broadcasting. With the advent in satellite technologies, the flourishing of commercial broadcasters, and the deregulation of broadcasting, the media environment in Turkey has gone through tremendous changes. TRT has been dramatically affected by these transformations. First and foremost, these developments have resulted in TRT’s loss of monopoly and grip over the national audience. Furthermore, this turmoil in the broadcasting scene has become one (among a number of other) factor triggering the transnationalization of TRT in the early 1990s. As a

G. Karanfil (*) Faculty of Communication, Izmir University of Economics, Izmir, Turkey © The Author(s) 2020 Y. Kaptan, E. Algan (eds.), Television in Turkey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46051-8_8

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result, since the last decade of the twentieth century, TRT has gradually adopted a transnational broadcasting scheme alongside its identity as a national broadcaster. This process of transnationalization of TRT forms the focus of this chapter. It is my contention that TRT’s transnational itinerary has evolved over the years and that transnationalization of TRT needs to be understood under two completely different broadcasting agendas. Throughout the chapter, I attempt to engage with both these agendas. Hence, the scope of this chapter can said to be two-pronged. In the first section, I elaborate on TRT’s attempts at engaging with the Turkish diaspora around the world. I argue that this—broadcasting to the Turkish diasporic viewer—is what starts the transnationalization process of TRT in the early 1990s and still prevails as one of the two “defining schemas” of TRT’s transnational broadcasts. Following from here, in the second section, I articulate how, in more recent years, TRT sets out to exert a Turkish cultural presence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. I attempt to show the rising prominence of neo-Ottomanist cultural policies behind TRT’s contemporary broadcasts and transnational expansions. I suggest that over the past ten years, neo-Ottomanism as both a foreign policy and a cultural policy pushed by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has become the second “defining schema” of TRT’s transnational broadcasts. Methodologically, I mainly make use of the relevant secondary literature complemented by an institutional analysis of TRT. In order to develop and substantiate my arguments, I attempt to shed light on the motivations behind TRT’s transnational broadcasts. More specifically, I engage with some of the most prominent transnational expansions of TRT such as TRT-INT, TRT Türk, TRT Avaz, TRT El Arabia, and TRT World, and I attempt to analyze and contextualize their mission statements, target audiences, and the content of their broadcasts. The chapter does not draw on detailed content analysis or audience research; however, I do give examples from programs broadcast by these stations and I elaborate on what this content might be geared toward. To sum up, this chapter traces the ventures of TRT as a player in the transnational broadcasting environment within the last three decades. I suggest it is important to do this for a number of reasons. TRT lends itself as an instructive and informative case with regard to two different forms of transnational broadcasting—as a diasporic media and as an apparatus of soft power. Studying TRT offers us a better understanding on the ways in which national, regional, and

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transnational media spheres and flows crossover and are interrelated. Recognizing the dynamics behind TRT’s transnationalization helps us reach insights with regard to the global media ecumene’s impact on public service broadcasters.

Transnational Broadcasts of TRT and the Turkish Diaspora Although political mobilizations among migrant populations are not a completely new phenomenon, the importance of diasporas in international and national politics has significantly increased over the past few decades. Scholars point to the emergence of a new form of politics that transcend and do not depend on the territorial boundaries of the state (Agnew 1999; Goldring 1998; Itzigsohn 2000; Jacobson 1996; Karpathakis 1999). In the contemporary global order where the scale of mobile populations that move across boundaries has peaked, and where the dissemination of ideas, finances, and people have become unrestrained by geographic boundaries, there are a variety of ways “in which internationally dispersed social groups mobilize and undertake a range of electoral and non-electoral political activities” (Vertovec 2005, p. 5). Examples of political activities exercised among diasporas include lobbying in host countries to influence homeland politics, engaging in mass protests about homeland-related issues, sending remittances and mass capitals to the homeland, supporting or assailing terrorism, and taking sides on domestic violent conflicts. As a consequence of these politically and economically influential manifestations of diasporic groups, these internationally dispersed populations have now become highly significant for many countries that have sizable diasporas. As Steven Vertovec notes Many countries, such as Israel and Armenia, regard their diasporas as strategically vital political assets, while others, such as India, the Philippines, and other migrant-sending countries, have been recognising the massive contributions their diaspora make through remittances. (2005, p. 1)

Regardless to say, within this context, the Turkish diaspora also has an increasing significance for Turkey in relation to politically, economically, and culturally charged issues. These issues include but are not limited to the Turkish-Kurdish ethnic conflict, proliferating “brain-drain,” politicized Islam, the process toward EU membership, the accumulation of an

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Islamic capital, the potential of expatriate-electorate, financial remittances, and—depending on how Turkish ethnicity is perceived—the construction of a transcendent Turkish nationalism among the former Soviet Union countries. Furthermore, Turkey has also been significantly affected—both domestically and in the international arena of politics—by financial and political activisms of other diasporic groups and organizations such as the Kurdish and the Armenian diasporas. In this sense, toward the end of the twentieth century, the Turkish state felt that informing and mobilizing its “national” diaspora had become much more significant, in terms of both mobilizing it for its own interests and for establishing a counterforce from afar, against the financial and political pressures of other diasporic groups— which it perceived as threats to its solidarity. In light of all these developments, throughout the 1990s, Turkey started engaging in transnational broadcasts through its public service broadcaster TRT—initially to forge connections with the Turkish diaspora that was dispersed around the world. Turkish Radio and Television was established in 1964, and it founded its first television channel in 1968. Kaptan and Karanfil suggest, “as in many developing countries, public service broadcasting in Turkey, as a state-sponsored network, was introduced as part of a nationalist agenda in the process of citizen forming” (2013, p. 2332). Until the emergence of commercial TV stations in early 1990s, Turkish television was under the monopoly of TRT. For decades TRT’s broadcasts were produced for the perceived needs and desires of an imagined national viewer. The first Director-General of TRT, Adnan Öztrak, emphasized the cultural and educational ends of the public broadcasting service as: “We are obliged to use this powerful medium in order to advance the revolutions of Atatürk which aimed to carry the Turkish Nation to the level of contemporary civilization as well as promoting the world view and life styles which were brought about by them” (Kırık 1999, p.186). In this sense, since its establishment, TRT was deployed to nationalize and modernize the public (Çaplı 1996). Regardless of the shifting ideologies in line with the changes in government, an elitist takes on broadcasting geared toward both modernizing the viewer and promoting a national consciousness has predominantly been a continuous principle of TRT throughout the decades. TRT intended, according to Aksoy and Robins, to forge “a cultural industry that would work to create a Turkish cultural identity in conformity with the elite’s modern and now ‘official’ image” (1997, p. 1944). Despite this “national” agenda still being prevalent, with the turn of the 1990s, TRT

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has stepped into the arena of transnational broadcasting via satellite dishes to seek its audiences afar and to reach the Turkish expatriate wherever he or she may be. According to Aksoy and Robins (2000), this newly emergent media was in those years a part of the process of negotiating new cultural spaces both among Turks and among Turks of the diaspora. TRT’s ambition was to reach, and connect, these widely dispersed populations, both Turkic and Turkish, and in the process to make itself one of the world’s largest transnational media organizations—broadcasting, as it expressed it in one of its brochures, ‘from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Wall of China’. In the case of the Turkic republics (Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) the aim was to use satellite television to re-establish cultural and political relations that had been severed during the Soviet era—relations based on linguistic affinity, a common religious culture and a shared Turkic heritage. (Aksoy and Robin 2000, p. 346)

The three transnational expansions of TRT that broadcast to the Turkish-speaking populations around the world throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s were TRT-INT, TRT-Avrasya, and TRT TÜRK. TRT-­ INT, launched in 1990 as the first transnational enterprise of Turkey’s public service broadcaster, was the most long-lived and arguably the most prominent among the three stations. In its early years, TRT-INT broadcast mainly to Turkish migrants residing in the continent Europe. In 1992, two years following the launch of TRT-INT, TRT-Avrasya was launched as the second transnational channel of TRT. (In fact, TRT-Avrasya was an offshoot of TRT-INT.) This channel was planned to target the Turkic Republics, which emerged with the collapse of the Soviet Union such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kirgizstan. In 2002, TRT-Avrasya changed its name to TRT TÜRK TV. In 1999, TRT broadened its reach to Turkish migrants in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand as well. Aksoy and Robins suggest that “TRT—as the agent, effectively, of the Turkish state—has been involved in a systematic strategy of cultural transnationalisation. It is a strategy that has aspired to connect together the imagined community of Turks at a global scale” (2000, pp. 346–347). Looking back retrospectively at these early attempts of TRT’s transnationalism, one can argue that an important amount of the content of these channels was a direct replica of programs broadcast on the national channel of TRT. Nevertheless, there was still a genuine effort on behalf of TRT

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to produce content actually geared to the needs and wants of the Turkish diaspora. In this sense, some portions of these two channels’ broadcast segments were directly targeted to the diasporic viewer. Having said this, these channels were still broadcasting from within a national broadcasting logic. A logic that perceived the audience as a Turkish national, neglecting to a great extent both their migratory experiences and the heterogeneity of these viewers concerning their diverse ethnic and religious belongings. There was a constant attempt in these broadcasts—complemented by policies and regulations—to nationalize and Turkify the diasporic viewer. The broadcasting goals of TRT-INT were as follows: • To strengthen the ties between our citizens living overseas and Turkey and Turkish culture • To represent all aspects of Turkey and Turkish nationals; to raise their educational and cultural levels • To help Turkish nationals around the world preserve their language, religion, morals, unity, and solidarity • To maintain their connections with the Turkish Republic by strengthening their spirits and showing how their various problems can be resolved • By introducing the cultures of their countries of residence, helping them live in harmony with their host nations • To keep our citizens informed by countering false and harmful propaganda like that from the Armenians1 and other destructive, separatist, and reactionary groups that wish to do our nation harm. (Karanfil 2011) It is clear from these goals that TRT-INT—this “agent of the Turkish state”—was concerned directly with what it saw as the cultural well-being of its viewers. The problematique here was that this cultural well-being was an imagined one. That is, the broadcasting goals of the station were exclusively geared toward emphasizing a Turkish agenda and taking the national context of Turkey as the main reference point. This clearly reflected the broadcasting tradition of TRT-INT’s national counterpart— TRT. As I have previously suggested, in times of its monopoly TRT had followed a broadcasting tradition that was always elitist and paternalist, designing programs according to what the state elite believed the public needed. As Kırık suggests, “TRT had committed itself to a mission which might be referred to as nation-building and/or citizen-forming” (1999,

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p. 87). In other words, TRT forged its own imagined audience and broadcasted to them—deciding by itself what they needed and desired. I would argue here that the case had been more or less the same for the transnational enterprises of TRT as well. On a similar note, while these viewers were mainly Turkish migrants—either guest workers or permanent settlers—who had migrated to Western European countries, Australia, and Canada between late 1960s and early 1970s, it was impossible to speak of ethnically and religiously homogenous communities of Turkish migrants in any part of the world. To the contrary, there was a mix of Kurdish, Turkish, Alevi, and Sunni individuals and smaller communities. TRTs broadcasts almost never attended to this diversity. Having said all this, it is still important to acknowledge that these transnational enterprises of TRT were in many ways synchronizing the trans-­ border viewer with the homeland and a transnational Turkishness. As Appadurai asserts, the combination of mass migration with mass-mediated images from the homeland creates a “new order of instability in the production of modern subjectivities” (1996, p.  4). TRT-INT was distinguished from commercial transnational TV channels from Turkey (such as Euro D, Atv Avrupa, Show Türk, Euro Star, Samanyolu TV Avrupa, Kanal 7 INT, and TGRT INT, which all started broadcasting abroad during 1990s) particularly by first-generation migrants, both because it approached the diasporic viewer as a citizen rather than as a consumer and because it had—even if in a limited way—content that was directly targeted at the Turkish migrants in Europe. TRT-INT, as Turkey’s public service broadcasting channel, provided Turkish programming, including news, movies, drama, and variety shows. These broadcasts included programs that focused on meeting the legal, social, and financial needs of these migrants such as informing them of their retirement rights in Turkey, their citizenship issues, voting rights, voting opportunities, and health issues along with entertainment forms that were aimed at strengthening their affinities to the homeland. There were programs that gave advice to diasporic viewers on legal issues concerning family law, labor law, consumer law, medical law, international law, and the Turkish citizenship law. The content of these programs distinguished TRT’s transnational broadcasts from channels that were broadcasting solely with commercial imperatives. Programs of this sort were quite functional from the perspective of the producer—in this case the Turkish state. They became very important apparatuses to evoke and reproduce both a belonging and a tie to a

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territorialized nation and a national culture. The references that they made were always to a Turkish national identity or a Turkish national culture in their conventional senses. The migrant viewers targeted by these programs, however, had not been living within the national context of Turkey for decades. While they were people of Turkish origin living in Germany (as an example), they were neither Turkish nor German; they were neither nor both (Kaya 2002). While some of them were subjects of diaspora (particularly the first generation), some were deterritorialized transnationals. To add to this, the ethnic, religious, cultural, and political diversity among the Turkish diaspora as discussed above made the situation even more problematic. Hence, many programs broadcasted by TRT-INT as mentioned above on the one hand were aimed to forge a virtual tie between the territorialized Turkish culture/identity—for mainly the first-generation migrants— and on the other stipulated a form of Turkishness, which to a large extent was irrelevant—for mainly the migrants of younger generations (Karanfil 2011). Perhaps this was why TRT programs were mainly consumed by first-generation migrants, and were almost totally ignored by younger members of the diaspora (RTÜK 2007). These were not programs that comprehended the social existences of these diasporic viewers, rather, they simply tended to formulate the migrant as a Turk (at times even in the sense of an ethnic identity) living abroad. In addition to the TRT neglecting to attend to the migratory needs of these viewers, the TRT “avoided” the ethnic and religious identity demands of these migrant viewers—particularly considering the sensitivity of the dispute and conflict between the “Kurdish issue” in homeland Turkey. TRT executives also seemed to be aware of their weaknesses and were in search of remedies to these problems. In an interview conducted with a high-level executive of TRT-INT, it was claimed that There are two reasons why we haven’t been able to address our citizens abroad as we would have liked to. One, because of a number of problems we have been experiencing with the audience research regarding our viewers in Europe we have not been able to gear our programs directly in relation to the needs and wants of our citizens abroad. I must admit, although the letters we receive from our viewers are usually positive and indicate gratitude for our broadcasts, my colleagues and I are still concerned we are experiencing problems in regard to what the audience needs are. However, we are aware of this problem and currently working very hard towards remedies.

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Secondly, because of the limited budget we have, unfortunately most of our programs are produced here in Turkey. We have only recently opened up a studio in Germany. This as you can imagine, takes away from the appeal of our programs for our citizens abroad. This is another issue we are trying to solve. (Karanfil 2007)2

Therefore, these programs based on the conventional context of the nation were effective in promoting forms of “banal nationalism” (Billig, 1995) among these diasporic viewers. Michael Billig uses his renowned phrase to describe “the ideological habits which enable the established nations of the West to be reproduced” (1995, p. 6). Most of the broadcasts of these satellite stations—because they were produced from within a national broadcasting mentality—were laden with powerful texts that reproduced conventional national identifications and cultures, rather than attending to the particular social realities of migrant viewers. One can argue that the content of these programs broadcast through TRT’s transnational enterprises functioned to reinforce and reproduce a sense of nationality, and a sense of a nation, both in their conventional senses— built around a strong sense to belong to a monolithic national identity that does not accommodate any ethnic, religious, political, and, for that matter, diasporic or transnational diversity. These broadcasts were geared toward forging a diaspora that was ready to reach out to in times of a crisis or in times of a need for support from a politicized or economically uplifted group of migrants. Indeed, the Turkish diaspora has demonstrated, on many occasions, its influence over both domestic and international affairs of the Turkish nation-state. For example, Turkey’s economy and politics have been directly impacted by the substantial financial aid which flowed from the Turkish diaspora following the 1999 earthquake, the absence and contributions of expatriate votes that helped shape the 2002 and 2007 national election results, and the proliferation of an Islamic material and intellectual capital among the diaspora. As Vertovec (2005), among others, also argue, state-run transnational broadcasts from homeland—by constantly rejuvenating ethnic and territorial long-distance nationalism— make the process of mobilizing diasporas a much more convenient one. Two years after the establishment of TRT-INT, in 1992, the second transnational channel of the Turkish public broadcasting service was launched. TRT-Avrasya was planned as a channel that would target the Turkic Republics, which emerged with the collapse of the Soviet Union: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kirgizstan. According to Aksoy and Robins,

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“this channel was a weapon of foreign policy in a newly reactivated, and strategically important, geopolitical region” (2000, p. 346). The viewers in this region were perceived as sharing a broadly imagined Turkish ethnicity and culture. In this sense, the pan-Turkic aspirations of the Turkish state clearly reflected on this channel as a tool for soft power. It needs to be realized here that after the collapse of the Ottoman empire and the establishment of the Turkish republic, in line with the rise of nationalist ideologies around the world, the Turkish state denounced Islam as the common denominator of Turkey and pushed forth Turkishness in its place. The driving incentive behind the establishment and the broadcasts of TRT-Avrasya was this pan-Turkic ideal. After broadcasting under the name TRT-Avrasya for a decade, in 2002 TRT-Avrasya changed its name to TRT Türk. The aim in the establishment of TRT Türk was to become a news-, information-, and education-oriented transnational agent of the Turkish state which had an international reputation and effectiveness. TRT Türk broadcasted 24 hours live and had four major news bulletins every day. The station also had 3:00 AM news broadcast, which aimed to establish the station as a point of reference. All of its broadcasts were in Turkish, with the understanding that there were more than 250 million people around the world who spoke Turkish or its vernaculars. The main slogan of the station was “watch the world in Turkish.” One can similarly argue that TRT Türk’s broadcasts were also geared toward disseminating a national consciousness. Particularly when the channel was targeting the Turkic Republics (when it was broadcasting as TRT-Avrasya), this project was geared toward not only Turkish citizens abroad per se but also toward the citizens of the recently formed Turkic Republics who were also imagined as belonging to a Turkish ethnic origin. The broadcasting goals of TRT TÜRK were listed as below, which I believe clearly unravels the intention behind establishing and maintaining this station for close to a decade. • Making sure that the various potentialities of Turkey and the Turkic States are introduced and promoted through programs targeting the Caucasus and Central Asia • Establishing a unity of language and thought between Turkey and the other Turkic Republics, to enhance the solidarity, cooperation, and feelings of synergy between these countries

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No matter what the content of these media was, and no matter how irrelevant this content might have been to the actual needs and migratory experiences of these dispersed viewers, the accessibility of TRT’s transnational expansions via cable and satellite has indeed affected the lives of many viewers of Turkish-speaking background (Karanfil 2007, 2009; Aksoy and Robins 2000, 2002, 2003; Ogan 2001). In a study conducted by Radyo ve Televizyon Üst Kurulu / Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) in 2007, there were approximately 600 households out of 5000 survey participants from Turkish background in Germany that had access to satellite televisions broadcasting from Turkey (RTÜK 2007). This study aimed at researching the television consumption patterns of Turkish migrants living in Germany. According to this same research, it was indicated that 66.3% of Turkish migrants in this country preferred to watch Turkish television (RTÜK 2007). This translates to one out of every three Turkish migrants in Germany consuming Turkish satellite television more than any other form of media. For the diasporic subject, transnational media have played an important role in the production and reproduction of dynamic cultures and cultural identities, produced in constant change. As Aksoy and Robins have put it, transnational media—for the Turkish-speaking populations in Europe— “has had very significant implications for how migrants experience their lives, and for how they think and feel about their experiences” (2003, p.  89). With satellite television from Turkey (although its content was more often than not strictly “national”), it has become much easier for Turkish migrants to imagine and experience both a diasporic space of their own in the host nation and to tap into a diverse array of specific ways of being Turkish which distinguish the members of the diaspora from each other. This has become the case because, one way or another, these broadcasts have depicted to the migrant viewer the flux in Turkish society, disrupting the “frozen image of the homeland.” Regardless of their content, transnational media from Turkey offered these viewers much more than just the option of choosing between the homeland and the hostland. It basically offered them one among many forms of subjectivity (Karanfil 2009; Aksoy and Robins 2000; Ogan 2001). According to Aksoy and Robins, through an engagement with transnational media forms, viewers “extend their horizons of experience of involvement. …moving beyond the frame of national society” (Aksoy and Robins 2000, p. 36). As a concluding remark on this section, I would argue that TRT’s transnational broadcasts have contributed not only to the identity projects of the

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migrant viewer, but also to their connections both among each other and with the homeland. Up until this point, I have focused on the “defining schemas” of TRT’s transnationalization—its broadcasts geared toward the diasporic and transnational viewers dispersed around the world. In the following pages, I turn to what I have referred to in the Introduction of this chapter, as the second “defining schema” in TRT’s transnational broadcasts. Here, I shift my focus to the ways in which TRT has become an instrument of the AKP government, working toward exerting a cultural presence in the Middle East region under the rubric of neo-Ottomanist cultural policies.

Transnational Broadcasts and Soft Power Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, transnational broadcasts that targeted Turkish-speaking viewers dispersed around the world became an integral part of TRTs broadcasting agenda. For nearly two decades, through TRT-­ INT, TRT-Avrasya, and later TRT Türk, the public service broadcaster reached both members of the Turkish diaspora and populations in different geographies of the world speaking Turkish or its vernaculars. Within the last ten years, however, TRT became imbued with a new transnational endeavor. A new form of transnationalism started becoming an indispensable component of TRT’s trans-border broadcasting scheme, which was fueled by the incentive to increase the prominence of Turkey in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region, and to establish a cultural presence in this geographical location. This transformation in TRT’s transnational broadcasts needs to be contextualized within the contemporary political agenda of the country. Following the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) coming to power in 2002, a shift to conservative politics started becoming visible in both national and international politics of Turkey. This new form of politics was labeled as neo-Ottomanism. With the turn of 2007 general elections, neo-­ Ottomanism became a driving force behind Turkey’s international cultural policies. It is beyond the scope of this study to unpack in detail neo-­ Ottomanism as a political ideology. However, a brief backdrop on the topic is crucial to make sense of TRT’s more recent transnational broadcasting policies. It may be argued that the idea of neo-Ottomanism germinated during Turgut Özal’s presidency in the mid-1980s, following the 1980 military coup in the form of Turkish-Islamic synthesis. In general, one can refer to neo-Ottomanism as the “revival of the Islamic imperial

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past in Turkish present” (Karanfil and Eğilmez 2017). Turgut Özal deployed the idea of neo-Ottomanism due to mainly two reasons: first, to accommodate the identity claims of ethnic and religious minorities and oppositions in the country through the ideology’s emphasis on “pluralism” (Yavuz 2016, p. 444), and, second, to mobilize the idea of a shared Ottoman past and Islam in order to expand Turkey’s market under neo-­ liberal pressures (Altunışık 2009, pp. 181–182). While in the early years of this ideology the emphasis on a shared past and culture was evident, Turgut Özal never fully jettisoned Turkey’s commitment to Kemalist secularism and Western ideals such as preserving close relations with the United States and the EU (Öniş 2011, p. 49; Altunışık 2009, pp. 182–183; Yavuz 2016, p. 444). Neo-Ottomanism became much more prominent, and more importantly, transformed to a certain extent with AKP’s coming to power in 2002 and the party’s second consecutive success in the 2007 general elections. As Al-Ghazzi and Kraidy have suggested, “AKP embraced a Turkey-­ centric policy of projecting Turkish self-confidence politically and economically, which has come to be known as ‘neo-Ottomanism.’ A key notion in neo-Ottoman discourse is ‘strategic depth,’ a combination of historical resonance and geographic scale” (2013, p.  2344). Under the scheme of neo-Ottomanist politics, Turkey turned away from the West and relations with neighboring Arab and Islamic countries started becoming a priority. According to Al-Ghazzi and Kraidy, Turkey’s minister of foreign affairs, Ahmet Davutoğlu, explained his country’s neo-Ottoman foreign policy doctrine as follows: [T]he adoption of a new discourse and diplomatic style, which has resulted in the spread of Turkish soft power in the region. Although Turkey maintains a powerful military due to its insecure neighborhood, we do not make threats. Instead, Turkish diplomats and politicians have adopted a new language in regional and international politics that prioritizes Turkey’s civil-­ economic power. (2013, p. 2344)

It was during this period that “Ottoman motifs in the fields of art, design, architecture, fashion, literature, film, and television,” with “festi̇ vals celebrating Ottoman milestones like the conquest of Istanbul,” and “new bank notes upon which Ottoman figures are emblazoned” have become the primary reflections of this new policy in social and cultural spaces (Fisher-Onar 2011, p.  470). As Al-Ghazzi and Kraidy, among

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others, articulate on the ways in which the AKP elite have envisaged neo-­ Ottomanist ideology, they claim that neo-Ottomanism—through the deployment of numerous popular media forms—has become a “nation brand” (2013). According to the authors: The AKP-led government’s focus on soft power to promote its economic and political interests has resulted in turning neo-Ottomanism into a nation brand that evocatively articulates a Turkey that is European, Islamic, moral, politically influential, and economically successful—the neo-Ottoman cool brand. (2013, p. 2348)

In line with all these developments, with the turn of 2010 a radical shift in TRT’s transnational broadcasts started taking form. Motivated by AKP’s foreign policies, TRT imbued with a new errand to expand its broadcast to the Islamic and Arabic-speaking viewers in and around the MENA region. Within this context, in 2009, TRT Avaz was founded (perhaps as a follow-up to TRT-Avrasya) to pronounce the visibility of Turkey among the post-Soviet Turkic Republics. Consecutively, in 2010, TRT established TRT-ET-Turkiyye (which was later renamed as TRT El Arabia) to reach the Arabic-speaking and Islamic world with its broadcasts. These two expansions of TRT “are excellent examples for the ways in which, through realizing the opportunities offered by the transnationalizing media ecologies around the world, AKP deployed the public service broadcaster of Turkey to disseminate its transnational agenda and to exert a form of soft power in the MENA region” (Karanfil and Eğilmez 2017, p. 20). TRT Avaz “was established in 2009 to reach a population of approximately 250 million, dispersed in a geography ranging from the Balkans to the Middle Asia and the Middle East to the Caucuses.”3 It is indicated on the station’s website that it “aims at disseminating Turkish culture and Anatolian cultural values to populations speaking Turkish, Azeri Turkish, Kazak, Kirgiz, Uzbek, and Turkmen living in 27 different countries in the relevant geography.”4 According to the mission of TRT Avaz, it strives to be the “one channel where all these populations meet and find values from the common shared Turkish culture.” In this sense, one can argue that these mission and vision statements of TRT Avaz make a strong emphasis on Turkishness and Turkish culture, and the content of the broadcasts complement this by highlighting Ottoman/Islamic history and culture as an all-encompassing heritage.

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TRT El Arabia was another transnational enterprise of TRT which was initiated to further promote the neo-Ottomanist cultural policies of the Turkish state. Initially founded as TRT-7-ET-Türkiyye in 2010, its name was changed to TRT El Arabia in 2015. This new station was “established to reach 350 million Arab speaking viewers dispersed in and around the 22 countries located in the Arab region.”5 The mission of TRT El Arabia was announced as “establishing and strengthening relations and ties between the Arab nations and Turkey.”6 By targeting viewers, in Arabic, from every age, the channel “aims to be the common language, common feeling, and the common screen of the Arab world.”7 TRT El Arabia’s programs can also be labeled as promoting neo-­ Ottomanist discourse. As Al-Ghazzi and Kraidy articulate, “a number of TRT-7-al-Turkiyya programs focus on Turkey’s economic successes and promote Turkish businesses and tourism. Breaks between drama series or news programs are filled with segments promoting tourism in Turkey” (2013, p. 2348). In an attempt to shed light on the content of TRT El Arabia’s broadcasts, Karanfil and Eğilmez opt to categorize the programs under a number of themes that they argue reflect Turkey’s neo-­Ottomanist discourse: We can easily list the following programs under the theme of Islam: A Mosque a City, Wooden Mosques, Süleymaniye Mosque, Life and the Koran. Istanbul as the capital of the Empire is a second theme under which programs can be categorized. Some such examples include; Istanbul the Ottoman Capital, Good Morning from Istanbul, Cities of Istanbul, Life in Istanbul, Min Istanbul, and Istanbul 5 Times a Day. Programs that can be listed under the category of Anatolian and Ottoman culture are; Ottoman Palaces, The Exile of the Ottoman Son, Africa and the Ottoman, Evliya Çelebi, Mimar Sinan, Abdülhamid The Second, Hose Life in Anatolia, Flowers of Anatolia, Time in Anatolia. (2017, p. 16)

Following up on this discussion, I claim that during the last decade Turkey’s public service broadcaster has geared itself toward infiltrating into the broadcasting domain in the MENA region under the rubric of its second “defining schema” on transnationalization. In this endeavor, neo-­ Ottomanism has been conceived and deployed as a transnational form of collective belonging shared by viewers living in the perceived hinterlands of the former Ottoman Empire.

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There is however one other transnational enterprise of TRT that does not seem to fit into either of its “defining schemas” of transnationalization, but is quite prominent and deserves to be mentioned here nonetheless. TRT World, which initially started as an online streaming media outlet, was officially established as a station in late 2015. TRT World can be seen as the revival of TRT Türk (which itself was the successor of TRT-Avrasya), and it can easily be argued that this station is a reflection of AKP’s internationalization politics. The station is a heavily news-oriented one. Its broadcasts are in English and it is geared toward disseminating news to the rest of the world from “Turkey’s perspective.” When contextualized within the political climate of Turkey, one can see that it is not a coincidence TRT World was established in 2015. The Gezi Park protests in 2013 and the stagnation in the peace process on the Kurdish issue in 2015 (which had started in 2013) deteriorated both AKP’s and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s (who had been elected as the President of Turkish Republic in 2014) image internationally. As a response to these developments, TRT World was established and put to use as an alternative outlet to the international media and to remedy the AKP government’s and Erdoğan’s image internationally. A careful reading of the introductory texts on the website of TRT World shows that (again, uncoincidentally) 2002 is marked as “year zero” in the growing regional and global significance of Turkey—the year in which AKP government, under the Presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, came to power for the first time. In short, one can clearly argue that TRT World was established as a mouthpiece of the AKP government and was mobilized as its agent in the international arena. The channel is introduced with the following words: Since the course of 2002 Turkey has become an increasingly significant country both as a regional and global actor. This period of stability, development and strong international relations has led to the natural emergence of TRT World. Turkey’s geopolitical and geo-cultural positioning is indicative of a potential to see world events differently. …In an age of information where the primary language of mutual communication between various cultures is English, TRT World will provide new perspectives on world events to a global audience.8

Drawing on this statement, one can claim that TRT World can be marked as an explicit example, of both, AKP government’s attempts at internationalization and global expansion, and TRT’s utilization in line

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with this agenda. TRT World in this sense is one of the most prominent transnational expansions of TRT. TRT World does not neatly fit into the second “defining schema” of TRT’s transnationalization endeavors; however, because it is not geared simply toward establishing a cultural presence in the MENA region. More so, the channel aims to manage and disseminate news to the world through the perspective of Turkey, similar to how Aljazeera and Sputnik manages news content from a non-Western standpoint. As Devran has claimed, “TRT World channel, …is considered to be a significant project for conveying the world the voice, agenda and policies of Turkey and the Turkish state” (2015, p. 282). In this sense, the mission of TRT World precisely overlaps with what Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the President of Turkey, has stated in an interview as “there now will be a Turkey that sets the agenda, not a Turkey for whom the agenda is set.”9 Similarly, Devran has also stated in his analysis of TRT World that the channel distinguish itself from other global TV channels by providing a rather different perspective on Turkey and the Middle East which is not derived from the Western discourses and preoccupations. …TRT World can succeed in catching the regional and global audience by following the Al Jazeera example. (2015, p. 283)

Hence I argue that TRT World is one of the most prominent of TRT’s contemporary transnational enterprises and is an integral part of AKP government’s expansionist policies.

Conclusion Throughout this chapter I have tried to map the transformation Turkish public service broadcaster has experienced over the past three decades. As an institution which emerged as strictly national and nationalizing, with the turn of the 1990s, TRT added to the focus of its broadcasts a transnational identity with the establishment of TRT-INT and TRT-Avrasya. These channels consecutively targeted the Turkish and Turkish-speaking diasporic viewers dispersed around the world and viewers from the Turkic Republics of the post-Soviet era. One consolidating ideology behind both these stations was the motivation to disseminate and strengthen cultural values, among these Turkish-speaking trans-border viewers, which were deemed to be representative of Turkish society. Furthermore, both these channels, having been deployed by the Turkish state, worked toward

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forging connections among Turkish-speaking viewers around the world and between these viewers and the “homeland” Turkey. These early transnational enterprises of TRT aimed at fostering transnational communities among dispersed viewers revolving around Turkish ethnicity, nationality, and language. Furthermore, they were also geared toward keeping a “connected” and “lively” diaspora which could be mobilized around political and economic incentives. These goals were achieved to a certain extent via programs that worked toward strengthening presumed Turkish identity and cultural values without creating cultural or ethnic ghettoization, creating common conversation content among transnational viewers, and synchronizing the migrant with the homeland and offering them alternative forms of identification in the host country. A number of studies on Turks living in various parts of Europe have unraveled the productive complexities of the cultures and cultural identities of these diasporic groups and the ways in which transnational media have had an impact on them as mentioned here. For example, Karanfil (2009) has depicted how satellite television from Turkey has helped synchronize Turkish-Australian viewers with their homeland; Ogan (2001) has shown how media consumption reflects the configurations of Turkish cultural identity in the Netherland’s society and how this experience diminishes the perceived distance between the homeland and the hostland; Aksoy and Robins (2000) have examined the ways in which Turks across Europe, through participation in transnational media consumption, have started “moving across spaces” that transcend national borders, all the while staying connected with the homeland. With AKP’s coming to power in 2002 and consolidating its claim on the government in 2007 general elections, TRT’s transnational stations and politics have undergone a sweeping makeover. I have argued that AKP governments strengthening grip on political power has led to the reconstruction of neo-Ottomanist politics in Turkey. This in turn has initiated a transnational agenda that sought to instill a cultural presence in the MENA region. Within this scope, TRT established TRT Avaz and TRT El Arabia channels to exert a cultural presence in the MENA region—which became the perceived hinterlands of the former Ottoman Empire. In the broadcasts of these newly formed transnational stations, the perceived common denominator was formulated around Ottoman and Anatolian cultural history, values, and morals (Karanfil and Eğilmez 2017). In this light, one of my arguments in this chapter has been that TRT Avaz and TRT El Arabia were attempts on behalf of the public service broadcaster of Turkey, to

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foster a transnational media sphere among viewers living in the Islamic and Arabic-speaking neighboring regions of Turkey. In summary, this chapter has aimed at tracing TRT’s journey of transnationalization over the past three decades. I have done this through utilizing historical and institutional analysis. My analysis has mainly drawn on secondary sources and a critical engagement with the literature. I have argued that this process of transnationalization needs to be read in light of both transformations in the global media environment and the correlations between the spheres of politics, culture, and media in Turkey. I believe the case of TRT is quite instructive in terms of reminding us that in the contemporary global media ecology, national, international, global, and transnational agendas are all juxtaposed—even so within the context of public service broadcasters like the Turkish Radio and Television.

Notes 1. The massacre of ethnic Armenians by the Ottoman Empire between 1914 and 1923 (also known as the Armenian Genocide) is a highly sensitive issue of dispute between the Turkish and Armenian governments with its repercussions in international politics. 2. Over the past decade, TRT has gone a long way in alleviating this problem. Currently TRT has representative offices in more than 20 different locations around the world, including Washington, London, Cologne, Berlin, and Brussels. Through TRT World (a transnational expansion of TRT established in 2015), TRT is also engaging in productions outside of Turkish national borders. 3. http://www.trtavaz.com.tr/. 4. http://www.trtavaz.com.tr/. 5. http://www.trtarabic.tv/. 6. http://www.trtarabic.tv/. 7. http://www.trtarabic.tv/. 8. https://www.trtworld.com/about. 9. h t t p : / / w w w. m i l l i y e t . c o m . t r / y e r e l - h a b e r l e r / i s t a n b u l / recep-tayyip-erdogan-gundemi-belirlenen-degil-gundem-belirleyen-bir-turkiye-var-10359700.

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CHAPTER 9

Mediatisation and Hyper-commodification of Sport in Post-1980 Turkey Dağhan Irak

Introduction Modern sport has held an important place in Turkey since it was introduced, or rather imported, into the social sphere with the other key modern concepts that defined the post-Ottoman state by the same cadre comprising the civil and military bureaucracies that founded and maintained modern Turkey under their tutelage for years. The Istanbul-based multi-sport clubs that still dominate the domain in Turkey, regarding both popularity and success, were founded by the late-Ottoman elites in the cultural and social centres of the Ottoman capital; they garnered massive popularity within society due to their role of promoting Turkish nationalism, belated due to a number of reasons, including the repressive reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II who curbed most social activities among Ottoman Muslims in the late nineteenth century. After the Republic of Turkey was founded as a nation-state, these clubs, namely Beşiktaş, Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe, cultivated their ties with political actors and the state

D. Irak (*) Department of Media, Journalism and Film, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK © The Author(s) 2020 Y. Kaptan, E. Algan (eds.), Television in Turkey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46051-8_9

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bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the social and political capital they earned from their contributions to the emergence of modern Turkey were translated into further success that solidified their popularity and enabled them to reach beyond the city and win the support of millions all over the country. On the other hand, the national teams also started to play a role as Turkey participated in international tournaments. Sport’s everlasting ties with modernity and nationalism, as well as its popularity, have kept it politically relevant through the decades; it has often been used to convey political messages by political actors to masses otherwise disinterested in the politics. After the 1980 coup d’état, sport’s ability to generate national pride and contribute to the foundation of an “apolitical” and consumption-­ based society was actively utilised by the Turgut Özal governments following the junta, while media, especially television, were actively encouraged to serve a similar purpose. In the relationship between politics and sport, media has played an important role, as it helped political messages sent through sport reach broader audiences. Television, in particular, increased sport’s impact by providing lifelike images compared to radio and newspapers, which created little to no imagery. Satellite technology further changed the game by enabling live events to be transmitted without geographical constraint; thus, sport could be truly globalised (on the role of satellite television on the globalisation of sport, see Baimbridge et  al. 1996; Sandvoss 2004; Williams 1994, among others). This chapter aims to contextualise the rapid mediatisation of sport in post-1980 Turkey through the key concepts of sport sociology, such as the relationship between sport and politics, mediatisation and politicisation. It will also attempt to serve television studies regarding the often-neglected role of sport in mediated mass communication and the political role of media. Media in post-1980 Turkey is a very television-oriented environment; therefore, the role of television in this whole process appears to be even more crucial compared to other examples in Western Europe (like France), where printed media held ground despite the rise of satellite and cable television. The main objective of this chapter is to contextualise the evolution of television and sports broadcasting in Turkey within the general global context of these concepts. In order to reach this goal, a historical analysis depending on first- and second-hand sources was necessary. Unfortunately and very ironically concerning a study on the history of television, the audiovisual material that could immeasurably help this work is very scarce

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in Turkey. Public and private television channels do not have publicly accessible archives, except for TRT’s selection of a handful programmes hosted on trtarsiv.com. Therefore, the textual references had to be primary sources for this study, especially the TV sections of newspapers of the era. Also, personal insights by former highly respected TRT employees such as Özden Cankaya and Halit Kıvanç among the references were helpful in crafting the context. However, the sources used are still limited, and we hold the opinion that once the archives become more accessible, more in-depth information on the subject may be found. Until that point, this chapter will strictly respect its scope and will not try to say anything that cannot be said by looking at the currently available material.

Transnationalisation of Media and Globalisation If cultural globalisation is framed in a way that emphasises its capacity to “restructure local contexts so that they retain the appearance of familiarity while at the same time being opened out to wider horizons of influence and significance” (Tomlinson 2012, p.  5), the transnationalisation of media appears to play a crucial role in this process. On one hand, the transnationalisation of media encompasses several aspects of cultural globalisation, such as the emergence of global, decentred corporations that combine different media products, and the creation of transnational markets and distribution systems (Ang 1990, p.  250). While this aspect of media transnationalisation illuminates the inequalities inherent in distributing cultural products, it inevitably takes us to the “cultural imperialism” debate (Souchou 2000, p. 29), as the transnationalisation of media also represents the hegemonic tendencies of cultural globalisation, often combined with political and economic globalisation. On the other hand, media content transcending national borders also means that cultural production will catch up with dispersed populations such as diaspora communities or zones of cultural influence, creating “diasporic public spheres” (Appadurai 1996, p. 22) or “geo-cultural markets” (Thussu 2006, p. 13) by providing communities whose cultural needs cannot be met by local production with transnational cultural products. Beyond these two major angles that have been widely discussed in scholarly debates, the transnationalisation of media has also contributed to the creation of a “global popular culture,” which seems to be a hodgepodge of viral crazes that may feature a Turkish kebab chef, images of North Korean children frantically playing the guitar in a synchronised manner and a French footballer dancing with his

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brothers, sometimes all at once. Therefore, transnational cultural products may be hyper-commercialised by global business conglomerates, diasporic or completely viral. The only defining feature of a transnational cultural product remains its ability to reach beyond national borders. While the appearance of a mediatised global culture is today synonymous with the Internet, it must be stated that the transnationalisation of media started decades ago with the precursors of the Internet. Radio was the first medium capable of transcending national borders, and its political potential was widely employed through the twentieth century (Street and Matelski 1997; Scales 2010). Imported foreign newspapers also played a more reserved role, especially during the early years of labour-oriented immigration (Zubrzycki 1958 and Ogan 2001). However, satellite technology and the transmission of television signals through satellite, along with the introduction of fibre optic cables, proved to be the real breakthrough in the transnationalisation of media around three decades prior to the widespread public use of the Internet. Compared to radio, television proved to be more impactful as it transmitted images, also more marketable, therefore profitable. Television broadcast satellites, firstly, enabled the global circulation of sound and images, and then facilitated the creation of global networks that would reshape the media landscape (Chalaby 2005, p. 29). The instant retransmission of audiovisual material also gradually changed the way these materials were produced and consumed, nicknamed “the CNN effect,” leading to global and real-time media production (Livingston 1997, p. 1) that aimed to create instant public opinion, especially during strategically important events like the Gulf War. The emergence of satellite television also triggered a major wave of transnationalisation of sporting events that also affected Turkey dramatically. So, I chose to put this technology at the centre of this chapter.

Transnationalisation of Media and Hyper-­commodification in Sport The introduction of satellite television technology created a massive transformation in sport, notably in football. While the Eurovision system that comprised connecting landlines and distributed the 1954 and 1958 World Cup and the 1960 Olympics live in Europe acted as a harbinger, the launching of the first communication satellite Telstar in 1962 brought international sport into a new era, especially starting with the 1964

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Olympic Games (Boyle and Haynes 2009, pp. 40–53). As encrypted satellite signals transcending national boundaries appeared, sporting events have become globally marketable commodities. According to Miller et al. (2001, p. 4), the present moment in sport is characterised by simultaneous, uneven, interconnected processes, among which are globalisation, televisualisation and commodification. When the traces of each of these processes are followed, it is clear that satellite television technology appears as was the milestone that triggered the transformation creating today’s globalised, commodified and mediated sport world. The role of satellite technology in sport’s transformation has been discussed by several scholars. According to Russell (1999, pp. 27–28), the cash injected by satellite television into football created a new game “with the potential to generate new identities and loyalties,” as working-class fans were displaced when the stadia were gentrified with the newly found capital. Giulianotti and Armstrong (2001, p. 276) argue that the income from satellite and subscription television stations is the main source of the economic restructuring and expansion in sport. In their pioneering work, Baimbridge et al. (1996, pp. 317–318) argue that the income boost by satellite television constitutes “a risk of spiralling inequality of income distribution” in favour of rich clubs better able to produce a marketable commodity—a football team appealing to global fans. Alabarces (1999, p. 80) claims that the satellite and cable television technologies not only transformed sport, it created the “footballisation of television” as television frequencies were filled with popular sport broadcasts. McChesney (1998, p. 36) also draws attention to the fact that sport acts as the locomotive for most successful satellite television services. This points to a loop between mediatisation and commodification in sport, as sport becoming a lucrative commodity through media income causes more appeal for media companies to invest in it, which pushes sport’s transformation to the boundaries of hyper-commodification. Hardin (2010, p.  2) also observes this loop between the “voracious public appetite for sports coverage and the corporate desire to promote brands and products.” Brown (1998, p. 1) diagnoses the dynamics of this transformation in football as “the insatiable appetite of satellite television for football and the desire of clubs for more money to finance the spiralling, post-Bosman transfer market.” Dubal (2010, pp.  125–126) calls this transformation “neoliberalization” and points to the alienation that fans experience as they are forced to become consumers. Sandvoss’ (2004, pp. 84–85) ethnographic work presents evidence for the intrinsic interrelation between the ownership of satellite and

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digital multi-channel television and the consumption of transnational football. All these scholarly analyses posit that sport and new technologies in television have a symbiotic relationship, the by-product of which is the (hyper-)commodification of both. While football accounts for the lion’s share of this transformation, the intertwined relationship between globalisation, mediatisation and commodification is not reserved to the “beautiful game.” In North America, where “soccer” hardly qualifies as professional sport, pay-TV technologies (satellite and cable) reached near complete market penetration in the early 1980s (much earlier than Europe, which had its boom in the 1990s) through professional American football, basketball and hockey (Whitson 2002, p. 67). The holy grail of sport mega-events, the Olympic Games, usually broadcast free-to-air, represents another facet of commodification, not through the marketability of the product to the viewers, but through its market value for broadcasting rights that is to be remunerated by commercials and sponsorships. The history of sport’s transformation into a globalised, mediatised and commodified entity coincides with Turkey’s transformation from a state-­ driven import-substitution economy to a neoliberal free market one, which entails the creation of a consumerist society that would demand what the free market has to offer. The restructuring of Turkey’s economy therefore necessitated a social metamorphosis in which media and sport played an immense role as locomotives of an entertainment-driven cultural realm.

Mediatisation of Sport in Turkey The relationship between sport and mass media can be traced back to the emergence of modern sport, since most sports often owed their popularity to coverage by print media and eventually radio. On the other hand, sport also contributed to the popularity of mass media, as sport journalism emerged as a popular genre. In this regard, Modern Turkey is no exception. Sport journalism, just like modern sport itself, emerged before the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 as part of a Turkish modernity that would eventually evolve into a modern state. In 1919, Spor Alemi appeared as the first sport-exclusive publication in the final years of the Ottoman Empire (Özsoy 2011, p. 215), while mainstream newspapers also devoted pages to sport events. In 1933, a wrestling match was broadcast on the radio, followed by the first football match broadcast in 1934,

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seven years after the first radio channel had gone live (Karaküçük et  al. 1996, p. 47). Radio, along with print media, did all sport coverage through several decades, as television technology arrived in Turkey only in the late 1950s. Nevertheless, TV became the flag-bearer of sport’s mediatisation immediately, as it did in many other countries. Even before the foundation of the public television system TRT (Türkiye Radyo ve Televizyon Kurumu—Radio and Television Corporation of Turkey), sport was part of the test broadcasts carried out by Istanbul Technical University (ITU) between 1957 and 1971. Pertev Tunaseli and Ayşegül Çilli became the first sport broadcasters, while the first live football match between Turkey and the Soviet Union was aired on 12 November 1961 (Tutuk and Barutçu 2002, pp. 35–37). There was also a sport game-show called “Mini Goal” in which celebrities tried to score goals through small holes (ibid). These broadcasts, albeit revolutionary, were rather novelties, since not many people were able to receive the signals, and even fewer households had the equipment to watch the ITU programming. However, it is still possible to claim that the importance of sport, especially football, to this new technology’s popularity was established even in that early stage. With TRT’s emergence in 1968, the same strategy was kept, and sport broadcasts were employed to create appeal for the rather expensive household appliance that is the television set. Advancements in relay technology helped TRT to broadcast large-scale multi-sport events. In 1970 the public broadcaster did not yet have direct access to the satellite links; however, it made a deal with an international agency that received the images from the Telstar satellite and sent TRT videotapes to rebroadcast the 1970 World Cup (Milliyet, 21 May 1970, p.  10). This makeshift solution included Turkey in the globalisation of sport sufficiently for the football chairmen in Istanbul to begin claiming that they could sign international stars like Riva, Pele and Beckenbauer “if the government allowed them to invest in foreign transfers” (Milliyet, 20 June 1970, p. 10), which was prohibited because of the economic hardships of that time that would become a massive foreign currency crisis a few years later. It should be noted that football in Turkey in that period was not comparable to the international level; in the 1970 World Cup qualifications, the Turkish national team played against the Soviet Union and Northern Ireland, losing all four games and scoring only two goals against 13. As Turkish audiences watched the World Cup rebroadcasts from Mexico, they discovered the extent of the gap between world-class teams and its own and that realised serious investment was needed to

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compete. However, the country was not able to afford such an investment until the 1980s when Turkey changed its economic model to an open market after a violent coup d’etat and post-junta elections that gave power to the neoliberal Turgut Özal government. While economically Turkey was not able to follow the early phases of sport’s globalisation in the 1970s, culturally it embraced the zeitgeist with gusto. One year after the World Cup, Turkey hosted the Mediterranean Games in Izmir that gave TRT a golden opportunity to live broadcast a major sporting event. The Mediterranean Games were the first live broadcast entirely produced by TRT (Cankaya 1986 [n.d.], p. 24). As Turkey did not participate, the public broadcaster did not air the 1972 Winter Olympic Games in Sapporo, but it covered the 1972 Summer Games in Munich extensively. The broadcast used the radio link between Sofia and Istanbul and became the first event broadcast from abroad by TRT (op. cit.: 26). These first Olympic broadcasts featured a 5-hour slot of live events during the day and a one and a half hour nightly slot of highlights. The Olympic Games broadcasts created quite a lot of excitement in Turkey, convincing many middle-class families (including the author’s own) to finally buy a television set. In Manisa (Western Turkey), two young people were reported to relay the TV signals, probably from nearby Izmir, to their own town, which was followed by a municipal announcement that the Olympic Games were finally available in their city (Milliyet, 28 August 1972, p. 3). At the time, television viewership was still limited to major cities, but its appeal was quickly spreading partly due to sport broadcasts. From then on, TRT continued its live sport broadcasts from all over the world. Among those, the professional heavyweight boxing title bouts became an instant hit, especially with the appearance of Muhammad Ali. Apart from his international popularity, Ali’s Muslim faith made him relatable to the Turkish public. As a result, Ali’s fights were live broadcast by TRT even though most matches took place in the middle of the night there because of the time difference. The Ali-Foreman title match, also known as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” was broadcast from Zaire and viewed by both the social democratic Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit and his Islamist coalition partner Necmettin Erbakan. According to the news reports, the match that took place at 6.15 AM was followed by thousands in Turkey, and prayers were held for Ali before the event (Milliyet, 31 October 1974, p.  11). Meanwhile, sport’s popularity on television also reshaped TRT’s programming. On Sundays, a new four-hour show called “Telespor” was introduced in 1974, which revolved around the broadcast

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of a live football game and featured celebrities and game shows, as well as footage from domestic and international sporting events. The format evolved into “TelePazar” (Telly Sunday) in 1977, becoming a staple of public television for years. The international sport broadcasts in the late 1970s became particularly important for the public in Turkey because of the political climate of the period. After the invasion of Cyprus by the Turkish Armed Forces in 1974 that would eventually become an occupation, Turkey was isolated from the international community. Sport, along with music, remained one of the few outlets for international representation. Just like the Eurovision Song Contest in music, European Cups, Olympics Games and other international events that Turkey took part became crucial in breaking the isolation and depression that hung over the country. With the coup d’etat in 1980, this isolation intensified as the violent methods of the junta were condemned by the international community, including institutions Turkey belonged to, such as the Council of Europe. Football was one of the few social activities that did not stop with the coup d’etat, as it was deemed harmless and apolitical (Irak 2019, p. 64). Meanwhile, the junta also made sure that the football world was under its total control due to the slight risks presented by its popularity, even dictating which teams would play in the top league (Koç et al. 2016, p. 1910). In the junta period between 1980 and 1983, the mediatisation of sport could not advance to the energy shortage the country was facing. However, after the government was taken over by civilians after a semi-democratic election in 1983  in which the candidates were pre-approved by the junta, Turgut Özal’s neoliberal rule changed both football’s and media’s fate. Turgut Özal, who was the mastermind of the economic policy shift enforced by the junta, created his own brand of populism that aimed to justify his neoliberal policies. A close ally of Reagan and Thatcher, Özal’s economic model was based on de-unionisation, privatisation and a free market economy without state regulation. In order to create a relatable political persona and simplify the massive policy shift from the state-driven import-substitution model to a neoliberal model for the masses and to create a relatable political persona, Özal actively used the state-run single-­ channel television and appeared as an “on-air talent” in an unprecedented ̇ ̇ TV programme called “Icraatın Içinden” (Insights of Performance) (Durna ̇ and Inal 2010, p. 129). He was also well aware that sport would serve to boost his popularity and even claimed that he would win the election in a landslide if Turkey played in the European Championship finals (Irak

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2019, p. 66). While his interest in football was evident, his attempt to use sport for political gain was not limited to football; amidst a conflict with Bulgaria about the Turkish minority, he ordered a secret operation to bring the Bulgarian weightlifting star of Turkish descent, Naim Süleymanoğlu, to Turkey. Sport bolstered national pride at a time when it was in short supply due to the country’s isolation, creating a space in which Turkey could still exist as an equal to other nations and also helping Özal promote his new society in the making. Sport, especially football, also had considerable entertainment value, which was able to divert people from old ways of politics with mass movements and drive them towards a consumerist lifestyle. However, in order to make sport fulfil these duties, it must be supported by the media and the state monopoly on television was a major obstacle to this goal. In 1990, months after Özal became the President of the Republic, his son Ahmet Özal founded the first private television network, Magic Box–Star 1, along with businessman Cem Uzan. This first attempt took place without any legal ground, violating the TRT Code, via satellite signals sent from Germany with the help of municipalities run by Özal’s party that erected retransmission devices to convert the signals into terrestrial ones (Irak 2019, p. 69). Magic Box directly entered the football broadcasting market and signed deals with all major clubs, practically pushing TRT out of the market. Despite being a pirate television channel, the Özal family’s business venture used the state-run PTT uplink to transmit satellite signals from the stadiums. The income boost created by Magic Box and other private networks over the years helped the football clubs acquire international stars and attain success in international competitions. At the same time, the Turkish football market was completely liberalised in parallel with the Western World. This massive transformation was in line with the aforementioned aspects of modern sport of the late twentieth century: globalisation, televisualisation and commodification. It also served the political agenda of Turkey’s ruling political actors. The mediatisation of sport in Turkey was accompanied by commodification. As in other countries such as Britain, this commodification didn’t fully depend on broadcasting rights income. During and right after the Özal period when the neoliberal economic system was established, sport, especially football, was among the massively liberalised industries. The major football clubs, which were multi-sport clubs that had investments in many other sports, went through important changes that would increase their competitiveness in the international scene. For example, the foreign

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coach and player signing restrictions that were enforced since the late 1970s due to a foreign currency shortage were removed, and the clubs were given the right and authority to sell season tickets, fix prices freely, and sign broadcasting deals with private television channels, the legality of which fully depended on the government’s indulgence. Other creative methods that did not exist in other nations were also established, such as declaring major sport clubs “associations working for public interest” and giving them the kind of fiscal advantages and tax exemptions that only entities like the Red Crescent Society enjoyed. Furthermore, governments often granted tax amnesties for the clubs’ remaining fiscal duties and the Turkish football league gradually became a “tax haven” for international players who would have otherwise signed for a bigger league. Besides the financial advantages provided by the state, during the Özal period government was directly involved in modernising sport clubs. Businesspeople close to Özal started to appear on club boards and invest in clubs. Galatasaray was a prominent example of this practice, where German football legend Jupp Derwall was hired as a coach (for a brief period he also took charge of the national team), a modern training centre was built, and well-known international players were signed. As a result, Galatasaray became the first Turkish club to reach the European Cup semi-finals in the 1986–87 season. In the 1990s, television continued to be vital in football’s economic capital accumulation, as televised football became marketable directly to the end consumer through encrypted signals. As in most countries like Italy and France, Turkey first implemented terrestrial encryption via decoder devices leased by encrypted television channels. Cine 5, a subsidiary of Show TV that followed Magic Box as a major actor in the private television business, was the first channel to implement this technology, and, as expected, football broadcasts were their main appeal to new subscribers. In 1996, Cine 5 obtained the exclusive rights to broadcast the Turkish First Division, which ended the multi-channel broadcasting model in Turkish football. This deal is comparable to the BSkyB deal in England of the early 1990s, as it proposed a scheme that favoured more popular and successful teams in income distribution, taking football off of “free-­ to-­air” television and rendering cafes and restaurants that offer live match broadcasts as new sites of fandom. Since then, Turkey has continued to give exclusive broadcasting rights for its top division football to encrypted platforms. Encrypted platforms and this exclusive rights scheme (called the “pool system”) contributed to the further neoliberalisation of football

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in Turkey, resulting in uneven income distribution among clubs and fans’ unequal access to the match broadcasts. The modernisation of football through government support in Turkey also coincided with the liberalisation of European football. After the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the breakup of Yugoslavia, the European football market took advantage of a fresh supply of talented players from these countries who were difficult, if not impossible, to sign before due to political restrictions. Basketball had a similar transformation. This massive change in the sport job market was accompanied by the famous 1995 Bosman ruling (see Antonioni and Cubbin 2000) that established the free movement of labour for footballers in Europe. Another important change in European sport came with the rebranding of the European Cup as the UEFA Champions League, which prioritised group stage games rather than knockout rounds, thus creating a platform where the number of games between strong teams massively increased. The Champions League also brought along an awarding and broadcast rights income allocation system which effectively created a loop between being successful and being rich. A similar income allocation system was also established by the newly founded English Premier League, which also immensely favoured the rich and successful teams over others (Lee 2002, pp.  33–36). Other team sports, like basketball, volleyball and handball, also replaced knockout-­ based international tournaments with a similar scheme. Turkey took part in the UEFA Champions League earlier than expected. In 1993, in the second season of the tournament, Galatasaray had a qualifying matchup with the powerful Manchester United, which was the clear favourite of the tie. However, the champions of Turkey pulled a surprise victory against their English opponents and was qualified for the Group Stage. This early entry and Turkey’s other successful results helped it to qualify frequently (in most years automatically) for this tournament, another factor that helped major Turkish clubs compete with their international opponents. In basketball, international success by Efes Pilsen, Ülker and Fenerbahçe established a similar presence during the emergence of the EuroLeague. The constant participation of teams from Turkey in these successfully marketed and well-mediatised tournaments further accelerated the domination of the globalisation-mediatisation-­ commodification triangle in Turkey.

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Conclusion In social sciences, sport is often considered a niche isolated from other social domains. However, as Bourdieu (1980) argues in reference to his field theory, sport is an autonomous field that is interconnected with other fields, including the cultural field and the field of power. Therefore, it is inevitable that what happens in sport is intertwined with politics and media. Sport’s popularity may even render it an amplifier of the events that take place in other fields. Thus, sport should be taken into account when analysing the mediatisation and economic transformation in Turkey. The mediatisation of sport in Turkey should be analysed through two contexts: the global and the national. Despite the late introduction of the television technology, Turkey was able to catch up with satellite television in the early 1970s and became part of the new mediated sport world that featured globally televised major sport organisations, like the World Cup and Olympic Games. As a matter of fact, it can be even claimed that the late arrival of television may have accelerated Turkey’s adoption of this new paradigm, as sport emerged as a powerful tool to promote this new and rather expensive technology. Despite the country’s faltering economy and foreign currency shortage in the 1970s, state-run TV did not fail to air global sporting events. In the 1980s, the political situation in Turkey sped up mediatisation even further, since the new neoliberal economic model aimed to promote a consumerism in which entertainment held a key role in diverting society from the left-leaning mass political movements of the 1970s. In this regard, sport and media received a similar amount and type of attention from the Özal government: subsidisation, investment by progovernment businesspeople and modernisation helped these two industries flourish and reach international standards. Furthermore, sport became particularly important in that period as a way to end the country’s isolation from the world. It also helped generate national pride and boost the government’s popularity. All of these goals could only have been achieved if sport was widely mediatised. Also, sport’s popularity also presented the media, which was comprehensively redesigned during the Özal era to serve the neoliberal transformation, with a product to showcase. Therefore, the symbiosis between sport and media solidified in that era. This period also coincided with the post-Cold War hyper-commodified globalisation of sport. Turkey’s own transformation, therefore, overlapped the global transformation of sport. It should not be considered a coincidence that these events took place when neoliberal

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governments (such as those of Reagan and Thatcher) dominated world politics and the government in Turkey of the era happened to be a close follower of them. The globalisation, mediatisation and hyper-­ commodification of sport, hence, were by-products of the political and economic changes taking place in the broader world. The transformation of sport in Turkey happened in the same way that the country transformed politically and economically—in line with the major global actors. Even the national peculiarities of Turkey, like the use of sport and media for the promotion of nationalism and the post-junta government, were tied to the global context, as the main objective of the 1980 coup was to accelerate economic change in the country. The example of Turkey’s symbiosis between media and sport within an aggressive neoliberal context seems less striking today, as many countries followed a similar path, especially the post-Soviet nations where neoliberalism has been intertwined with a social transformation that swiftly introduced them to consumerism. Also, the globalisation of the current sport media environment is almost perfectly complete, so it is normal that Turkey has become less unique when the path it started following before the 1990s became the norm for other countries after the Berlin Wall fell. However, Turkey should still be considered as an example that stands out, since sport was and still is the harbinger of all new television technologies, such as encrypted platforms, thematic channels, HD, 3D and eventually 4K broadcasting, online streaming, video-on-demand (VOD) and Internet protocol television (IPTV). Sport broadcasting is still the backbone of all broadcasting platforms in Turkey because their sport assets often determine whether a broadcaster makes or breaks, as in the example of the takeover of the most important digital platform in Turkey, Digiturk, by the Qatari sport giant BeinSports in 2016, which mostly depended on that platform’s exclusive domestic football league broadcasting rights and attendant global distribution rights. Therefore, sport broadcasting should not be considered a secondary factor in today’s TV scene in Turkey, but rather a primary one that defines whether an investment will be financially viable and contribute to the global-scale endeavours of television in Turkey.

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CHAPTER 10

From TRT to Netflix: Implications of Convergence for Television Dramas in Turkey Eylem Yanardağoğlu and Neval Turhallı

Introduction Convergence is defined by Jenkins (2006) as the “flow of content on multiple media platforms.” The term refers to the blending rather than replacement of one media form by another and the interaction between old and new media through the blurring of distinctions between previously separate platforms (Meikle and Young 2012, p. 2). There are three dimensions of convergence. Technological convergence refers to the “coming together of all forms of mediated communications in an electronic, digital form, driven by computers” (Pavlik 1996, p. 132). Economic convergence occurs when conglomerates become active in multiple industries (Aaron et al. 2002). Finally, cultural convergence refers to the globalization process of media content (Pavlik and McIntosh 2004). All these dimensions of convergence trigger changes in the content, use, distribution, audience and profession of media production (Pavlik and McIntosh 2004).

E. Yanardağoğlu (*) • N. Turhallı Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey © The Author(s) 2020 Y. Kaptan, E. Algan (eds.), Television in Turkey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46051-8_10

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In Turkey, the television (TV) industry experienced economic and technological convergence beginning in the early 1990s with a transition from the single-channel state television monopoly to a multi-channel private media environment. The state monopoly on broadcasting was broken on March 1, 1990, when the Magic Box Company began transmitting from Germany via satellite. Following a chaotic period in which 250 local and national TV channels and 1250 radio stations were established illegally, Law No. 3984 Broadcasting Act was enacted and lifted Turkish Radio and Television’s (TRT) monopoly on broadcasting. It allowed for the foundation of commercial radio and television channels and established the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK)1 as the regulator of commercial TV and radio outlets (Çaplı and Tuncel 2005). The new commercial television stations introduced new types of programs in news, current affairs and entertainment that challenged the taboos and official dogmas regarding national and cultural identity (Kejanlıoğlu 2004). The process of cultural convergence intensified on Turkish television through the adaptation of new forms and formats of “Western” television. One of the most rapidly developing areas was the field of TV drama series production. Turkish television audiences first encountered TV drama series in the 1970s during the TRT period, and the interest they showed spurred the growth of local independent production companies. At the end of the 1990s, there were around forty primetime serials per week on television (Yanardağoğlu 2014). TV dramas became the major output of commercial television in this period, ranging from miniseries with thirteen or twenty-six episodes to longer series that have aired for at least five seasons (Yanardağoğlu 2014). Until the beginning of the 2000s, these series were locally produced and consumed TV products. They varied from big-­ production literary adaptations to small-budget sitcoms. In the last decade, these series became more professional, industrialized and transnational. Today, more than seventy different Turkish TV titles are broadcast to audiences in about 100 different countries (Alankuş and Yanardağoğlu 2016). Over-the-top (OTT) media services and video-on-demand (VOD) became a part of audiences’ daily lives in Turkey over the last decade. Global platforms like Netflix and Blu TV have been the most prominent examples of VOD services. The emergence of video-on-demand platforms brought about changes in the standards and production of television series. Internet television is described as all-online platforms where series are produced to the same professional standards of broadcast television

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(Lotz et al. 2018). Over-the-top media services are platforms from which content can be downloaded or streamed online. The term is used to refer especially to subscription-based video-on-demand services. To be precise, video-on-demand media services can be SVOD (subscription-based video-­ on-­ demand), AVOD (advertisement-supported video-on-demand) and TVOD (transactional video-on-demand) services. SVOD is a distribution method in which paid subscription to the platform is required to stream content. Examples include Netflix and Amazon Prime and Blue TV in Turkey. In AVOD, advertisement is the main revenue source for the platform and audiences are not required to pay to watch the content. In Turkey, Tubi and Puhu TV are popular AVOD platforms. YouTube could also be categorized as AVOD, but their new subscription model adopts a more SVOD mentality. Finally, iTunes and Google Play are TVOD platforms in which customers pay for content. In line with the digitalization of television, traditional television channels launched websites to broadcast live programs and stream original series. Initially, this was an opportunity for audiences who missed their favorite shows’ broadcast to view it on the Internet. In other words, the Internet was utilized as a substitute for broadcast television. Furthermore, these websites also streamed “uncensored” versions of television shows and series. In this way, the Internet was used as an escape platform for streaming content that could not be broadcast on mainstream television. The distribution of television dramas began to converge with the trend of streaming and video-on-demand as these platforms’ need for original web series grew. This trend was first seen on YouTube with low-budget series that were streamed. Later, the VOD services carried productions that had higher budgets. In Turkey, the change occurred incrementally. At the beginning, audiences watched TV series on the Internet, on the websites of specific TV channels or on YouTube. Later, the production of series for distribution on YouTube only became a trend. The first series entitled Otisabi (2013) was followed by Sıfır Bir (Zero One) in 2016, which became a major hit on YouTube. The big change occurred when Netflix started broadcasting in Turkey at the beginning of 2016, which triggered the establishment of the first local online streaming platforms Blu TV and Puhu TV. This study focuses on these three online streaming platforms—Netflix Turkey, Blu TV and Puhu TV—in order to investigate the process of convergence as traditional broadcasting moves from terrestrial and cable television to digital platforms. The main focus of the study

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is television series produced for online video-on-demand (SVOD or AVOD) platforms in Turkey and the ways that the Internet has transformed their production processes.

Methodology Through application of a qualitative research method, the data that are presented here are drawn from semi-structured interviews conducted in 2019 in Istanbul with eleven participants who live in Istanbul and work on the creative teams of drama production companies as producers, directors, scriptwriters or crew members. This research aims to explore the ways in which the production of dramas for mainstream television converges with or diverges from the production of dramas for digital platforms. This study employed a qualitative research design in order to gain more insight about the digital transformation of television series with a special focus on the production process. During the data collection, face-to-face interviews were conducted with eleven participants, eight of whom were working for both traditional television and digital platforms. Interview questions aimed to elicit detailed information on the ways the Internet transformed the series production processes in Turkey from the viewpoint of their creators. The participants were first identified using the IMDB and Sinematürk websites to ensure eligibility for the sample, and each met the requirement of having worked in both traditional television series and online series production. Attending panels and conferences about digital transformation and digital television, such as Televizyon Yayıncılığında Dijital Dönüşüm (Digital Transformation of Television Broadcasting) hosted at Galatasaray University, provided a means of access to the participants. Other industry events, such as the Beyond 24 Istanbul Conference held at Kadir Has University and the Meetings on the Bridge panel entitled Dizilerin Dijitale Dönüşümü (Transformation of Series to Digital), were venues to reach out to certain producers, directors and screenwriters. Attending these events during the data-collection period in 2019 was also helpful in gaining first hand up-to-date information on the changes occurring in the television industry. The participants each had at least ten years of experience working in television. In addition, a content manager from Blu TV, a representative from Netflix, and creative team members who worked on the Blu TV series Bozkır, 7Yüz and Dudullu Postası, the Puhu TV series Dip, and the Netflix series Hakan: Muhafız also participated in the research. Apart from online drama series, the participants also had

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experience working on the broadcast series of a range of mainstream television channels, such as Kanal D, TRT, ATV and Fox TV. Participants answered twenty questions during semi-structured interviews, including questions on digitalization and convergence and the ways they transformed series production in Turkey. The questions sought to understand the perceptions of creators about the transformations in the industry and detailed insights about their experiences during this process. First, the participants answered questions about their own career history in the industry. Later, participants shared their views on regulation policies, digital marketing, the international market and their expectations about the future of the industry. Participants also compared and contrasted their experiences producing for traditional television versus digital platforms. Ten of the interviews were carried out face-to-face and the participants consented to the recording of those interviews. In addition to the voice recordings, the researcher also took notes while conducting the interviews. One interview was conducted via email with a participant living abroad. The audio-recorded interviews were transcribed and the data were categorized into themes. The primary data were then enhanced with the use of secondary data gathered from newspaper articles, blogs and academic journals. Analysis of both primary and secondary data was made in the light of the literature in the field.

Convergence and Television Series In Turkey, the history of the television series is almost parallel to the history of television itself. The first series broadcast on Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) was Kaynanalar (Mother-in laws) in 1974. The series became very popular and introduced the new culture of series watching. American and then Latin American TV series were imported in the following years. The plots of local TV series in the 1980s and 1990s mainly promoted family values with nationalistic and conservative undertones in line with the political climate (Aksel Yağcı 2011). By the end of the 1990s, the domestic television series sector had developed. Story lines eventually diversified to include issues like politics, crime, inner-city problems and rural–urban migration. In this period, the cinema sector in Turkey similarly began to change due to the emergence of a new generation of “auteur directors” whose work facilitated a “rapid growth in Turkish domestic film production” (Bayrakdar and Akçalı 2010, p. 165). Until the beginning of the 2000s, television drama series in Turkey remained locally produced

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and consumed products (Yanardağoğlu 2014). Growing appetite for content from the mushrooming private television channels from the mid-­1990s onward galvanized the need for better quality content and increased professionalism in domestic TV output. The growing need to meet the demands of the advertising and private television sectors were the major driving forces behind the successful transnationalization and growing professionalization of TV series production (Yanardağoğlu 2014). In the mid-2000s, the transnationalization of Turkish TV series began when Arab satellite channels like Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) began to acquire Turkish titles. Turkish TV series became a global trend, especially after Gümüş (Nour) was broadcasted on MBC satellite television. By 2013, “Turkey had become a world-class player in the global television ecosystem, and the drama series became the nation’s most important cultural export” (Yanardağoğlu and Karam 2013, p. 564). The cultural convergence of the TV series represented a trend that was seen in multiple-­ centered geo-flows (Thussu 2007). Turkey’s television series reached seventy-­five countries in mid-2014 and was seen as exemplary of contra-­flows, rather than a one-way convergence toward Western hegemonic media (Alankuş and Yanardağoğlu 2016). In 2017, Turkey became second in the world after the United States in TV series exports, reaching 142 countries and a total of $350  million in 2016 (Türk Dizileri 2 Numara 2017). When Netflix entered Turkey in 2016, it first streamed content from all over the world, such as La Casa de Papel and Black Mirror, with the options of Turkish subtitles and dubbing. In 2018, the company launched the first Netflix Turkey original series called Hakan: Muhafız (The Protector), which had more than ten million views around the world. Hakan: Muhafız is set in Ottoman-era fantasy that is a mix of history, action tropes and supernatural elements. The first season, comprised of ten episodes, was produced by 03 Medya and narrates the story of a young man who discovers he has superpowers and works to defend Istanbul from dark forces (Every Turkish Series on Netflix 2018). Netflix announced two more series to come, Ottoman Rising and Atiye (Hakan: Muhafız dizisinin izlenme rakamları belli oldu 2019). Just like Hakan: Muhafız, both of these series feature actors whose fame reaches beyond Turkey to the Middle East, the Balkans and Latin America. The pioneer of SVOD in Turkey is Blu TV, which uses the same subscription-­based video-on-demand strategy as Netflix. In 2017, Blu TV launched its first original project, Masum (Innocent). It was a big-budget

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online drama produced by D Productions, which was the major production company for Doğan Medya. Masum is a high-end crime drama about a retired policeman forced to contend with a murder involving his own son (Vivarelli 2017). As an online streaming platform, Blu TV used to be a part of Doğan Digital, itself part of Doğan Media Group owned by former media mogul Aydın Doğan. When the media group was sold to Demirören Holding in March 2018, Blu TV was not included in this acquisition and remained within Doğan Holding. However, as the content manager of Blu TV revealed, the acquisition of Doğan Medya by Demirören, which took place after the release of Masum, left Blu TV without the support of D Productions at the beginning (interview with Participant 2, March 3, 2019). Since then, the platform focused on low-budget original content. Blu TV is currently the most active streaming platform in original series production in Turkey. According to the content manager of Blu TV (interview with Participant 2, March 3, 2019), they have produced a total of twelve original series since the establishment of the platform. Puhu TV is the largest Turkish AVOD (which depends heavily on advertising, like YouTube). Puhu TV was founded in 2016 by Doğuş Media Group, one of the major media conglomerates owned by the Şahenk Family that owns the TV channels NTV and Star TV.  Initially, Puhu TV similarly streamed series produced for traditional television. But Puhu TV released its first original, Fi (Phi) in 2017, which featured a trilogy of local bestselling novels that were based on the story of a womanizing celebrity psychologist who falls in love with his neighbor. Episodes lasted for one hour and combined elements of the crime, thriller and drama genres. Şahsiyet (Persona) was released in 2018, and the last original drama title was a psychological thriller called Dip (The Bottom), released in 2018. Even though their last project did not generate as much publicity as the first two series, it still reached one million viewers. The distinction between Puhu TV and other video-on-demand platforms in Turkey does not merely stem from the difference in their business models as either advertisement-supported or subscriber-supported VOD services. The distinction is more about how Puhu TV was originally set up as a platform that produced originals both for streaming on the Internet and broadcasting on television. The idea was to distribute unregulated content on the Internet and the “censored version” on television. However, “things did not go as predicted for Puhu TV,” according to a May 1, 2019 interview with Participant 10 who was a screenwriter for

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Puhu TV’s original series Dip, because the new regulations announced by RTÜK—Radio and Television Supreme Council—included regulating the on-demand services such as Netflix, Blu TV and Puhu TV. This move was considered as content regulation by some critics (Öztürk 2019). Furthermore, Doğuş Media Group had some financial troubles over the last year (Özgür 2018).

Changes in Production Series produced for video-on-demand platforms seem to have some differences from series produced for mainstream television, especially in the scale of their production. As previously mentioned, Blu TV used to be a subdivision of Doğan Digital that produced their first originals with D Productions, which was the main series production company for Doğan Medya. Therefore, when Blu TV was first established it was working with one of the biggest production companies in Turkey. However, since Doğan Medya was sold, they have mainly worked with small-scale production companies or freelance producers who make feature films and some documentaries. One such company is Birfilm, which produced the 7Yüz series and is one of the production companies responsible for the distribution of festival films in Turkey. Similarly, the series Bartu Ben (I am Bartu) was produced by an independent film producer. Therefore, there seems to be a tendency for Blu TV to work with independent producers rather than the more established names in the industry. On the other hand, Netflix has chosen the different path of working with companies that have an international base. For example, O3 Production Services produced Hakan: Muhafız, and Karga7 is working on the new series Ottoman Rising to be streamed on Netflix. O3 Production Services is partners with Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC), an organization that focuses on the success of Turkish television series in the Middle East and the world (Alankuş and Yanardağoğlu 2016). In addition, Karga7 is a multinational company headquartered in Los Angeles. Both these companies that worked with Netflix share the advantage of being in international cooperation. Puhu TV, operating as an AVOD platform, chose to produce its web series with major production companies already well established in traditional television. For example, Puhu TV’s Fi (Phi) and Şahsiyet (Persona) were produced by Ay Yapım, the company that produced some of the most highly rated television dramas in Turkey, such as Fatmagül’ün Suçu

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Ne? (What is Fatmagül’s Fault?). Puhu TV worked with TMC for the production of drama series Dip (The Bottom). TMC has been a major producer of music and television series for almost thirty years and produced globally rated shows like Binbir Gece (A Thousand Nights) in the 2000s. Both Ay Yapım and TMC continue to produce television series for mainstream channels owned by Doğuş Media Group. In the meantime, the YouTube trend waned, especially when Sıfır Bir (2016) moved to Blu TV. This brought a lot of new subscribers to the other platforms. After this transfer, as Participant 10 explained in an interview on May 1, 2019, from the perspective of creators the distinction between Blu TV and Puhu TV was clear. If they had low-budget productions with non-famous players but lots of impact due to the uniqueness of the content, then they presented it to Blu TV. But if the content required big budgets with well-known actors, then they would present it to Puhu TV (Participant 2, March 3, 2019).

Narrative Changes As Esler (2016, p.  133) suggests, “technological convergence impacts more than just the way audiences are constructed by networks, it also influences the forms and content of television production.” Before explaining the changes in content as television series moved to digital platforms, it is important to understand how digital television in Turkey manifested itself in this context. The content manager of Blu TV, Sarp Kalfaoğlu, says: the priority of VOD producers is to “create or include content that cannot be found on traditional television” (Kalfaoğlu 2019). In other words, online series are expected to be distinct from broadcast television series in terms of storytelling and plot. The directors and screenwriters who participated in this study all emphasized the differences in the narrative of the shows (cinematography, script, editing, sound) produced for on-demand platforms versus mainstream television channels. First, the streaming series focus on telling stories different from those found on traditional television in Turkey. As one of the scriptwriters of Puhu TV original series who participated in this study mentioned, the stories on traditional television are very similar and sometimes the same (interview with Participant 10, May 1, 2019). The typical melodramatic mode of a love story is used in every single television drama. However, Internet series seem to challenge this notion with the inclusion of many more stories with distinctive characters. For example,

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Hakan: The Protector tells the story of a superhero assigned to protect Istanbul from evil. Similarly, Bozkır (Steppe) focuses on the story of two homicide detectives. As stated above, the priority of VOD producers is to create and distribute content that cannot be found on traditional television (Kalfaoğlu 2019). Furthermore, the producers and executives aim to counterbalance the negative impact of the ratings system on traditional television. In 2012 a new ratings system came into effect in Turkey, which increased concerns about the “exportability” of the TV series. This was due to the new constitution of the panel. Prior to 2012, the education level of the “head of household” determined how social and economic status was categorized. In the new ratings system, the primary determinant is mass public income level, rather than education, which is impacting on the audience preferences which in turn impacts on the exportability of the series (Alankuş and Yanardağoğlu 2016). Currently, the changes that were made to the ratings system present an obstacle for the marketability of shows produced for traditional television abroad. For media executives who distribute TV series, “edgier stories and scripts, and shorter running times” are considered more appealing for audiences outside Turkey (Vivarelli 2017, p. 48). Therefore, the melodramatic mode that is almost a necessity for traditional television series is replaced with edgier plotlines such as superheroes and fantasy elements for online platforms. According to Participant 10, who is a scriptwriter, series made for traditional television tend to include elements of family drama, while online video-on-­ demand platforms provide more opportunities to portray edgier stories and plots (interview with Participant 10, May 1, 2019). As suggested by Participant 4, who is a director, there are many differences directors experience when shooting series for online distribution, like cinematographic elements and editing techniques (interview with Participant 4, March 20, 2019). The participant suggests that usage of dramatic lighting and applying unorthodox camera angles are more common in Internet series than traditional television series. In mainstream television, there is a common application of the formula of one wide-angle shot and two close shots in every single scene with extremely bright lighting (interview with Participant 4, March 20, 2019). However, this could be a result of time restriction rather than artistic choice. For online video-­ on-­demand platforms, the shooting style should also be discussed in terms of technological convergence. Today, watching series online involves a watching experience on multiple screens, like televisions, smartphones and tablets. Producers are reported to utilize more close-up shots because the

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series will be viewed on mobile phones and tablets (interview with Participant 4, March 20, 2019). The information and insight provided by participants lead us to reach the conclusion that the narrative of content is changing either in terms of the plot or the storytelling. In other words, on-demand series seem to create more space for different character types and story development. In addition, they allow more space for creativity and the application of different shooting techniques. According to the majority of the participants, the series distributed on mainstream television are repetitive, which is not conducive to the creativity of the production teams. The on-demand platforms, on the other hand, are believed to better meet audiences’ expectations for more creative and different content.

Interchangeability of the Content Analysis of the interviews with the creative teams shows that series that are mainly produced for traditional television have not been successful on digital platforms, and vice versa. While Netflix so far seems to prefer the fantastical superhero subgenre, as seen in The Protector (2018) and Atiye (2019), Blu TV has so far streamed thriller, detective and fantasy genres. This seems to have been successful, as the series continued for three more seasons until now. Taking YouTube as an SVOD platform, it seems that the content of SVOD and AVOD is also interchangeable between on-­ demand platforms. However, interchangeability of content between mainstream television and on-demand television does not seem to occur. For instance, one of the original series by Blu TV, Dudullu Postası (Dudullu Post), was originally written as a comedy to be distributed on traditional television, but when they signed the contract with Blu TV the script writers were asked to adapt the content to the digital platform’s format of shorter episodes (interview with Participant 8, April 12, 2019). An episode which is 120 minutes on television must be shortened to a maximum of 60 minutes, and the elements of storytelling had to change in the process. Additionally, the plotline moved from comedy to fantasy-thriller after the fifth episode (interview with Participant 3, March 13, 2019). Dudullu Postası, which was initially created for traditional television, adapted its main plot and character development according to the expectations of video-on-demand audiences. The changes were undertaken through vigorous editing of previous episodes and while shooting the consecutive ones, once it was clear that

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the series would also be released on Blu TV (interview with Participant 3, March 13, 2019). Similarly, when the two highly watched Internet serials Masum (Innocent) from Blu TV and Fi (Phi) from Puhu TV were later broadcast on television, they did not receive the anticipated attention from audiences. A possible explanation for this failure on traditional television could be the differences in regulation of the two platforms. Due to its content, Masum was broadcast very late at night, and Fi was strictly constructed to fit the constraints of traditional television. So, love scenes were cut, and all of the swear words were muted. After these changes, the remaining content might not have appealed to the audiences of traditional television. Secondly, the narrative differences of linear storytelling in traditional television versus the non-linear style in digital platforms could also have played a role. Masum and Fi were initially made for video-on-demand audiences.

The Netflix Effect in Turkey Netflix changed the game for the industry by creating a business model that relies on new media technologies. This has transformed many things, from viewer’s watching habits to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for creating personalized content (McDonald and Smith-Rowsey 2018). In the United States, Netflix is known as a “mainstream, middle class product, but in the other parts of the world its use is either negligible or limited to cosmopolitan upper-classes whose tastes may not be indicative of their fellow citizens” (Lobato 2018, p. 252). Hence, the entrance of Netflix in a local television market both as a producer and a distributor also alters production and distribution in the countries that comprise its international market. This effect on production was apparent in the entrance of Netflix into Turkey’s market. The majority of the participants interviewed for this study were positive about Netflix entering the industry because it would mean more options for producers as more platforms open for distribution of their series (interview with Participant 7, April 6, 2019). Directors also welcomed the competition, which could bolster the artistic features of the series (interview with Participant 1, February 21, 2019, and interview with Participant 2, March 3, 2019). Netflix in Turkey also acquires original content from these local distribution platforms. For example, Masum (Innocent) (2017), which was an original production of Blu TV, was later sold to Netflix (Türkiye’nin İlk İnternet Dizisi Masum, Netflix’e Satıldı 2019). In this case, a local distribution platform also

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operates as a production company for Netflix’s streaming of content to the globe. Turkish television series have long been transnationally popular in the Middle East, the Balkans and Latin America, and Turkey continues to be one of the biggest content exporters in the world. It is too early to forecast whether online series can show similar popularity internationally, but there are some indicators. For instance, the first season of Netflix’s Hakan: Muhafız (The Protector) was viewed more than ten million times around the world and 85% of that is outside Turkey (Hakan: Muhafız dizisinin izlenme rakamları belli oldu 2019). Second, Blu TV’s original 7 Yüz was sold to an Australian online video-on-demand platform (Avustralya’da gösterilecek ilk Türk dizisi: 7Yüz 2019). Similarly, Fi (Phi) is the first Turkish Drama to be broadcast on South Korean television. The streaming on Netflix of Masum (Innocent), originally a Blu TV production, indicates a trend toward convergence of content between local and global SVOD services. This is reminiscent of local television series’ broadcast on satellite in order to reach a broader audience, for instance, in the Arabic-speaking countries. However, it should be noted that this association between the local and global digital platforms appears to be working both ways, as Netflix also cooperates with Digitürk for streaming of the Netflix original title House of Cards prior to breaking into the market in Turkey.

Conclusion This study explores the ways in which the Internet and digitalization of television are shaping TV series production in Turkey. The study sought to consult the primary witnesses of this transformation—series creators—for their views and experiences. The insight provided by the creative members of TV series production teams signals the influence of technological convergence on the production process. As TV watching experiences now transpire on multiple screens, series are produced with shooting and lighting techniques adapted to viewing on smart phones and/or tablets. Both Blu TV and Puhu TV were founded by more established media groups as born-digital enterprises, which is indicative of increasing economic convergence. Furthermore, Netflix Turkey is a subdivision of Netflix, a media conglomerate that both produces and distributes content globally. For local content that is distributed transnationally, distribution and production are

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becoming increasingly intertwined, which signals a trend toward greater cultural convergence. The novel plotlines, shooting and editing techniques adapted to the digital platforms do not fit with the narrative style of traditional television’s linear storytelling. Thus, the TV drama production process in Turkey is in a transition period that is increasingly converging on the technological, economic and cultural terrain. What is yet to be seen is whether the content created for digital platforms will achieve the popularity and viewership attained by the Turkish TV series broadcast on cable and satellite to many parts of the world.

Note 1. The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) was founded in 1994 as part of the provisions in Law No. 3984 Broadcasting Act which was passed in April 1994. The new law aimed at ending the illegal and chaotic situation that persisted since 1990 when TRT’s monopoly over broadcasting was breached with the start of satellite transmissions via Magic Box Company from Germany to Turkey. The law lifted TRT’s monopoly over broadcasting, and allowed the foundation of commercial radio and televisions. It also established the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) as the regulator for commercial TV and radio outlets. RTÜK is charged with the duty of allocating frequencies, monitoring transmissions, maintaining compliance with broadcasting standards and regulations, and also issuing licenses for broadcasters (Çaplı and Tuncel 2005). The Supreme Council’s duties and responsibilities were extended in 2011 in the new Broadcasting Act Law no: 6112, which entrusted the Council with the authority to regulate audio-visual content that is distributed on terrestrial channels, as well as online content that are available as on-demand services (Sümer and Adaklı 2011). Further changes that fell into RTÜK’s regulatory remit on the audio-visual content on the Internet were introduced as part of the amendments that were stipulated in the Law no. 7103 in 2018. Accordingly, the Supreme Council was granted the authority to also regulate all publications and audio-visual content online, including news, grant or cancel licenses, and ban Internet publications. These changes meant that on-demand services such as Netflix, Blu TV and Puhu TV will be monitored by the Supreme ̇ Council (Internete RTÜK denetim i Resmi Gazete’de yayımlandı 2018). In 2019, a new directive on the “Regulation on Radio, Television and Voluntary Online Broadcasts” came into force. Critics considered the provisions in the new directive as “Internet censorship” because Article 29/A authorized the RTÜK to ban access to platforms such as Netflix and online news outlets such as Deustche Welle Turkish (Radio and Television Supreme Council Authorized to Inspect Online Broadcasts 2019).

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References Aaron, L., Robinson, J., & Smothers, S. (2002). Convergence, Defined. Presstime, Issue May, p. 18. Aksel Yağcı, C.  S. (2011). Yerli Dizi Serüveninde 37 Sezon. In Y.  Aksel (Ed.), Beyaz Camın Yerlileri: Dokunaklı Öyküler, Dokunulmaz Gerçeklikler (pp. 13–47). Kocaeli: Umuttepe Yayınları. Alankuş, S., & Yanardağoğlu, E. (2016). Vacillation in Turkey’s Popular Global TV Exports: Toward a More Complex Understanding of Distribution. International Journal of Communication, 10, 3615–3631. Avustralya’da gösterilecek ilk Türk dizisi: 7Yüz. (2019, April 19). Gazeteduvar. Retrieved April 19, 2019, from https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/kultursanat/2019/04/19/avustralyada-gosterilecek-ilk-turk-dizisi-7yuz/. Bayrakdar, D., & Akçalı, E. (2010). Istanbul Convertible: A Magic Carpet Ride Through the Genres. In D. Göktürk, L. Soysal, & I.̇ Türeli (Eds.), Orienting Istanbul: Cultural Chapter Capital of Europe? (pp.  165–177). Oxfordshire: Routledge. Çaplı, B., & Tuncel, H. (2005). Avrupa’da Televizyon: Düzenleme, Politikalar ve Bağımsızlık Türkiye İzleme Raporu [Television Across Europe: Regulation, Policy and Independence, Turkey Monitoring Report]. Ankara: Open Society Institute. Esler, V. M. (2016). Not Yet the Post-TV Era: Network and MVPD Adaptation to Emergent Distribution Technologies. Media and Communication, 4(3), 131–141. Every Turkish Series on Netflix 2018. (2018, June 3). What’s on Netflix. Retrieved from October 5, 2019, https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/turkishseries-on-netflix. Hakan: Muhafız dizisinin izlenme rakamları belli oldu. (2019). NTV.com. Retrieved October 19, 2019, from https://www.ntv.com.tr/galeri/sanat/hakan-muhafizdizisinin-izlenme-rakamlari-belli-oldu,uWCJPpmndk60wU_JEeODwg. ̇ Internete RTÜK denetimi Resmi Gazete’de yayımlandı. (2018, March 28). Evrensel. Retrieved March 30, 2018, from https://www.evrensel.net/ haber/348833/internete-rtuk-denetimi-resmi-gazetede-yayimlandi. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (1st ed.). New York and London: New York University Press. Kalfaoğlu, S. (2019, April 6). Köprüde Buluşmalar: Sinema Konuşmaları ve Gösterimler. Public talk on Dizilerin Dijitale Dönüşümü. IKSV, Istanbul. Kejanlıoğlu, D. B. (2004). Türkiye’de Medyanın Dönüşümü. [The Transformation ̇ of the Media in Turkey]. Ankara: Imge. Lobato, R. (2018). Rethinking International TV Flows Research in the Age of Netflix. Television and New Media, 19(3), 241–256. Lotz, A.  D., Lobato, R., & Thomas, J. (2018). Internet-Distributed Television Research. Media Industries, 5(2), 35–47.

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McDonald, K., & Smith-Rowsey, D. (2018). The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century. New York: Bloomsbury. Meikle, G., & Young, S. (2012). Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Netflix’ten yeni Türkiye projeleri. (2019). Ntv.com. Retrieved from https://www. ntv.com.tr/galeri/sanat/netflixten-yeni-turkiye-projeleri,nDglHDtWOkOX wzusCp9o0w/QGBIbFUBq0amEkSNHMLfmQ. Özgür, B. (2018). Goriot Baba’lara ne oluyor? Ülker, Doğan, Şimdi de Şahenk! Gazeteduvar. Retrieved April 7, 2018, from https://www.gazeteduvar.com. tr/ekonomi/2018/04/07/goriotbabalara-ne-oluyor-ulker-dogan-simdide-sahenk/. Öztürk, F. (2019). Netflix: RTÜK’ün Internet yönetmeliği ne getiriyor, kurul üyeleri ne diyor? BBC Türkçe. Retrieved August 2, 2019, from https://www. bbc.com/turkce/haberler-turkiye-49193378. Pavlik, J.  V. (1996). New Media Technology and the Information Superhighway. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Pavlik, J., & McIntosh, S. (2004). Converging Media: An Introduction to Mass Communication. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Radio and Television Supreme Council Authorized to Inspect Online Broadcasts. (2019, August 1). Bianet. Retrieved August 25, 2019, from https://bianet. org/english/human-rights/211167-radio-and-television-supreme-councilauthorized-to-inspect-online-broadcasts. Sümer, B., & Adaklı, G. (2011). 6112 Sayılı Radyo ve Televizyonların Kuruluş ve ̇ kin Değerlendirme Raporu. Iletiş ̇ Yayın Hizmetleri Hakkındaki Kanun’a Iliş im Araştırmaları Dergisi, 5(2), 141–158. Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Basımevi. Thussu, D.  K. (2007). Mapping Global Media Flow and Contra-Flow. London: Routledge. Türk Dizileri 2 Numara. (2017, April 4). Hürriyet. Retrieved April 10, 2017, from http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/ekonomi/turk-dizileri-2-numara-40417302. Türkiye’nin İlk İnternet Dizisi Masum Netflix’e Satıldı. (2019, January 26). Birgün. Retrieved January 26, 2019, from https://www.birgun.net/haber/ turkiye-nin-ilk-internet-dizisimasum-netflix-e-satildi-244842. Vivarelli, N. (2017). OTT Brings Creative Freedoms to Turkish TV Market. Variety. Retrieved April 3, 2017, from https://variety.com/2017/digital/ global/turkish-drama-ott-phi-masum-1202019978/. Yanardağoğlu, E. (2014). TV Series and the City: Istanbul as a Market for Local Dreams and Transnational Fantasies. In D. Koçak & O. K. Koçak (Eds.), Whose City Is That? Culture, Design, Spectacle and Capital in Istanbul. New Castle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Yanardağoğlu, E., & Karam, I.  N. (2013). The Fever That Hit Arab Satellite Television: Audience Perceptions of Turkish TV Series. Identities, 20(5), 561, 579.

PART IV

Diasporic and Transnational Audiences of Turkish Television

CHAPTER 11

Mediatised Culturalisation Through Television: Second-Generation Alevi Kurds in London Kumru Berfin Emre Cetin

Introduction Turkey is an ethnically and religiously diverse country. This chapter examines a twice minority group (Cetin 2016), a minority group based on their religion (Alevi) and ethnic (Kurdish) identity, the Alevi Kurds who originated from Turkey but are dispersed across Europe, particularly in Germany and the UK, as a result of migration. Alevis are a persecuted community who have been claiming cultural and religious rights since the 1990s in Turkey while Kurds are the second largest ethnic group in Turkey and have been in an armed conflict with the Turkish state since the late 1980s. The case of the Alevi Kurds is of particular importance as it stands at the core of political contest within and outside of Turkey around both the Kurdish and Alevi questions (Gezik and Gultekin 2019). Alevi Kurd migration to the UK began in the late 1980s for various reasons including discrimination, poverty and the expectation of better life chances (Cetin 2016). The estimated number of Alevis living in the UK is

K. B. Emre Cetin (*) University of the Arts London, London, UK © The Author(s) 2020 Y. Kaptan, E. Algan (eds.), Television in Turkey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46051-8_11

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300,000, the majority of whom are ethnically Kurdish even though it is difficult to verify this as Alevis have not been recognised as a distinct religious group in the UK until recently. I have been conducting ethnographic research on the Alevi Kurdish community in London since 2016 during which I have undertaken 57 in-depth interviews with community members and 17 with workers from Alevi television, along with participating in community events and gatherings. My analysis in this chapter is based on 17 interviews with second-generation Alevi Kurds whose ages vary between 19 and 37. All of my interviewees are university graduates except one female participant and seven of my interviewees self-identify as female and ten as male. The majority of my interviewees were born in the UK whereas six of them arrived in the UK before the age of four. Through these interviews my aim has been to explore the attitudes of second-­ generation Alevi Kurds towards the media—Alevi, Kurdish, Turkish and English—and to examine their interpretations of the programmes these media broadcast in response to their self-identifications in terms of each of these ethnic (Turkish, Kurdish, English) and ethno-religious (Alevi) categories. I have conducted interviews in Turkish and English and used pseudonyms for my interviewees in order to anonymise their identity. I have transcribed the interviews myself and categorised them around identity, media uses and approaches/attitudes towards media. Then I thematically analysed those categories, hence the themes discussed in the third section of this chapter are deductive. For the purposes of this chapter, I particularly focus on the second-generation Alevi Kurds’ understanding of the Turkish media and the ways in which this constructs their transnational imagination as either part of Turkish culture or distanced from it. This chapter has two aims. The first is to analyse how the second generation relate to their parents’ home country through the media. Alevi Kurds are an ethnic minority in Turkey who have little representation in the mainstream Turkish media and hence the second-generation migrants in the UK when engaging with the Turkish media are much more likely to have access to mainstream Turkish rather than Alevi Kurdish culture. In the first section, I introduce and situate the concept of mediatised culturalisation and relate it to migration in order to understand how second-­ generation Alevi Kurds in London engage with Turkish culture primarily through the media rather than through direct, first-hand personal experience. This is supported by an analysis of the interviews along three themes: language, gender and life styles, and Turkish political culture.

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Whilst the cultural differences between Turkish and Alevi Kurdish cultures are highly contestable as it is difficult to draw clear boundaries between the two cultures, the representations in the Turkish media and the systematic exclusion of particular identities which are deemed incompatible with Turkish-Islam such as Alevis, Armenians and Jews draw boundaries around what can appear as “Turkish” in the Turkish media. This brings us to the second aim of this chapter which is not to emphasise or highlight cultural differences as markers of each culture but rather to unpack the notion of the Turkish migrant as an umbrella term and analyse the complexities of ethnic boundaries in the context of transnational migration.

Migration and Mediatised Culturalisation I have three interrelated key arguments in this section. Firstly, I argue that the experiences of second-generation migrants with and through the media are overshadowed by the generic concept of “migrant” which primarily refers to the first generation. Secondly, I argue that we need to discuss and research migrant communities who are also ethnic minorities in their homeland from a nuanced perspective. Hence we can say that the literature on media and migration has been developed in terms of two monolithic categories: ethnicity and the migrant. The aim of this section is to unpack these categories and suggest the notion of mediatised culturalisation in order to gain a nuanced understanding of the engagement of second-generation migrants with the media of their parent’s home country. Relevant to this discussion is the work of Ray (2003, p. 22) who criticises the monolithic notion of Indianness and argues that there are different diasporic Indian communities across the globe as a result of the ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity of the country. The monolithic notion of Indianness in a transnational context has also been challenged in later studies (Athique and Hill 2009). Ray’s case for India can be applied to other migrant communities. For instance, until recently the term “Turkish migrant” has been used as an umbrella category which disregards the ethnic and religious diversity within Turkey and its resonances abroad (Milikowski 2001; Ogan 2001; Aksoy and Robins 2003; Bozdag 2014), even though other studies suggested more nuanced accounts of migrants from Turkey (Kosnick 2000, 2003, 2007). This also applies to the category of “Turkish-speaking migrants” (Robins and Aksoy 2005) which obscures the cultural and political differences across different

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communities from Turkey. As the Kurdish media has become more visible and popular amongst Kurds from Turkey living in different countries, research on Kurdish audience in the diaspora has demonstrated the need to analyse the different uses of media and the different interpretations of their content by Kurdish audience (Hassanpour 1998, 2003; Sinclair and Smets 2014; Keles 2015; Smets 2016, 2018). These studies, however, primarily focus on the relationship between the Kurdish media and the Kurdish audience, even though the diasporic Kurdish audience has been engaging with transnational Turkish television for over two decades. Hence, these accounts, with the exception of Keles (2015), do not necessarily elaborate on how ethnic minorities of a home country connect and engage with the mainstream culture they left behind. This not only is problematic in terms of the invisibility of marginalised communities but also neglects the various ways in which audiences from different ethno-­ religious backgrounds use the media and interpret media content in constructing their identities and their transnational imaginations. The second key argument of this section questions the assumption of studies on the media and migration which consider the communities’ engagement with the media in a binary way as bi-lingual or bi-cultural despite their emphasis upon transnationalism or a global cultural flow (Chalaby 2005). This binary framework is productive when considering those migrant communities who are not an ethnic minority in their home country, but for minorities who migrate to another country this “dual frame of reference” (Suarez-Orosco, 1989, cited in Reese 2001, p. 455) of home country and host country should also include an ethnic minority dimension brought from the home country. I argue that the binary framework is not sufficient for understanding how a migrant ethnic minority will connect with the mainstream media of both their home and the host countries as well as their own ethnic media which may be situated in the home and host countries. Here I suggest a tripartite formulation of this relationship by looking at the migrants’ engagement with the (1) ethnic media (in the home and host countries), (2) mainstream media of the home country, and (3) mainstream media of the host country. The third key argument centres on the way that the notion of migrant needs elaboration in terms of generational differences as these have an important impact upon the transnational experiences and imaginations of migrants. That is to say, the children of first-generation migrants have different levels and ways of transnational engagement with and through the media. In this regard, Diminescu’s (2008) notion of the “connected

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migrant” helps us to situate migrants within the transnational flow of materials, ideas and people (Appadurai 1997) instead of being isolated or “encapsulated” into (Leurs and Ponzanesi 2018) their “ethnic enclaves” (Waldinger and Richter, 2002, cited in Matsaganis et  al. 2011, p.  54). Diminescu criticises the idea of a clear boundary between the home left behind and new country of settlement and emphasises the need to see the migrant as connected both to home and host countries. But does the notion of the “connected migrant” apply equally, and in the same way, to the first and second generations? Not only digital skills and literacy but also the migrant’s past and experiences play an important role in defining connectedness. For instance, second-generation migrants are more likely to be bi-lingual and better connected with both cultures, even though the direction and intensity of their connectedness can vary (Gillespie 1995). Their involvement with institutions such as education in the host country and their friendship networks will also likely open up more channels for integration whereas their family background and transnational family networks will enable them to maintain their connectedness to their home culture. The media is an important cultural source for the transnational engagement of second-generation migrants, especially if they are born in the host country or migrated at an early age, as the media of their parent’s home country is likely to be the primary and everyday means by which they can engage with it. Despite the promising avenues of study indicated by this complexity, I argue that the second-generation migrants’ engagement with the media is both understudied and undertheorised. Therefore, in order to develop a more nuanced understanding of how, for migrant communities, cultural identities and transnational imaginations are formed, re-formed, shaped and contested through the media, I propose the concept of mediatised culturalisation. I use the term “culturalisation” in a similar way to acculturation although the two are not completely identical. According to Redfield et al. (1936, p. 149), acculturation is a change of original culture patterns following continuous and first-­ hand contact with individuals who come from different cultural backgrounds. Later discussions also bring the dimensions of resistance and rejection into the definition of acculturation (Sam 2006, p. 11). However, the reason why I suggest culturalisation instead of acculturation lies in the fact that I refer to a mediated experience rather than the first-hand experience suggested by acculturation. It is also difficult to address the idea of “changes of original culture patterns” implied by the concept of acculturation by solely focusing on the media; but learning about and negotiating

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particular cultural values and notions through the media are more tangible. There is also the questionable notion of “originality” that is presumed by the various definitions of acculturalisation (Redfield et al. 1936) and that attributes an authenticity to the particular cultural traits of different communities which draw boundaries between them and imply a shift from one culture to the other. It is highly contestable and even dangerous to define a cultural attitude as “Turkish”, “Kurdish” or “Somalian” that essentialises it to a particular culture and might have discriminatory implications for the members of that particular group. Teske and Nelson (1974) argue that acculturation is a “dynamic process” of exchange rather than an end result. Similarly, I consider culturalisation as dynamic and situational rather than a personally transformative process (with an end result) as emphasised by the psychological connotations of acculturation. Hence, culturalisation acknowledges the individual reservations or critical distances which might emerge in mediated engagements with the parents’ home country and it is essential to understand the mediated nature of the second generation’s experience of it. Rather than drawing on their own first-hand experiences of their parents’ home country, the second generation primarily relates to it through the memories and narratives of their parents, and through objects and the media on an everyday basis. That is why the culturalisation concerning the home left behind by their parents is a mediated experience. As a concept, culturalisation takes into account the distance between being born into a culture and the secondary and mediated encounters with it. Mediatised culturalisation, therefore, refers to a process where the second generation learns about, and engages with, their parents’ home country and their culture through the media. This can occur in different ways depending on (1) the first generation’s transnational engagement with the home country; (2) the availability and the uses of the home country media sources such as satellite TV or online devices; (3) the ethno-religious background of the migrant community (e.g. whether they are a minority group in their home country as well); and (4) the second generation’s transnational engagement with their parents’ home country (frequency of visits, interest, friendship networks, etc.). Further, mediated culturalisation is not only about learning and engaging with the culture but also about structures of feeling (Williams 1977), transnational affect (Wise and Velayutham 2017; Leurs 2014), enculturated feelings, emotions and attitudes. For instance, my second-generation interviewees’ engagement with the Turkish media provides not only a ground for comfort and security

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but also a source of anxiety and worry due to their ethno-religious minority background. As much as the familiarity established through language and the consumption of TV entertainment such as dramas and reality shows is comforting, the political agenda that they come to know through the news media is challenging and disengaging for the second generation. In this regard mediatised culturalisation is also about resentment, reservations and distance towards the home culture. In the following sections, I will look at the process of mediated culturalisation through three areas— language, gender and life styles, and Turkish political culture—which have repetitively emerged as main themes from the interviews.

Culturalisation Through the Turkish Media Language Most of my interviewees say that television is an important medium for hearing spoken Turkish, both for themselves (in learning the language) and for their parents (including learning the language for those whose first language is Kurdish), although it works differently for the two groups. Although Turkish television has improved the interviewees’ Turkish-­ speaking skills, it has been more central to their parents’ everyday life and has served as an obstruction to their parents’ engagement with British culture according to my second-generation interviewees. Satellite has been there [in the house] since the beginning. This is because my dad does not speak English. He always watched Turkish TV. Perhaps if he did not get the satellite, he would have improved his English. Because he had had to… But because that Turkish TV was available all the time, he never watched British TV. (Sevda, female, 29, insurance broker) I think my mum used to watch English TV in the first house we had. That’s why she was a bit more confident. She could do lots of things herself. But as they’ve got Turkish TV, it isolated them more from British culture or the British community. I think it was hugely beneficial for my sister, she was stuck to that television like glue. And her Turkish is amazing because of Turkish television. Anything she has learned she learned from that TV. Because she didn’t pick up a book, so you can see that they can become quite intelligent just from TV education (laughing). (Tulin, female, 30, political advisor)

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The second generation regards the Turkish media as an obstacle to gaining knowledge about British culture and to improving the English language skills of their parents, although it can be a benefit to themselves. Interestingly, this argument resonates with early discussions about assimilation and integration where engagement with the home country’s media is regarded as having a negative impact upon the migrants’ integration. All my interviewees self-identify as Alevi Kurdish even though they emphasised that their definition of self-belonging is situational: [Britishness] comes after Alevi Kurdish. I don’t think I ever said to myself, yeah I’m British. I say I’m born and raised here. But when they ask me, I’m Alevi Kurdish. I do say I am British, it is always my nationality I say is British. My ethnicity always Alevi Kurdish. It just depends what they are asking me. There is a difference, yeah. (Duru, female, 24, accountant) Of course I see myself as Alevi Kurdish. Actually it depends… Sometimes I say I am from London, I am British, I am from Britain but I generally say Alevi … I wouldn’t normally say that I am British. But while filling a form, if I can’t be bothered to write Alevi, I write British… When it comes to legal documents and stuff. But if somebody asks me I am Alevi Kurdish…. (Elif, female, 23, undergraduate student)

Despite self-identifying as Kurdish, they have ranked Kurdish as their third language in terms of the ability and frequency of speaking it, whereas they rate English as the first, followed by Turkish. This ranking also applies to the order of languages spoken at home. The second generation argues that they speak better Turkish than their parents do thanks to being regular viewers of Turkish television since their early childhood. This has been reinforced by their parents’ choices of installing a satellite dish at the earliest opportunity despite the high cost back in the 1990s. Milikowski (2001) also notes that Turkish television provided the second-generation migrants in the Netherlands with a good command of language and fluency. While the Turkish media is still an important source for learning better Turkish, it also serves as a barrier for those who speak Kurdish. No doubt, this is not independent of the learned attitudes to these two languages which is framed by the ongoing discrimination against Kurds in Turkey.1 In the context of the media, the variety of dialects in Kurdish and their imbalanced representation in the Kurdish media appear to be the most important obstacle for viewing Kurdish media for my interviewees. The

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interviewees mention that they are not able to understand the programmes in Kurdish fully because their regional dialect is different than that of the programmes. Furthermore, despite their sympathy towards the Kurdish movement, my interviewees do not identify with the political overtones of factual programmes available in the Kurdish media. Also, the limited number of entertainment programmes available is mentioned as another obstacle for the second-generation viewers. Their consumption of Turkish media provides the second generation with an everyday engagement with the Turkish language beyond the family realm and expands their linguistic knowledge and skills. This can be regarded a primary base for further engagement with the Turkish culture represented on media and facilitates a deeper understanding of Turkish media culture and beyond. Dramas, Gender and Life Styles My interviewees mentioned that they follow some of the Turkish series such as Ezel (2009–2011), Kurtlar Vadisi (Valley of Wolves, 2003–2016), Kuzey Güney (2011–2013), Eşkıya Dünyaya Hükümdar Olmaz (Bandits Can’t Rule the World, 2015–ongoing), Aşkı Memnu (Forbidden Love, 2008–2010), Fatmagül’un Suçu Ne (What Is Fatmagül’s fault?, 2010–2012), Sıla (2006–2008) and some reality shows such as Kısmetse Olur (If Fortune Allows It Will Happen, 2015–2017) and Evleneceksen Gel (Come to Get Married, 2015–2017): I watch a lot of Turkish series. For instance, I used to watch, Ezel. Kurtlar Vadisi, for my dad, I have to watch that. There was this Asmalı Konak, Yaprak Dökümü [Autumn Leaves] … There was another one called, Muhteşem Yüzyıl [Magnificent Century]. That was a really good one. (Ahmet, male, 31, solicitor)

Some of these dramas such as Sıla depict family life and gender relations from a patriarchal and conservative perspective. While interpreting those series, the interviewees distinguish between the representations they see on Turkish media and the actual lives of Turkish people: I don’t think that the series are a true replica [of real life]. For instance, they show Mardin but that’s not really how Mardin is or Istanbul is. I dunno. I just watch it for the sake of it. Obviously we get entertained by them, the

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main characters becoming a couple, [we want them] to be couples quickly or something… But I also find it quite hilarious because it is not… Turkey is not like that… Young girls may think it as such. For instance Sila, she was a rich family’s daughter but she was adopted. She goes back to Mardin. It portrays the wrong image to people, maybe to my age girls or the younger…. (Elif, female, 23, undergraduate student)

However, whilst my interviewees do not take Turkish drama at face value and certainly recognise it as fiction, nevertheless it does offer them a portrayal of the lives of Turkish people with which they can identify. The dramas are not a point of reference for understanding or learning about Turkish culture, rather they are an important point of reference for fantasising about life in Turkey: We don’t identify with the woman we see on English TV, we identify with Sıla and Fatmagül. We see ourselves being her not like… Say Angelina Jolie… (…) You fantasise about to be that girl [you see on Turkish dramas] because English dramas never as glamorous as the Turkish. They are real life and it is grey. Turkish ones are very colourful. There’s a lot going on, the girls have pyjama parties [in those dramas] … The life styles seem so much more appealing. You think of yourself in this world. (…) There is always this idea, oh I want to be there, I want to be that girl… Somehow you start to fantasise about that life style. (Berrin, female, 29, receptionist) Watching these dramas gives you an idea about the life beyond the village [of the parents] and the “white Turkey”,2 not the Kurdish Turkey. It encourages you to want to see certain places. You know where these dizis are set and then you become more curious. The more you go and explore the more you like it. You become more attached. (Berrin, female, 29, receptionist)

Turkish dramas open up a transnational social space for fantasy for the second generation as they find the Turkish life styles they see on television more appealing than their English counterparts. The first-generation migrants in the UK come from a rural background (Cetin 2016) and by and large their first urban experiences have taken place in cities where they settled in the UK but their transnational connections with Turkey are mostly based on the villages and the holiday towns that they visit during the summer. Turkish dramas enable the second generation to become curious and know more about other parts of Turkey and thus the dramas facilitate transnational spatial experiences beyond the family origin for the second-generation viewers.

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Turkish News and Political Culture My interviewees are very critical of the news on Turkish television which distances them from Turkish politics. They do not trust the media as they find the themes in the news coverage and the style of the coverage sensational, exaggerated and biased. Even though they mention that they follow the news occasionally, they are not as engaged with the news channels or programmes as they are with TV entertainment. For instance after the recent suicide bombing in Ankara,3 some [TV channels] said that there were 100 casualties… You cannot believe them. I think they were messing around with the numbers. Because I think there were more casualties. They don’t care about these things, they only care about getting their stories across. (Duru, female, 24, accountant) I feel like they [news stories] are exaggerated. Majority of the time. I feel like they are trying to manipulate people’s feelings against it. Actually, I don’t think that they exaggerate the whole event. Just they wanna jumble up with emotions and feelings. (Oyku, female, 23, undergraduate student) I think they [TV channels] all have an agenda in making the news. They are very biased. They would make news about the people [politicians] they support. I don’t think that they are independent. There is also much repetition in the news. (Turan, male, 35, customer service assistant) Daily news programmes, I just think they are like a joke. They talk nonsense [in the programmes]… They show street fights and all the trivial stuff… And then you watch English news… It is all these like, important matters which effect our country [UK], whereas Turkey… Unless there is something very important, news are like a joke and I find it completely pointless. But since, what’s happened in Turkey, since the 15th of July [of coup attempt], I could say there is proper news. But still as much as they like to show it. We don’t know to what extent it is really going on. We could only just take their word for it. (Elif, female, 23, undergraduate student)

Even though the distrust on Turkish media might also be an issue for the contemporary media audience in Turkey due to increased censorship and partisanship following the coup attempt of 15 July 2016, I argue that my interviewees’ distrust on Turkish media primarily stems from their ethno-religious identity. They state that they do not feel as though they belong to Turkey as their community has been persecuted or subjected to different forms of violence, have been unable to speak their language and

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unable to practice their religious rituals safely and openly. The news programmes reinforce this feeling of being discriminated against and misrepresented and they think that the Turkish media contributes a great deal to the exclusionary and nationalist characteristic of Turkish political culture: From what I heard from one [of the alternative TV channel], the current dictator has the control over majority of the channels. So, probably the channels we watch are those which are the least controlled by [the government] … I think he owns one of the channels, is it ATV? I wouldn’t trust any news on ATV. I still wouldn’t trust the others. (Duru, 24, accountant)

My findings about the critical approach of the second generation to the Turkish news media resonates with Keles’ (2015) findings about the Kurdish diaspora in Germany and Sweden. Furthermore, in the case of the news, the Turkish media reinforces the feelings of ontological insecurity (Leurs 2014) as my interviewees explicitly mention their feelings of discomfort, anxiety and unsettlement about Turkey. Ontological security is about the confidence in continuity of the self (Giddens 1990, p. 92) sustained through relational networks which are no longer bounded by the physical space (Georgiou 2012, p. 312). Georgiou (2012, p. 312) further argues that satellite television serves as “permanent, reliable and easily accessible ever-present point of reference” for transnational communities providing them with a sense of ontological security through sense of homeliness, a system of daily reassurance and a system of management of insecurities associated with transnational condition. In a similar vein, Leurs (2014) asks the question whether Somalian refugees’ communication with their families through video chat and social media reinforces or intimidates their sense of ontological security through increasing the feelings of anxiety and discomfort. Drawing on my interviews, I argue that transnational ontological insecurity, a perpetual anxiety and discomfort about their Alevi Kurdish identity as predominantly perceived in Turkey define the feelings towards the home country for the second-generation migrants. The second-­generation Alevi Kurds hold and reproduce these negative feelings through their engagement with the Turkish media. Hence, Turkish news facilitates a variety of negative feelings and emotions about the home country in a transnational social realm. Watching Turkish news and following Turkish news media re-situate the second generation as members of an invisible, excluded and misrepresented community in their transnational imagination. In this regard their sense of identity and exclusion is defined by their readings of Turkish news

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media rather than being first-hand experiences such as those of their parents. This is not to say that the Turkish media is the only source for this but it encapsulates their parents’ and other circulated cultural narratives about being members of a persecuted community. Hence, the second generation’s cultural experience of exclusion in the Turkish context is mediated through the Turkish media.

Conclusion It is important to emphasise that my interviewees do not take what they see on television at face value. In this regard, mediatised culturalisation does not mean that being exposed to Turkish television makes the second generation more “Turkish” or assimilates them into Turkish culture. Instead the second-generation migrants draw on their own resources, first-hand experiences and critical accounts about the Turkish media in order to evaluate the verisimilitude of what they see on television. On the other hand, their critical distance to Turkish political culture and political discourses on the Turkish media does not mean that they draw a strong boundary between the culture and the language. Despite the fact that their parents, particularly their mothers, speak to them in Kurdish, their language skills in Turkish is far more developed than their parents and here Kurdish and Turkish television plays an important part in improving their Turkish. The second generation considers this an advantage; however, they think that satellite dishes have acted as a barrier to their parents getting to know British television. The concept of mediatised culturalisation helps us to contextualise the mediated nature of the second generation’s engagement with their parents’ home country, particularly for the communities who were part of an ethnic minority in their home country. It is also important to note that the media is not the only source of acquainting the second generation with their parents’ home culture, as transnational ties continue through visits to the home country and engagement with friends and other family members living there. However, the media enables an everyday engagement and opens up a shared popular culture to the second generation of transnational communities. In this regard, it is crucial to look at how this engagement occurs and how it infiltrates into the transnational imagination, sense of belonging and self-definitions of the second generation. This chapter provides an insight into this question by examining the second-generation Alevi Kurds’ interpretations.

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Notes 1. Kurds have been subjected to persecution by the state, lynching by Turkish nationalists and denied of cultural rights such as speaking Kurdish language in public institutions and renaming of Kurdish towns in Kurdish since the early Republican era (1923–). 2. White Turk is a critical idiom that is being prevalently used both in colloquial language and socio-cultural analyses referring to the well-educated, urbanite, middle-upper-class segments of the society. The term has also gained conservative undertones especially in the discourse by the conservative-­Islamist AKP and acquired a novel connotation through more directly referring those socially and culturally excluded by the Kemalist elites who are believed to have formed the hegemonic bloc of the Turkish Republic. 3. An ISIS suicide bomber has killed 103 people who were gathering for a peace demonstration on 10 October 2015 in Ankara.

References Aksoy, A., & Robins, K. (2003). Banal Transnationalism: The Difference that Television Makes. In K. H. Karim (Ed.), The Media of Diaspora: Mapping the Global (pp. 89–104). London: Routledge. Appadurai, A. (1997). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Athique, A., & Hill, D. (2009). The Multiplex in India: A Cultural Economy of Urban Leisure. London: Routledge. Bozdag, C. (2014). Policies of Media and Cultural Integration in Germany: From Guestworker Programmes to a More Integrative Framework. Global Media and Communication, 10(3), 289–301. Cetin, U. (2016). Durkheim, Ethnography and Suicide: Researching Young Male Suicide in Transnational London Alevi-Kurdish Community. Ethnography, 17(2), 250–277. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138115586583. Chalaby, J. (2005). Transnational Television Worldwide: Towards a New Media Order. London: I.B. Tauris. Diminescu, D. (2008). The Connected Migrant: An Epistemological Manifesto. Social Science Information, 47(4), 565–579. Georgiou, M. (2012). Seeking Ontological Security beyond the Nation: The Role of Transnational Television. Television & New Media, 14(4), 304–321. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1527476412463448. Gezik, E., & Gultekin, A.  K. (2019). Kurdish Alevis and the Case of Dersim. London: Lexington.

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Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gillespie, M. (1995). Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change. London: Routledge. Hassanpour, A. (1998). Satellite Footprints as National Borders: MED-TV and the Extraterritoriality of State Sovereignty. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 18(1), 53–72. Hassanpour, A. (2003). Diaspora, Homeland and Communication Technologies. In K. H. Karim (Ed.), The Media of Diaspora (pp. 76–88). London: Routledge. Keles, J.  Y. (2015). Media, Diaspora and Conflict: Nationalism and Identity amongst Turkish and Kurdish Migrants in Europe. London: I.B. Tauris. Kosnick, K. (2000). Building Bridges: Media for Migrants and the Public-Service Mission in Germany. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 3(3), 319–342. Kosnick, K. (2003). Ethnicizing the Media: Multicultural Imperatives, Homebound Politics, and Turkish Media Production in Germany. New Perspectives on Turkey, 28-29, 107–132. Kosnick, K. (2007). Migrant Media: Turkish Broadcasting and Multicultural Politics in Berlin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Leurs, K. (2014). The Politics of Transnational Affective Capital: Digital Connectivity among Young Somalis Stranded in Ethiopia. Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, 5(1), 87–104. Leurs, K., & Ponzanesi, S. (2018). Connected Migrants: Encapsulation and Cosmopolitanization. Popular Communication, 16(1), 4–20. https://doi. org/10.1080/15405702.2017.1418359. Matsaganis, M., Katz, V., & Ball-Rokeach, S. (2011). Understanding Ethnic Media: Producers, Consumers, and Societies. Los Angeles: Sage. Milikowski, M. (2001). Learning about Turkishness by Satellite: Private Satisfactions and Public Benefits. In K. Ross & P. Playden (Eds.), Black Marks: Minority Ethnic Audiences and Media (pp. 125–134). Aldershot: Ashgate. Ogan, C. (2001). Communication and Identity in the Diaspora: Turkish Migrants in Amsterdam and Their Use of Media. London: Lexington. Ray, M. (2003). Nation, Nostalgia and Bollywood: In the Tracks of a Twice-­ Displaced Community. In K.  H. Karim (Ed.), The Media of Diaspora (pp. 21–35). London: Routledge. Redfield, R., Linton, R., & Herskovits, M. J. (1936). Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation. American Anthropologist, 38(1), 149–152. Reese, L. (2001). Morality and Identity in Mexican Immigrant Parents’ Visions of the Future. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27(3), 455–472. Robins, K., & Aksoy, A. (2005). Whoever Looks Always Finds: Transnational Viewing and Knowledge Experience. In J.  Chalaby (Ed.), Transnational Television Worldwide: Towards a New Media Order (pp.  14–42). London: I.B. Tauris.

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Sam, D. L. (2006). Acculturation: Conceptual Background and Core Components. In D. L. Sam & J. W. Berry (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Acculturation Psychology (pp. 11–26). New York: Cambridge University Press. Sinclair, C., & Smets, K. (2014). Media Freedoms and Covert Diplomacy: Turkey Challenges Europe over Kurdish Broadcasts. Global Media and Communication, 10(3), 319–331. Smets, K. (2016). Ethnic Media, Conflict, and the Nation-State: Kurdish Broadcasting in Turkey and Europe and Mediated Nationhood. Media, Culture and Society, 38(5), 738–754. Smets, K. (2018). Ethnic Identity without Ethnic Media? Diasporic Cosmopolitanism, (Social) Media, and Distant Conflict amongst Young Kurds in London. The International Communication Gazette, 80(7), 603–619. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048518802204. Teske, R.  H. C., & Nelson, B.  H. (1974). Acculturation and Assimilation: A Clarification. American Ethnologist, 1, 351–367. Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wise, A., & Velayutham, S. (2017). Transnational Affect and Emotion in Migration Research. International Journal of Sociology, 47(2), 116–130. https://doi. org/10.1080/00207659.2017.1300468.

CHAPTER 12

Turkish Drama Serials and Arab Audiences: Why Turkish Serials Are Successful in the Arab World Miriam Berg

In the past ten years, Turkish serials appear to have become a permanent fixture on Arab screens. Their overwhelming success in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has not only aided in reconnecting with these former Ottoman territories not known for their fondness for Ottoman rule but also contributed to Turkish popular culture, which is typically seen by nationals of these countries as exciting, rich, influential, and trendsetting, and an example for a modern country that is achievable in the Muslim Arab context (Berg 2017b). Over the last decade, Turkish serials have not only become a huge commercial success, having become the second largest producer of television programs worldwide (Al Jazeera Türk 2014; Vivarelli 2017), but they have also significantly aided in bringing an entire country and its culture closer through commonalities that many in the Arab world were unaware of (Berg 2017a). Nonetheless, along with their enormous popularity, Turkish serials have also attracted their fair share of controversy over the years. Turkish programs have been

M. Berg (*) Northwestern University in Qatar, Doha, State of Qatar © The Author(s) 2020 Y. Kaptan, E. Algan (eds.), Television in Turkey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46051-8_12

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accused of corrupting the morals of Arabs. This has included fatwas being issued for their ban, their being blamed for increased divorce rates, decreased work efficiency, and traffic jams, and framing the enthusiasm for Turkish drama serials as the invasion of an alien culture (Salamandra 2012). Yet, none of the fatwas or criticisms have managed to slow down the ever-increasing popularity of Turkish drama serials. Instead, these programs appear to have established a strong audience base in the region, particularly among female viewers. As the popularity of Turkish serials in the Arab world and beyond is a relatively new phenomenon, there is still limited research examining the reasons for their popularity or the nature of the viewing experience. The few exceptions to this paucity of scholarly research (Yanardağoğlu and Karam 2013; Kraidy and Al-Ghazzi 2013; Anaz 2014; Özalpman and Sarikakis 2018; Berg 2017a, b) serve to make understanding the Arab audiences’ viewing experience more pressing. Emerging scholarly research urgently needs to further explore the importance of Turkish serials as an important development of popular culture in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and beyond, as well as its importance as a vehicle for messages of societal realities, gender roles, and modernity. Because of their significance to these areas, Turkish serials are taken seriously by both their viewers in the MENA region and producers (Berg forthcoming; Bhutto 2019; Paschalidou 2014; Sevinç 2019). Without prior notice, in March 2018 the Arab world’s largest private broadcaster, MBC Group, pulled the plug on Turkish cultural products. Ironically, the network that first ignited the fever for Turkish serials has been the one to now seemingly extinguish its existence on Arab screens. With the shows no longer airing on Saudi Arabian and UAE networks, loyal viewers have been constrained to watching Turkish serials on alternative platforms (Berg forthcoming). Findings from an online survey administered to several Arabic fan sites of Turkish serials on social media, which included more than 300 respondents of whom the overwhelming majority were women between the ages of 18 and 50, revealed that Arab audiences are now opting to watch Turkish serials either online with English or Arabic subtitles (such as via YouTube), or are visiting the official websites of Turkish television networks to watch the content in Turkish language online. One-third of 18- to 25-year-old respondents noted that they also started watching Turkish serials on Netflix. However, the survey has also shown that viewers over the age of 50 either have stopped watching Turkish dramas altogether or are trying to watch them on other satellite

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channels that are still airing them, as they preferred to watch the shows dubbed rather than subtitled (Berg forthcoming). What these findings have ultimately revealed is that Arab audiences are actively seeking content that best serves their needs, irrespective of restrictions and censorship imposed on them. Despite television still being the most prominent medium in the MENA region (NU-Q 2018), these findings clearly show that the new media landscape allows Arab audiences to more freely select media content they would like to engage with, rather than being forced to consume what the state or media corporations believe they should be watching (Berg forthcoming). Data gathered through interviews, focus group discussions, and surveys1 with various Arab nationals in Qatar spanning a period of almost a decade have identified that viewers become deeply involved with Turkish programs and their content. Their motivation for viewing drama serials cannot be simply categorized as escapism and overindulgence in meaningless fantasy, nor can it be understood as trivial experiences of passive stay-­ at-­home women. This age-old argument (Blumenthal 1997) was reiterated by the majority of male study participants throughout the course of my fieldwork. To provide some insight into the motivations behind the viewing of Turkish television serials among Arab viewers, this chapter, by using the diverse audiences in the Gulf State of Qatar as a departure point, will examine why Turkish content resonates so strongly with Arab women, while also determining their viewing motivations and how Turkish serials have managed to fill a void among its viewers that Arab media have largely failed to satisfy. The chapter will also investigate why Turkish programs have been widely perceived as women’s genre despite being prime-time serials in Turkey.

Social Structure in Qatar and the Position of Women To understand and examine the appeal of Turkish serials to Qatari audiences, while placing an emphasis on motives for watching, we need to briefly explore the socio-cultural characteristics that impact audience behaviors and attitudes that develop as a result of the characteristics that are distinctive to Qatar. At the same time, it is also important to understand the cultural and domestic situation and role of women in Qatar, as they have been largely identified as the prime audience of Turkish serials.

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Qatar’s demographic is unique as its nationals comprise only 11.6% of a population of more than 2 million—the highest ratio of noncitizens in the world Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). At the same time, Qatar is the second richest country in the world because of its vast natural gas and oil reserves (CIA). While nationals from the Indian subcontinent, Egypt, and the Philippines constitute the largest ethnic groups, there are also significant numbers of expatriates2 residing in the country who originate from various Arab3 countries (Gengler 2012; Snoj 2019). Similar to other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, Qatar’s sponsorship law (kafala system) makes it difficult for foreigners to stay in the country beyond the length of their work contract. As the majority of the Arab world is afflicted by war, political conflict, or economic turmoil, Arab families in Qatar often live in fear of seeing their work contracts (and therefore their sponsorship) terminated, which result in their immediate expulsion from the country. Qatar’s labor law requires all non-Qataris to be sponsored by a Qatari citizen or company, having ultimate control over their visa status, conditions, salary, and potential expulsion from the country. The thought of being forced to return to one’s country of origin can for many be a rather daunting prospect, as many fear they will not only lack social or economic stability and security, but the income and standard of living available to them in Qatar is simply unachievable in their home nation (Lay 2005). Therefore, it is possible to argue that the impact of rather unstable living conditions is a factor that requires attention when exploring viewing motives, particularly among the expatriate population in Qatar, or when assessing similar audiences in other GCC States. Despite undergoing swift development, urbanization, and the rapid expansion of its population, Qatar has managed to remain a culture that is very private and has low social mobility, featuring the same Wahabi branch of Islam that is more closely associated with Saudi Arabia (Gengler 2012). The concept of “honor” is one that controls the foundation and regulation of all social interactions in both Qatari and other Muslim societies and refers predominantly to the sexual conduct of women. “A man’s honor is thus directly related to a women’s sexual behavior and her general reputation” (Lay 2005, p.  183; Nydell 2006). From early Arabs until today, women have been in a state of subjection to their closest male relatives such as fathers, brothers, husbands, or uncles (Lay 2005, p. 184). Because of a “fear” of Arab women breaching the sexual code that is considered the most shameful of all (or ayb), unmarried women (in particular) are commonly not permitted to leave the house without a family member or

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companion to chaperone them. The decision for women to pursue higher education or to work is largely made by the male members of the family. In an interesting development over more recent years, more female Qataris have been enrolling in higher education courses than their male counterparts. Qatari women have also been increasingly represented in many key positions in a broader range of sectors, resulting in a slow but distinct shift in the role of women in society (Al Muftah 2018). Moreover, arranged marriages are commonplace both among Qataris and among more conservative Arab nationals, with the Western concept of courtship, or spending any time together prior to marriage, deemed culturally unacceptable. Qatari nationals are (more often than not) expected to marry either their cousin (relatives) or another member of their tribe; yet in more recent years, statistics have revealed that around 40% of Qatari marriages end in divorce (Teller 2014). Overall, it is important to note that women in Qatar face similar constraints to those experienced by women worldwide, but these are “compounded in an Arab Middle Eastern context by religious and cultural defined attitudes and practices” (Metcalfe et  al. 2009, p. 583).

Importance of Cultural Similarities in the Appeal of Turkish Serials With the aim of understanding the viewing motivation of Arab audiences in Qatar, it is critical to first briefly explore factors that appear to have contributed to the strong appeal of Turkish drama serials among Arab audiences. The existence of a shared history between Turks and Arabs spanning more than half a century that incorporates a common culture, heritage, and religion cannot be overlooked when analyzing audience behavior in the region. Therefore, one of the most significant factors that appear to have contributed to the appeal of Turkish drama serials among Arab audiences in Qatar is the cultural proximity between Turkey and the Arab world (Straubhaar 1991; La Pastina and Straubhaar 2005). The dubbing of Turkish programs with a colloquial Syrian dialect in a region where foreign content is traditionally subtitled has not only translated a language and localized a television genre but also made Turkish serials available to a much wider and diverse group of viewers. This includes those who may otherwise have encountered difficulties with subtitling, but, more importantly, it has brought an entire country and its people

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closer, with many in the Arab world being unaware that Turkish culture was so proximate (Berg 2017a). At this point, one could ask the question as to why Turkey, which has a shared history with the majority of the Arab world, was for many years not perceived as culturally proximate, relevant, or even of interest to the region? Turkey, despite being geographically close to the Arab world, ideologically and politically could not have been more distant from its Arab neighbors. Turkey’s strong feeling of having been “stabbed in the back” and “betrayed” by Arabs during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire left them with a strong sense of resentment and distrust (Birand 1996, p. 171). At the same time, Turkey’s foreign policy goals and security interests during the twentieth century also significantly contributed to further distancing the country from its Middle Eastern neighbors as time went on. With the rise to power of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) in 2002 as a political force, Turkey started to reconcile with the Arab world (Fisher Onar 2009, p. 12; Taspinar 2011) and its engagement with the Arab public has been an important mission and a core factor in its soft power-based policy, conceived as neo-Ottomanism (Al-Ghazzi and Kraidy 2013; Bryant and Hatay 2013; Kraidy and Al-Ghazzi 2013). Although unplanned, the international success of Turkish dramas has fallen nicely into the soft power strategy of the AKP government. Turkish serials appear to have achieved the unachievable, by creating an affinity and familiarity with Turkey and its culture among Arab audiences that no other public diplomacy incentive could possibly have achieved (Berg 2017b; Berg forthcoming). Yet it is the dubbing of Turkish programs in particular that has ultimately enabled Arab audiences to rediscover the many cultural, ethnic, and racial similarities between them. Male Jordanian student: Until everybody started watching Noor (Gümüş) most people had no idea what Turkish people looked like. I personally don’t mind subtitling, but I agree with the other people in the group that dubbing made the difference. It is done well and you can’t really tell the difference. Moderator: Would you mind elaborating a bit more what you mean with “can’t tell the difference”? Male Jordanian student: Sure. What I was trying to say is that it looks genuine that Turkish actors speak Arabic. Turkish people look very similar to us; it’s not like

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dubbing an American show where everything would look totally out of place. I think it would be much harder to kind of believe that a white person is speaking Arabic than someone more Middle Eastern looking, right? (Focus group discussion,4 November 2013) Counterintuitively, Turkish serials did not encounter cultural discount among Arab viewers through the content’s appeal being reduced because of dubbing (Hoskins and Mirus 1988). Instead, the dubbing seems to have made everything Turkish more tangible to Arab audiences and aided in making viewers appreciate and discover their many similarities. As this student summarizes it: Female Egyptian student: Turkish shows kind of showed Arab viewers that we are very alike. Of course, they are more open than Arabs, but you still see that it is a Muslim country when you watch the programs. I love how important family is for them. I think they don’t glorify western lifestyle; it is just there, and I am tempted to say it feels very organic and not out of place. (Focus group discussion, February 2014) Turkish serials appear to have successfully merged cultural and ethnic similarities, social relations, and family ties with a modern way of life that is still recognizable in the Arab and Muslim cultural context (Berg 2017a).

Viewing Motivations of Arab Audiences in Qatar I have deployed the uses and gratifications (U&G) approach as an analytical tool to examine the viewing motivation of Turkish serials among its viewers in Qatar. The U&G concept focuses on how individuals utilize media and examines the appeal of various types of media content. The core argument of the concept is that audiences use media to gratify social and psychological needs (Rosengren and Windahl 1972; Rubin and Rubin 1985). According to the U&G theory, viewers actively select certain types of media content to satisfy their needs and expectations. Therefore, audiences are not interpreted as passive receivers, but rather as

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being actively involved, making conscientious and motivated attempts to seek various forms of gratification (McQuail 1987; Anderson 1987). As media can serve various purposes or gratifications, the outcome of the viewing experience can differ among individuals engaged in similar or the same media (Anderson 1987). Moreover, the U&G theory does not have a single or common list of gratification forms obtained from media use. Instead, multiple lists, categories, and classification systems exist that focus on different variables, such as entertainment, relaxation, acquisition, arousal, pastimes, diversion, escape, and sociality. Seminal research focusing on the viewing of soap operas was largely conducted when television was the dominant medium in the 1980s (Ang 1985; Rubin 1985; Livingston 1988); however, the digital age has seen a revival of the U&G theory, with an increasing number of contemporary scholarly researchers now utilizing the concept worldwide (Leung and Wei 2000; Leung 2001, 2013; Choi et al. 2004; Chung and Kim 2015; Grellhest and PunyanuntCarter 2012; Roy 2009; Rubin 2009; Ruggiero 2000; Shin 2009; Sundar and Limperos 2013). Even though the emergence of digital media has enabled television serials to reach a wider audience, empirical findings over the years have shown that until the ban of Turkish television serials on Saudi Arabian and UAE networks, television was still identified as the most utilized and prevalent medium among Turkish serial audiences, particularly with respect to the older generation in Qatar, as well as the wider MENA region (NU-Q report 2014, 2016, 2018).

Turkish Serials Perceived as a Women’s Genre Before exploring the viewing motivation of Turkish serial viewers, it is important to briefly discuss who Turkish serials fail to resonate with: younger audiences (expatriate and national). My empirical findings from research focusing on university-level students have shown that the younger generation in Qatar claims not to be viewers of Turkish television dramas. Instead, most of the subjects I have spoken to underlined that they were only (on occasion) passive audiences of Turkish dramas because the shows were watched in their households by mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, or sisters-in-law. Turkish drama serials were perceived by these subjects as something that “housewives” find enjoyable to watch. Female students, in particular, noted that watching Turkish television dramas was (largely) perceived as something embarrassing and shameful, whereas male

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students described the viewing of Turkish television dramas to be a weakness of the female gender, because they were used as a means to fulfill a female need for romance, while compensating for a monotonous lifestyle. Female Sudanese student: Turkish shows are for older women… It’s a bit embarrassing I think if you sit there and have nothing better to do than watch these shows. (Focus group discussion, September 2013) Male Libyan student: I mean, which normal man would sit there and watch that? It is for women who are frustrated with their lives and don’t have anything better to do. (Focus group discussion, March 2014) Female Qatari student: I have also been forced to watch them because they were the only topic of conversation for a while in my whole family. (Focus group discussion, November 2013) Female Tunisian student: I have to come out and admit it; I’ve watched two series; I’m not ashamed of it. (Focus group discussion, March 2014) These transcripts of university students from various Arab backgrounds demonstrate that Turkish drama serials are perceived by the younger generation as a genre that is only enjoyable by “housewives.” The use of the words “forced to watch,” “embarrassing,” or “I am not ashamed” is a clear reflection of this attitude. For many, Turkish serials were seen as too dramatic and overly emotional and the length of the episodes was seen as too long to maintain viewer focus. Yet, an overwhelming majority of female and male students acknowledged that Turkish serials appear to have surpassed local and regional television content in terms of production value and were more comparable with US content. Intriguingly, despite the majority of them declaring that they were not active viewers of Turkish drama serials, however, as the focus group discussions went on, most were able to demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of various programs’ characters and plotlines, as well as discuss numerous aspects of their appeal in a comprehensive manner. As a researcher, I was surprised by the students’ ability to discuss in such intrinsic detail their mothers’ viewing patterns/ motives, that at times I questioned whether they were honest about their claim not to be viewers themselves at the presence of their peers.

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Nonetheless, surprisingly, the most dominant motives for viewing Turkish serials outlined by university students were those outlined by female viewers which I will discuss in detail in the next section. These included the desire to experience an alternative socio-cultural model, to seek entertainment and escapism, as well as “personal identity,” which is the ability to identify with and relate to stories and characters presented in media content (McQuail 1987).

Turkish Serials as a Tool to Engage with an Alternative Socio-Cultural Model and Desired Modernity Over the past decade, particularly for female audiences, Turkish serials have become an integral part of daily viewing. One of the most prominent motives, particularly among female audiences in Qatar, has been a desire to experience modernity. Watching Turkish serials seemingly enables their viewers to dive into a world that feels familiar, but at the same time one that is distant enough to discover cultural trends and Turkish understanding of modernity. Previous scholarly research examining the soap opera genre and its viewers identified this as being key to audiences’ perception and realization of modernity (Abu-Lughod 2005; Ang 1985; Baran 2017; Chua 2004; Geraghty 1991; Kraidy and Al-Ghazzi 2013; Salamandra 2012). Therefore, Turkish serials stand not only for an actual cultural proximity but for a desire or aspiration for an ideal modernity that is achievable in the Muslim/Arab context. Similar to Japan, which successfully transformed American cultural products into an Asian cultural environment (Iwabuchi 1997, 2002, 2004), Turkish serials appear to have succeeded in transforming foreign elements of popular culture and an understanding of a Western style modernity into a Muslim, Middle Eastern cultural setting. However, importantly, we must note that Turkish serials appear to project not only a modernity that resonates with female Arab viewers but one that can convey an everyday consumerism. Many female viewers I have spoken to over the years have been particularly captivated by the glamorous lifestyles projected in Turkish serials broadcast on Arab networks. Women were drawn to the sense of fashion, make-up, and hair of Turkish actresses displayed in these programs. For many, changing their hair or make-up to echo the styles of Turkish actresses, or visiting Turkey and the prominent places in Istanbul they had

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seen on screen, was like experiencing first-hand the glamor and urban lifestyle portrayed in these shows. This urban lifestyle, set in the backdrop of a Muslim society that cannot be found anywhere else in the Muslim or Arab world, provides Turkish serials with an important visual structure where images of the Bosporus and its impressive mansions become a prominent element. For Arab viewers, the city of Istanbul represents a novelty where Islamic culture meets Western style—a true depiction of modernity set against the backdrop of Istanbul’s most desirable locations. In a similar way to what urban lifestyle means to viewers of Japanese and Korean cultural products in Asia (Iwabuchi 2004; Leung 2002; Ko 2004), the display of the urban nature of Istanbul, Turkey’s largest metropolis, is an important feature in the portrayal of a Western style modernity, as it projects a sense of uniqueness in which the city is presented as a place full of possibilities which cannot be replicated anywhere else in the Arab world (Berg forthcoming). Female Qatari: I don’t know anyone in Qatar who has not been to Turkey. My family and I enjoy how modern it is for a Muslim country. We love to shop there. My uncle has a home in Sapanca, so the whole family meets in Turkey. (Interview,5 October 2017) A combination of both findings from my field work and encounters with female viewers over the years, at places such as waiting rooms or hair salons where women are watching Turkish serials on their mobile phones, has shown that the underlying success of Turkish serials is due to their cultural relatability, as well as their exoticism. The modern Turkish way of life has been widely associated with Westernization and linked to people’s personal freedoms, such as freedom of choice and generally a more liberal take on social and cultural issues. For Arab audiences, pleasure from watching Turkish television dramas is gained by seeing an alternative socio-cultural model to Qatar and the rest of the Arab world, but without physically being confronted with the reality of modernity and Westernization. The fact that Turkish serials originate from a Muslim country provides these dramas with a highly relatable element and thus fosters affinity in the viewer, which somehow manages to legitimize breaking boundaries that would be otherwise culturally unacceptable.

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Female Qatari student: My mum and grandmother would never watch or accept an Arab show that is as modern as Turkish shows. In fact, they would condemn it. In a very strange kind of way, Turkish shows are allowed to do it and people still watch it and appreciate it for being from a Muslim country. (Focus group discussion, December 2013) As this female student describes it, there is a clear paradox at play whereby Turkish shows are afforded a certain level of tolerance when it comes to displaying taboo topics such as sex, consumption of alcohol, attire that would be considered un-Islamic (haram), and so on, all of which are heavily frowned upon in Western productions. One could argue that Turkish serials enable Arab audiences to satisfy their curiosity about a more modern and Western lifestyle. The fact that this more modern lifestyle is displayed by Turks who are not Arab, but are close enough ethnically and culturally, takes away their own anxiety about transitioning into an all-too-open society, but at the same time satisfies their curiosity. Finally, it is important to note that the notion of modernity in the understanding of the study participants is predominantly associated with progress and Westernization, which is perceived as a positive rather than negative development and a model to aspire to (Berg 2017a).

Entertainment and Escapism Irrespective of whether one is a Qatari or an expatriate, entertainment has been identified as the most prevalent reason for viewing Turkish serials. However, it is important to underline that, despite entertainment being one of the core viewing motives among audiences in Qatar, Arab women appear to take the viewing of Turkish serials fairly seriously by becoming personally involved in the experience. They not only satisfy the curiosity of Arab women about a society that is culturally close but distinctly different, but they enable women to reflect on their own position in life and society. Therefore, Turkish television serials are not something that Arab women binge on and consume mindlessly, as it has become more than “just” entertainment. Nonetheless, it would be naïve to dismiss the fact that this is simply seen as entertainment and relaxation for some of its viewers who, at times, just want to relax and dive into a different world. In fact, scholars

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undertaking research of television audiences over the years have found seeking entertainment, relaxation, or escape to be the most common viewing motivation (Horna 1988). Female Qatari stay-at-home mother: My kids and husband know that if my favorite show is on I don’t want to be disturbed–it’s my time. (Interview, January 2018) Female Egyptian student: My mother and sister-in-law are crazy about Turkish shows. I think they find them relaxing … they enjoy the drama. Egyptian shows are either very depressing, or they are too sexualized in a very unpleasant and misogynistic way. (Focus group discussion, October 2017) It seems that Turkish serials enable female audiences in Qatar to escape from everyday life by providing them with something distinctly different to become involved with. This nature of Turkish serials when compared to local/regional or Western productions not only allows viewers to enter a world that is new and exciting but one that also provides comfort by being familiar. At the same time, the display of glamorous lifestyles, attractive actors, and the portrayal of strong and independent female characters as protagonists in a society that is seemingly Muslim but where societal rules are more liberal, is experienced as very enjoyable and emotionally involving viewing for women. Female Tunisian, professional: It is guilt-free viewing. They don’t try to forcefully teach you anything, or tell you what is wrong or right or how to be a good daughter or a good wife. Women seem to be very independent and strong headed … I really like that. (Interview, July 2016) Female Qatari, professional: What I really enjoy is you see places that we don’t have in the Middle East. The actors and places are just so beautiful. (Interview, July 2016)

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Female Lebanese stay-at-home mother: Turkish soaps, you never get bored. It’s like going up and down with drama and emotions. There is always a bad plot twist that gets you hooked because you want things to be perfect again. (Interview, December 2016) As these two transcripts highlight, Turkish dramas allow viewers to leave behind their regular lives and enter a world—at least for an hour a day—“which is more picturesque, fantastic, adventurous, and heroic,” entangled with romance and drama (Abramas 1999, p. 260).

Emotional Involvement and the Importance of Romance What makes Turkish shows more appealing to Arab audiences than other alternatives is the way romance is portrayed. One could argue that what made a series like Noor so relevant and successful was not only the fact that there was a large focus on romance and romantic storylines but also that the two lead characters had married through an arranged marriage, which as a concept might feel alien to a Western audience but is very real and relatable to those in the Arab world. Turkish serials also appear to be pushing the boundaries by presenting stories that deal with adultery, sex before marriage, abortion, alcohol consumption, and dress codes that would not be seen as acceptable in Arab society, but they touch upon all these areas from a cultural perspective that is familiar enough to Arab viewers to make them acceptable, relatable, and identifiable. Female Syrian student:

In Arabic TV dramas, you might find the love relationship but it’s always like married and divorced and betrayal, and here they offer this plotline of an innocent blossoming romance, something that we like in this culture but we don’t really see in Egyptian or Syrian shows. It’s always about like, it’s arranged, we are supposed to get married, that’s it. We get married. (Focus group discussion, October 2013)

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Crucially, the concept of love and romance as portrayed in Turkish serials is not something that is culturally acceptable in Qatar. Therefore, the romantic storylines and emphasis on personal relationships in Turkish serials allow women to escape from the limitations imposed upon them and experience an alternative reality. However, to understand the meaning of romance for women in Qatar, we need to remind ourselves of and reflect on their position and role in society. Arab women in Qatar are often limited by traditional cultural norms and values that define what it means to be a good wife, mother, daughter, and sister. Even though women I have spoken to as a part of my field work, and others I have met as an academic, accept the socio-cultural norms they find themselves in, it seems that Turkish serials enable female viewers to identify and sympathize with characters without having to experience the consequences. As discussed earlier, ethnic and cultural similarities seem to significantly contribute to the female audiences’ ability to utilize Turkish drama serials as a medium that gratifies their entertainment needs (Berg 2017a). Female Jordanian-Palestinian student:

I think it’s every Arab girl’s dream … no joke. All of us, especially the young ones. When we watch them, we want that life. We want to be that way. We want to be able to be that way. And we can relate to it so much because sometimes in some of these TV shows, the girl will be doing something behind her parents’ back; she wouldn’t want her parents to find out, and that’s so relatable. And the guy, of course, but I think it’s sort of like a fantasy for everyone, and that’s why we watch it so much. We love it so much. We want to watch it to the end to find out what happens. (Focus group discussion, November 2013)

Fantasy enables female Arab viewers to imagine a different socio-­ cultural reality, that social problems can be solved in a different way, or

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that one can exist in a utopia. Ang (1985), for instance, found that producing and consuming fantasies while watching soap operas allow women “a play with reality,” which can be experienced as liberating because it is fictional rather than real (p. 134). Ang (1985) suggests that this level of fantasy enables female viewers to adopt a position and try out those positions, without having to worry about their reality value. Therefore, fantasizing when watching Turkish drama serials appears to allow Arab women to develop a dimension of subjectivity as a source of pleasure that puts “reality in parentheses” (Ang 1985, p. 135) and provides a safe imaginary solution.

Personal Identity Another important viewing motive among Arab audiences is the pursuit of personal identity (McQuail 1987). Comparable to the early findings of Livingston (1988) about British soap viewers, Turkish serials equally enable female viewers to reinforce their personal values, as well as relate and identify with stories and characters in Turkish shows. Female Iraqi, professional: I always find the pain and joy and also the bad people in the stories always very genuine. They don’t censor and show reality more than media here but in a non-blaming and guilt-free way. (Interview, August 2016) Female Qatari, student: You sometimes see situations and you feel it could affect you and your family too. I mean some of the stories you would never be allowed to film here. But still, they feel real and you get immersed into them because you can relate to them. (Interview, February 2017) By touching on subjects that are considered taboo in the Arab world, they fill a void that Arab media are failing to satisfy. The earlier sets of interview transcripts demonstrate the ability of Turkish serials to offer Arab viewers storylines and characters that are relatable and personally involving, but at times unacceptable in the Arab cultural context, to offer a highly engaging viewing experience. Turkish drama serials project a world where people can choose to live a liberal or conservative lifestyle but where family values and respect for one’s elders still matter (Berg 2017a; Berg forthcoming).

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Conclusion The overall discussion in this chapter has revealed that female Arab viewers in Qatar are the main audience of Turkish serials. Research exploring the reaction of Arab viewers to the ban of Turkish programs on Saudi Arabian and UAE satellite channels has shown that the desired impact on highly dedicated viewers was relatively limited. The new media landscape has enabled younger viewers in particular to actively seek alternative media platforms to continue watching Turkish content. Furthermore, the dubbing of Turkish programs into Syrian colloquial dialect has been one of the most significant factors in the appeal and success of Turkish dramas in the MENA region. Not only has the dubbing enabled Arab viewers to rediscover the cultural proximity between Turks and Arabs, as well as provided accessibility to a far broader audience, but it has also brought an entire culture and its people closer that many in the Arab world were unaware was so proximate. At the same time, findings from my research over the years have repeatedly shown that Turkish serials fail to attract large numbers of younger Arab viewers, while the majority of them had at least one female relative that was a regular viewer within their families. Drama serials made in Turkey have become an integral part of daily viewing in many households in Qatar. One of the prevalent viewing motives among female audiences has been a desire to experience modernity where Turkishness as projected in serials was highly appealing to Arab viewers. Yet, one cannot simply understand this as an audience response to Western modernity. Instead, the textual appeal of Turkish dramas has been for many viewers closely associated with the lifestyle and social relationships of contemporary Turkey as embodied in these programs. Therefore, one of the many gratifications Arab audiences receive from watching Turkish television dramas is gained by seeing a different socio-cultural model that is achievable in the Muslim/Arab context, but without physically being confronted with the reality of modernity and Westernization (Berg 2017a). At the same time, the need for entertainment and escapism has been identified as the most overarching motive. Turkish serials not only allow Arab women to enter a different world and escape the one they find themselves in but at the same time they provide comfort by appearing familiar and relatable. This unique combination of feeling of proximity and distance, glamor, attractive actors, and strong female characters makes the viewing experience of Turkish serials highly gratifying. Furthermore, the display of courtship and romance, as well as the ability to touch on subjects and

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characters that are relatable but deemed taboo in the region, holds a strong appeal and fills an important void that local/regional or Western content is unable to provide. In summary, female viewers opt for Turkish serials, regardless of the fact that Arabic and Western content is widely available, while cultural and linguistic elements appear to become less important if national and regional media fail to gratify the audience’s needs.

Notes 1. Data were drawn from 30 focus groups conducted with university students (2013–2014, 2017–2018) and 40 semistructured interviews with female Arab Turkish drama serial fans (2013–2014, 2016–2017), all of whom were from various Arab backgrounds. Interviews were also conducted with production companies, Turkish and Arab television executives, Turkish screen writers, directors, and actors (2010 and 2015). 2. The term “expatriate” or “expat” refers to workers who stay much longer than a typical short-term contract and try to create a new life away from their country of origin. 3. Due to Qatar’s diverse demographic, it was possible to conduct qualitative research not only with Qataris but also with Arab nationals from various other Arab countries who were residing in the country. The majority of research participants were from or had identified their heritage as originating from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. 4. All focus group participants were University students in Qatar between the ages of 18 and 25. 5. Fans of Turkish serials interviewed were between the ages of 21 and 55.

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CHAPTER 13

Consuming Halal Turkish Television in Indonesia: A Closer Look at the Social Responses Towards Muhteşem Yüzyıl Inaya Rakhmani and Adinda Zakiah

Introduction Much has been written about the complex relationship between secular and Islamic values in relation to global, market-capitalist developments in both the developed (Barber 1995; Tripp 2006) and developing world (Ger 2013; Sandikci and Rice 2011). Taking historically rich cases in various countries, these studies have diverged greatly from Huntington’s (1996) thesis regarding the inherent incompatibility of Islamic with secular, Western values. Significantly, many authors who specifically work in and on Islamic and/or Muslim-dominant countries have attempted to explore and elaborate on the diversity, heterogeneity, complexity, as well as the contradictions in the relationship between Islamic and secular values (Bayat 2007). In recent decades, the convenient terms “Islamic revivalism” (Nasr 2009) and “Islamic fundamentalism” (Choueiri 2010) have been unpacked

I. Rakhmani (*) • A. Zakiah Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Indonesia, Jawa Barat, Indonesia © The Author(s) 2020 Y. Kaptan, E. Algan (eds.), Television in Turkey, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46051-8_13

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and more critically examined—specifically in relation to the increasing appeal of right-wing, conservative politics around the world. Islamic populism (Hadiz 2016), for instance, is understood as the rise of Islamic narratives as a response to social dislocations, and political and economic marginalisation caused by neoliberal globalisation. Hadiz (2016) compares the cases of Indonesia, Turkey, and Egypt. Although the political trajectory of Islamic populism differs in each country according to the cross-class alliance underpinning it, the appeal of the notional ummah has undoubtedly affected the political, public, and even market spaces in countries with large Muslim populations. Along this line of thought, in her work regarding Indonesia, Rakhmani (2016, 2019) too understands Islamic consumerism as a way for middle-­ class Muslims to adapt to global market capitalism. Rather than confront and resist secular values that come with global products, an entire clerical bureaucracy was established to ensure that secular consumption does not conflict with select Islamic doctrines. In Indonesia, this role is performed by the Indonesian Ulama Council (Majelis Ulama Indonesia—MUI), a state-sanctioned clerical body founded in 1975 by the authoritarian government that brought into the fold mainstream Muslim organisations in Indonesia. In 1989, MUI established the Assessment Institute for Foods, Drugs and Cosmetics (Lembaga Pengkajian Pangan, Obat-obatan, dan Kosmetika MUI—LPPOM MUI) to issue halal certificates for consumable products. By 2017, MUI has issued 7764 halal certificates for 259,984 food, medicine, and cosmetic products (LPPOM MUI 2017 in Rakhmani 2019). LPPOM MUI has close partnerships with the National Agency for Drug and Food Control and the Ministry of Religious Affairs. In 2019, the halal label is mandated by law to be included on all product packaging. Consequently, Muslim clerics must now decide on how everyday consumption aligns with Islamic doctrines, which meant the evolution of Islamic authority together with popular culture (Akmaliah 2014). Thus, since the 2000s, Islamic symbols have become much more visible in market spaces of popular culture, namely film, fashion, music, popular literature, as well as television. In a neoliberal social world, halal popular culture and products provide the tools and space for the Indonesian Muslim middle class to navigate their upward social mobility (Rakhmani 2019). In taking media cases to explain the broader effects of neoliberal transformation, Rakhmani’s (2016, 2019) work on Indonesian television resonates with Öncü’s (2000, 2005, 2007) work on Turkish television. Öncü (2005) argues that the growth of neoliberalism, and the ensuing

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expansion of media markets, was a definitive phase in Turkish television, as it marked Turkey’s integration into the global economy. However brief, optimistic rhetoric was expressed over the lessening of state control and the nation’s opening up to transnational consumer markets (p.  228). However, this was followed by what was often mentioned by the Turkish media as economic uncertainty and political instability (Öncü 2005, p. 220). This social condition succeeded a history of state dominance over religious affairs, a situation that is also present in Indonesia. Significantly, in the past century both Indonesia and Turkey served as prime examples of state-led modernisation and economic growth in Muslim-majority countries. From 1950 to 2000 in Turkey and from 1966 to 1998 (New Order authoritarianism) in Indonesia, the state controlled the spread of Islamic views through education. The kinds of Islamic doctrines that were promoted were those deemed compatible with modernity and developmentalism. The Directorate for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) in Turkey and the Ministry of Religious Affairs (MORA) along with the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) in Indonesia were bureaucracies established to organise the relationship between the state and the Muslim population, and provide religious guidance in support of the national development agenda. However, they also played an unanticipated role in facilitating the upward social mobility of previously marginalised Muslim bureaucrats, activists, politicians, and others (van Bruinessen 2018). As such, after the 2000s, Islamism rose to prominence in political affairs in both countries, albeit in different ways. In Turkey, the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) benefited from the “highly controlled opening to religious groups that was then being initiated by a state controlled by military Kemalists and some of their technocratic allies” (Hadiz 2016, p.  11). Unlike in Turkey, in Indonesia representatives of Islamism remain in the periphery of the political elites, despite being instrumental in political competition. Around the same time, the middle classes in both countries expanded as a consequence of economic growth. As global brands proliferated in both countries, consumption behaviour like that of the middle class in the West emerged. Shopping malls and disposable income fuelled the growth of globally oriented consumerism. In both Turkey and Indonesia, the rise of consumer culture occurred alongside the increasing visibility of Islamists’ influence in the political arena. As such, this social condition developed a religiously conservative but “consumption-oriented segment. As much as secular middle classes developed a taste for globally oriented

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consumption culture, so did the religious middle classes” (Sandıkcı 2018, p. 460). In recent decades, the Turkish and Indonesian middle classes have been gradually socialised, specifically through television programmes and advertising, about the ways of life of the global middle class. Melodrama has become especially prominent for at least three reasons. Firstly, both Turkish (televizyon dizileri or dizi) and Indonesian (sinema elektronik or sinetron) melodrama are exported to other countries, in addition to getting prime time audience domestically. Secondly, amid the dizzying pace to shorten production time, reduce cost and maximise margin, both dizi and sinetron have stirred controversies and reactions from Muslim civil society organisations and clerics about what can and cannot be portrayed together with Islamic symbols. Thirdly, the social controversies surrounding episodes and/or melodrama titles could inform us about the tensions between secular and Islamic values, specifically in market-driven conditions. Thus, we approach the import of Turkish melodrama and its consumption in Indonesia with this in mind. In this chapter, we firstly provide an overview of Indonesia’s melodrama or sinetron industry, including the context within which dizi was imported and rose to prominence. Secondly, we elaborate the social responses around Turkish melodrama by taking the case of the first dizi to be broadcast on Indonesian national, commercial television: The Magnificent Century (Muhteşem Yüzyıl/Abad Kejayaan). We then conclude with a discussion regarding the social responses of Indonesians towards Turkey’s Magnificent Century and what they tell us about the relationship between Islamism and secularism in times of neoliberal globalisation. This chapter ultimately shows that not only are Islamic and secular values not incompatible as previously asserted (Huntington 1996), they have, in fact, fused by means of market mechanisms (Rakhmani 2016). At the centre of these social processes, television programmes and advertisements have played a socially important role in constructing the Muslim middle-class lifestyle. Turkish melodrama has transcended national boundaries with the support of market mechanisms and commercialisation. The way Turkish melodrama is received in Indonesia can inform us about what is deemed halal and haram for portrayal on television. To that end, the authors purposively selected significant grievances and protests carried out by Islamists towards Islamic melodrama in general and Turkish dizi in particular. The authors furthermore describe the debates surrounding the

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meaning of halal by taking the case of The Magnificent Century. We then dove deeper by scanning episodes and responses towards The Magnificent Century available on YouTube that were voluntarily uploaded. Eight videos receiving the most significant number of comments were selected: six episodes, one response video by a prominent cleric, and one fan-made video. These eight videos received more than 600 comments in total (per 17 January 2020), and the authors selected 65 of those to outline the distinctive interpretations of “halal.” We found that the debates surrounding The Magnificent Century reveal a polarisation between secular and conservative perspectives vis-à-vis the dizi. As such, the authors argue that the use of Islamic symbols in a consumerist society can be seen as reaction towards the Western, secular, modern values that arrived with market capitalism.

Importing Television Melodrama in Indonesia As in other developing countries, the proliferation of melodrama on Indonesian television occurred alongside economic liberalisation of its broadcasting system. Much throughout the New Order, Indonesian television operated under a single, state broadcasting system under the Television of the Republic of Indonesia (Televisi Republik Indonesia— TVRI). After operating as a single system for nearly three decades (1962–1989), competition between private, commercial television stations in the 1990s necessitated a more marketable television format. Private stations imported US-produced television programmes as they were more cost-efficient compared to producing programmes locally. However, some of these imported television programmes drew objections from the growing Muslim middle class as they were deemed offensive to Islamic sensibilities. Among them was the cooking show Wok with Yan and its episode that featured pork on the menu (Kitley 2000). Such protests compelled private stations to be more conscious of their expanding Muslim middle-class audience. In the 1990s, television executives and producers followed a rule of thumb, namely, to avoid representing religion altogether, for fears of misrepresenting Islam. As business logic dictates, executives and producers found creative ways to package television programmes to suit the needs of their Muslims audience. The popular format sinetron, despite following a television cinema format, as the name suggests, gradually evolved to resemble more the American soap opera or Latin American telenovela to

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capture a wider audience. Producers then infused Islamic rituals and symbolism into this melodramatic format, which then allowed for halal products, such as Islamic cosmetic brands and banking services, to be advertised to the specific Muslim audience segments during prime time. Like soap operas and the telenovela, sinetron was produced using the strip programming method, or back-to-back scheduling during prime time, to maintain loyal audiences. Strip programming allowed longer prime time hours, and for production houses to generate more episodes faster. Using rating analysis to inform decision-making, television executives work closely with producers to identify which particular scenes captured the highest audience that they would replicate in the next episodes (Rakhmani 2014). This method allows television stations to modify the script and cast continuously within a very short time. This way, the audience gains instant gratification with every plot twist and resolution, which, in turn, cultivates their loyalty. Indonesia’s television industry is also teeming with imported drama, including from Latin America, India, South Korea, and Turkey. In the 1990s, commercial television station TPI (now MNCTV) aired Indian series, such as the classical version of the epic Ramayana and Mahabharata (Tirto 2016). In the 2000s, private station Indosiar began airing Indian melodrama during prime time, and branded the programming Mega Bollywood (Sumandoyo 2017). To compete, SCTV broadcast Brazilian telenovela, specifically their flagship programme Esmeralda, around the same time (Barkin 2014). East Asian dramas, such as Endless Love and Meteor Garden, were also aired later. Between 2014 and 2016, commercial television station ANTV began importing Indian and Turkish melodrama. Although the originating exporting countries and regions varied, the melodrama television genre in general proved successful in capturing Indonesia’s domestic television audience. Kiki Zulkarnain, ANTV’s General Manager for Programming, stated that importing ready-to-air melodrama is much cheaper than producing locally (Jawa Pos 2015) for as low as IDR 50 million (USD 3500). For comparison, an episode of locally produced sinetron could cost IDR 300 million (USD 25,000; Sumandoyo 2017). Another example is the Turkish melodrama Elif, aired by SCTV.  Benardi Rachmat, SCTV’s General Manager for Programming Acquisition, stated that the station purchased Elif for USD 2000 to USD 3000 per episode, which already included rights for multiple broadcasting. Indian melodrama is even cheaper than Turkish. The Bollywood economies of scale allowed the price to further

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driven down to USD 100 to USD 300 per episode (Bhatia 2016), making it more appealing for Indonesian television to air Indian melodrama.

Dizi on Indonesian Television The origins of Indonesia’s sinetron industry can be traced down to Raam Punjabi, a media mogul of Indian descent (Barkin 2014), who started off by importing and producing raunchy films for the Indonesian market. He later expanded into the sinetron market, successfully applying Bollywood aesthetics to locally produced sinetron, including plotline, music, dances, and even fashion. Bollywood aesthetics has been proven successful and well-received around the world, regardless of their cultural background (Bhatia 2016), and its efficiency owes greatly to the scale with which it produces. In that, Bollywood has been very successful in influencing global standards of television melodrama. Compared to Indian influence in Indonesian television, which has matured after many decades, the reception of Turkish series in the country is relatively nascent. Alex Bastian, Planning and Scheduling Manager of Trans TV, claimed that during the early days of importing Turkish series, television executives saw dizi as modern while also conforming to Islamic values (Jawa Pos 2015). Islamic values were key in the appeal of Turkish drama to a Muslim-majority Indonesia audience. The first station to import Turkish television series, the Magnificent Century (Muhteşem Yüzyıl), was ANTV in 2014. Initially, the Indonesian broadcasting station titled the series King Suleiman to appeal to its Muslim audience, specifically due to its core plotline that was loosely based on sixteenth-century history and portrayal of King Suleiman, a prominent leader of the Ottoman Empire. The series not only depicted how King Suleiman governed his kingdom, but also melodramatises the intriguing relationships among the imperial courtiers. Between 22 to 31 December 2014, The Magnificent Century, later renamed Abad Kejayaan, received a 4.2 rating (Nielsen in PT Visi Media Asia Tbk 2014). Mimicking the success of Abad Kejayaan on ANTV, other commercial television stations followed suit and imported other Turkish television series. For instance, SCTV started to air Elif on 30 March to 7 August 2015 during prime time. Elif’s positive audience reception encouraged SCTV to also rerun the melodrama after the end of season one during daytime, and season two between 9 November 2015 to 31 January 2016.

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Benardi Rachmat, SCTV’s General Manager for Programming Acquisition, claimed that Elif was extremely successful as it captured 20 to 29 per cent of the audience share in March 2015 with the highest rating of 3.8. In comparison, the average rating for melodrama in Indonesia was 1.7 in 2015 (Nielsen Television Audience Measurement 2015). Commercial television station Trans TV also aired a romantic comedy entitled Cinta di Musim Cherry (Cherry Season/Kiraz Mevsimi) on 3 August 2015. Although the dizi received only a 1.0 rating, well below the average rating for domestic melodrama, Cinta di Musim Cherry was the fourth most watched dizi aired on Trans TV (Rayendra 2015). On the same day that Trans TV aired Cinta di Musim Cherry, ANTV also started airing Shehrazat (One Thousand and One Nights/Binbir Gece). Shehrazat scored a rating of 2.8 between 3 August to 20 September 2015 (Nielsen in PT Visi Media Asia Tbk 2015), and became the first melodrama that appealed to all audience classes. According to AGB Nielsen (2015), the most popular dizi are Cansu dan Hazal (Broken Pieces/Paramparça) with a rating of 3.2, Shehrazat with a rating of 2.7, and Abad Kejayaan with a rating of 2.1. In comparison, the highest rated local melodrama that aired around the same time was Pangeran (Prince) with a rating of 4.4; Preman Pensiun (Retired Thug) with a rating of 4.3; Tukang Bubur Naik Haji The Series (The Porridge Seller Wants to Go on Hajj) with a rating of 3.9; and 7 Manusia Harimau (7 Tiger Men) with a rating of 3.9 (Nielsen in Marketeers 2015). Meanwhile, the highest rated Indian melodrama, Jodha Akbar, received a 5.4 rating between 5 January to 31 March (Nielsen PT Visi Media Asia Tbk 2015). Although it may seem that Indonesian sinetron and Indian melodrama are rated higher than Turkish dizi among Indonesian television audience, taking into account other factors such as attention span, market penetration, and broadcast duration, Turkish dizi actually gained popularity very quickly. Between January and September 2015, an episode of dizi was watched for 31 minutes on average; Indian series 21 minutes; and local sinetron 18 minutes (Nielsen Television Audience Measurement 2015). In October 2015, local melodrama took 59 per cent of the total air time with 212 titles; 27 Indian titles took 15 per cent of total air time; while Turkish dizi, with 11 titles, took 9 per cent of total air time (Nielsen Television Audience Measurement 2015). A 10 per cent of Turkish dizi aired on prime time (6:00–21:59  PM). Around 50 per cent of dizi was aired

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between 10.00 and 1.59 PM and almost 40 per cent were aired between 10:00 PM and 1:59 AM. Significantly, Turkish dizi attracts a distinctive audience segment compared to Indian and Indonesian melodrama. Both local and Indian melodrama attracts the lower, female middle-class audience, aged between 5 and 14 years and above 30 years, whereas Turkish dizi succeeded in capturing a segment that television executives found difficult to attract before: upper-middle-class 30-year-old female audience (Nielsen Television Audience Measurement 2015). Nielsen (2015) attributed this to the fact that 40 per cent of Turkish dizi is aired between 10:00 PM and 1:59 AM, which is when the professional female audience are home (in Marketeers 2015). Consequentially, in less than a year after first entering the Indonesian television market in December 2014, dizi already rated on par with sinetron and Bollywood drama that have decades of experience in the market.

Social Responses Towards the Magnificent Century (Muhtesȩ m Yüzyıl/Abad Kejayaan) in Indonesia: A Case Study The audience response towards Abad Kejayaan must be understood within the development of Islamic melodrama in Indonesia. In the early 2000s, Islamic melodrama, or sinetron religi, emerged as a subgenre after the unexpected success of the low brow sinetron entitled God’s Mystery (Misteri Ilahi). The melodrama portrayed supernatural interventions that befell sinners, showing gruesome and gory effects suffered by Muslims who stray from the path of righteousness. The success of God’s Mystery sparked an onslaught of copycat sinetron that applied the same formula. This paved the way for more pronounced references to Islam on television. In the mid-2000s, the resounding success of the film Verses of Love (Ayat-ayat Cinta) changed how prime time melodrama is packaged to target the burgeoning middle-class Muslim audience. Love triangles are resolved with polygamy; heartbreak is reconciled with intimate prayer scenes; and protagonists adorn themselves with Muslim fashion. While television genres are very distinctive, the way in which sinetron portrays apparent Islamic symbols to great commercial success is crucial in the formation of what is now widely known as sinetron religi in Indonesia.

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Sinetron religi received a mixed, sometimes contrasting reactions from different segments of the Muslim middle class and organisations. Indonesian television executives and producers initially hired actors to play in multiple sinetron religi as well as conventional melodrama to cut production cost. This low-cost solution enabled actors to act in one sinetron wearing a veil and without a veil in other melodrama. This move was denounced by the audience, who questioned the piety of the actors in sinetron religi (Rakhmani 2014). MUI argued that some Islamic melodrama is “blasphemous” and “ruins the image of Islam” (Anugrah 2009). They attempted to “correct” the depiction of morality in the content of Islamic melodrama as well as regulate the display of piety of its actors by bureaucratic means. Such reactions are not without precedent. From 1999 to 2000, the Brazilian telenovela Esmeralda, for instance, which told the love story of a blind woman named Esmeralda, was the target of protest by a hardline Islamist organisation, the Islamic Defence Force (Laskar Pembela Islam— LPI) on 3 May 2000. In the rally, LPI demanded the broadcasting station, SCTV, to cancel the series because one of the lead character’s name was “Fatima,” a named shared by a daughter of Prophet Muhammad (Barkin 2014). Fatima was depicted as selfish and materialistic and LPI deemed that it dishonoured Islamic values. SCTV cancelled the drama shortly after. Similar social symptoms were also apparent during the airing of the globally successful Abad Kejayaan in Indonesia. The dizi, which has been aired in more than 47 countries around the world, is arguably one of the most widely consumed dizi globally—with 200 million viewers in 2016 (Tirto.id 2016). In Indonesia, in 2014, Abad Kejayaan received a 4.2 rating and a 2 per cent audience share (PT Visi Media Asia Tbk 2014; Jawa Pos 2015). This section zooms in on public protests, the responses of Muslim clerics, as well as audience responses towards Abad Kejayaan. Responses from the Public Although Abad Kejayaan achieved commercial success in Indonesia, criticism and public protests emerged in response to the series—specifically regarding the controversial fight over the throne and the king’s relationship with his concubines. In Indonesia, the state regulates broadcasting via Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia— KPI). KPI issues administrative sanctions based on public protests pursuant to its Guidelines for Broadcasting Conduct and Programme Standard

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(Pedoman Perilaku Penyiaran dan Standar Program Siaran—PPPPSPS/ P3SPS). The complaints lodged with KPI were related to the Victorian-­ style dresses worn by women in the series, and the way the female body is exploited (showing aurat [intimate body parts]), which, according to viewers, is not Islamic. Furthermore, the audience was also disappointed about the scant portrayal of the glorious history of Islam in the series. KPI held a hearing to listen to the various opinions regarding Abad Kejayaan before sending a formal reprimand to its airing television station ANTV.  This hearing involved the Indonesian Ulama Council (Majelis Ulama Indonesia—MUI), the Film Censorship Body (Lembaga Sensor Film—LSF), and historian Alwi Alatas from the International Islamic University (Universitas Islam Antar Bangsa), Malaysia. All agreed that the content of the first episode of Abad Kejayaan was problematic because it was not consistent with Islamic teachings. Fahmi Salim of MUI said “If ANTV wanted to inform [the audience of] Islam’s magnificent era, show only the magnificent part, not the personal aspects of the figures” (Mahaputra 2015). Artadi Hasbi of LSF claimed that LSF released the series with exception—which ANTV responded to by self-censorship, cutting the total duration from 120  minutes to 80  minutes. ANTV also enlisted an Islamic cleric from one of the largest Muslim organisations in Indonesia known for its traditionalist, pluralist views, Nahdlatul Ulama, to provide historical context for the series. However, complaints continued. Some of the viewers objected to the way women were portrayed as concubines. For the first few episodes, KPI classified Abad Kejayaan as suitable for teenagers (Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia 2015). However, it was the specific complaint about the objectification of women that was deemed unsuitable for this age group. A controversial dialogue between Alexander’s and King Suleiman’s female slaves was cited in the KPI website: All of you were brought here as slaves. If you do not watch your attitude, you would end up a slave. Just learn how to shut your mouth and behave. All girls here are for the King. If you are the chosen one, you can marry the King and have offspring, therefore you can be the beloved wife of the King. And you will rule the world.

KPI claimed they received 2778 complaints from viewers through social media and short messages (JPNN.com 2015). To mitigate commercial risks, ANTV included a disclaimer at the beginning of the series,

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asserting that the station is not responsible for any misrepresentation contained in the series. As cited on their website, KPI demanded ANTV to suspend the series, and only permitted the station to continue broadcasting Abad Kejayaan if they agreed to keep the series “safe” for viewers and avoid misrepresentation. Firstly, KPI demanded ANTV to show only positive portrayals of King Suleiman and Islamic history as the title suggests. Secondly, ANTV must involve Islamic clerics or scholars of Islamic history to review the content of each Abad Kejayaan episode. Thirdly, ANTV must change the disclaimer at the beginning of each episode and remove any reference that the station is not responsible for misrepresentation and any misconduct due to the series. Fourthly, KPI demanded ANTV not to show any form of slavery and exploitation of women by King Suleiman. Lastly, ANTV is to hold a press conference to clarify that Abad Kejayaan, previously titled King Suleiman, was a fictional programme, and apologise if any of the episodes caused the audience any discomfort, and the series was modified to portray only King Suleiman’s governance and none of his personal exploits. Thanks to public grievances lodged with KPI, ANTV made the executive decision to change the presentation of the series along with its title. ANTV also enlisted Muslim clerics from Nahdlatul Ulama to provide a brief explanation at the beginning of each episode to mitigate any possible misrepresentation. Likewise, the television station also censored female cleavage and other sexually suggestive body parts that were deemed pornographic under KPI rules. Responses of Muslim Figures Aside from public grievances lodged with KPI, conservative Muslim clerics also expressed their objections towards Abad Kejayaan publicly. Clerics from conservative and hardline Muslim organisations as well as prominent Muslim politicians commented about the way King Suleiman and the Ottoman Empire was represented in Abad Kejayaan. A conservative Muslim organisation, The Jakarta Islamic Preachers Corps (Korps Mubaligh Jakarta—KMJ), demanded a hearing with ANTV about Abad Kejayaan. Following this discussion, ANTV agreed to censor the aesthetics, dialogue, and specific scenes to suit the moral construct of Muslim viewers. “Having listened to the explanations, we assume that ANTV’s management intends to make this series suitable with the values of Indonesian audience,” said Muhammad Shobari, the leader of KMJ as

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directly quoted by the most influential Islamic newspaper in the country (Republika.co.id 2015). In line with KMJ’s views, several prominent Muslim politicians also publicly expressed their objections about the series and demanded a hearing with ANTV. Among them was Fahira Idris, a senator from Jakarta, and a self-proclaimed anti-“liberal Islam” activist. This hearing took place after she tweeted to her 474,000 Twitter followers about Abad Kejayaan’s deviation from historical facts. “The film King Suleiman is not Islamic and objectifies female Muslims. Please criticise KPI,” Idris mentioned on @ fahiraidris. Celebrity preacher Yusuf Mansur, a very popular Muslim cleric who frequents national television, also tweeted to his three million followers calling for ANTV to stop airing Abad Kejayaan (Solopos.com 2014). Felix Siauw, a Chinese Muslim convert and cleric affiliated with the hardline Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), also had a meeting with ANTV to discuss Abad Kejayaan. Felix Siauw also created a video essay entitled Ini Kata Ustad Felix Siauw Tentang Sinetron Menyesatkan ANTV—ABAD KEJAYAAN (This Is What Ustad Felix Siauw Says About ANTV’s Deceitful Sinetron—MAGNIFICENT CENTURY) posted on a YouTube channel with 42,200 subscribers. The video was viewed 49,000 times. In the video, Siauw gave a brief explanation of Islamic history and the Ottoman Empire, and connected it with the drama’s story line. He argued that the series promoted hatred towards Islam as it depicted the King as a prideful, promiscuous man. Meanwhile, official representatives of the largest traditionalist Sunni organisation in Indonesia, the General Committee of Nahdlatul Ulama (Pengurus Besar Nahdlatul Ulama—PBNU), offered a different take from other Muslim clerics. The Head of PBNU Da’wah Body, Zakky Mubarak, argued that almost all of the events represented in Abad Kejayaan actually happened in the context of society in the sixteenth century. Additionally, these events were portrayed as fiction. He said that slavery and kings having concubines were normal in many kingdoms, including Islamic kingdoms. Mubarak told the Muslim audience that the social phenomenon of slavery and concubinage must not be seen with today’s modern perspective (Hazliansyah 2015). He also suggested to Muslims who feel uncomfortable with the series to take it as a work of art packaged with dramatisation. These secular, modern interpretations approach Abad Kejayaan more as historical fiction rather than a religious

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text. However, this approach is rejected by conservative, Islamist interpretations that allows only a victorious portrayal of Islam in Abad Kejayaan. Audience Responses During and after the broadcasting of Abad Kejayaan on ANTV, YouTube users uploaded the episodes with Indonesian and English subtitles.1 The authors of this chapter examined users’ comments to these videos to illustrate the audience response towards Abad Kejayaan. Many of the comments actually demanded reruns of episodes. Others asked questions to clarify points they did not understand. Others argued that the historical account of Islam’s Magnificent Century had been modified in Abad Kejayaan. Viewers problematised the portrayal of King Suleiman’s governance as well as his personal life in the series. It’s unfortunate that [there are] many negative opinions about King Sulaiman Al-Qanuni and especially Hurem by ONLY watching the drama. However, this series has many contradictions with the real history. I suggest before giving any comments, find out the history of why King Sulaeman Al-Qanuni is very popular and [how] he is respected in his regime, even until today almarhum [the deceased—trans] is still being remembered and respected. (EF, user comment towards Kesedihan Mahidevran di Pemakaman Mustafa Abad Kejayaan [Mahidevran’s Sadness at Mustafa’s Grave Magnificent Century] episode, 10 April 2015) In its country of origin (Turkey), this film was banned because some parts of this series were not compatible with the real history. (AA, user comment towards Kematian Pangeran Mustafa—Abad Kejayaan [The Death of Prince Mustafa—Magnificent Century], 10 April 2015). This series is not real. Many parts have been changed. It’s not compatible with real history. (DR, user comment towards ABAD KEJAYAAN [King Sulaeman] ANTV Episode 2, 26 January 2015).

Some viewers, despite admitting their lack of knowledge about King’s Suleiman history, also expressed their belief that the story distorted the true historical events: Although I have not read the original history (of Magnificent century), I believe that the story of this film has been deflected from the real story. (RG,

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user comment towards Kematian Putri Hurrem [The Death of Princess Hurrem] episode, 29 April 2015).

Having enlisted clerics to justify the airing of Abad Kejayaan, some of the audience actually expressed their displeasure with ANTV’s decision to have them explain problematic parts of the drama. They furthermore questioned the motivation behind the ustad’s explanations. That’s right ustad [Felix Siauw] … probably they were lying that it was just a fictional story [and] that we can take wisdom from that… When the series was aired on television, some parts were censored. Yet, if we looked at YouTube… There is clearly more digression rather than merit. I pity the clerics who are paid to explain the merits of these misguided stories… I hope those clerics will realise that their acts will mislead Islam … remember currently Islam is being destroyed from within… (AM, user comment to Ini Kata Ustad Felix Siauw Tentang Sinetron Menyesatkan ANTV—ABAD KEJAYAAN [This Is What Ustad Felix Siauw Says About ANTV’s Deceitful Sinetron—MAGNIFICENT CENTURY] video, 1 January 2015) Controversies caused by Abad Kejayaan were remarkable. This series was for entertainment only. Yet, unfortunately, it contains more digression rather than merit because it [chooses to] show the women around the King (which is not necessarily true) rather than to show the value of Islam itself. From my perspective, I regret some clerics who justify this show. Dear Ustad, what do you want to explain? … about Islam or about King’s women. (AS, user comment towards Ini Kata Ustad Felix Siauw Tentang Sinetron Menyesatkan ANTV—ABAD KEJAYAAN [This is What Ustad Felix Siauw Says About ANTV’s Deceitful Sinetron—MAGNIFICENT CENTURY] video, 1 January 2015)

The more secular, modern responses to Abad Kejayaan stood in contrast to those that called for the content to be modified to suit Islamic values. These users asked ANTV to rerun Abad Kejayaan, as Indonesian versions of the episodes on YouTube are limited. Some of them praised the series, saying that it was only entertainment and not to be taken seriously. Dear ANTV, please rerun this series, the series was good. Do not show series that is not good, and with considerable quantity of episodes. (AM, user comment towards ABAD KEJAYAAN [King Sulaeman] ANTV Episode 2, 26 January 2015)

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Do not take this series as historical reference… this series were just for entertainment only with King Sulaiman’s story as background. That’s why there was dramatisation because it was for entertaining only. Be a smart audience. Just enjoy it. (MY, user comment to Ini Kata Ustad Felix Siauw Tentang Sinetron Menyesatkan ANTV—ABAD KEJAYAAN [This Is What Ustad Felix Siauw Says About ANTV’s Deceitful Sinetron—MAGNIFICENT CENTURY] video, 1 January 2015)

These distinctive social and Islamic interpretations of Abad Kejayaan, be it from public protests, Muslim figureheads, and the audience, are deeply rooted in Indonesia’s post-authoritarian history. Much throughout the authoritarian rule, president Suharto depoliticised Islamist movements through bureaucratisation, namely through the Ministry of Religious Affairs and MUI. By the 1990s, however, the state-led economic growth also gave rise to a new Muslim middle class. Indonesia’s Muslim middle class continued to incorporate Islamic rituals into their modern social activities. Public displays of piety grew steadily, so much so that even Suharto changed the way he carried himself in public—for example, by portrayals of himself going on the hajj—to appeal to this large emerging middle class (Hefner 2000). Van Bruinessen (2013) coined the term “conservative Islamic turn” to describe this phenomenon, as Islamist movements were increasingly influencing the official political and state narratives in democratic Indonesia, which up to that point were heavily controlled by the authoritarian state. In that period, Islam in Indonesia was known to the West as the more “tolerant” version compared to the one they encountered in the Middle East. This was largely thanks to the two Muslim organisations in Indonesia that were influential in developing this friendly face of Indonesian Islam, namely the modernist Muhammadiyah and the traditionalist NU (Hefner 2000). However, the state’s intervention in their conducts was the rule. After the fall of the New Order, during which prominent Muslim organisation and their clerics promoted state modernisation projects, the freer and more open public space shaped through processes of decentralisation and democratisation also allowed the rise of fundamentalist and conservative Islamic discourses in public discussions. The two most significant organisations shaping these conservative discourses were the Prosperous Justice Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera—PKS), which was influenced by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement, and the Indonesian chapter of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HTI). By 2005, the conservative turn (van

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Bruinessen 2013) had become mainstream that it also included market spaces (Rakhmani 2016). The expressions of public, Islamic figures towards Abad Kejayaan show how conservative Islam pervaded into commercial television spaces. The social responses to the television series illustrate the tension between secular and Islamist values in commercial spaces within which Islam is visible.

Conclusion This chapter examined the friction between secular, modern and conservative, Islamic interpretations towards Turkish melodrama (dizi) imported and broadcast by commercial television stations in Indonesia. By taking the case of one of the most influential and popular dizi globally, Muhteşem Yüzyıl (Magnificent Century) or Abad Kejayaan in Indonesia, the authors explored and explained this friction by studying the social responses surrounding Abad Kejayaan. Social responses of the state, via the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission, Islamic figures, through multiple representatives from various influential Muslim organisations, as well as audience responses on video uploads of Abad Kejayaan show how conservative Islamic interpretations can have a regulating effect on television content. This indirect regulation occurs through the role of television executives and producers to mediate the commercial relationship between audience and advertisers. Television stations must ensure that this relationship is not threatened, and avoid commercial risks by abiding to the cues given by Muslim audience. The expression of conservative, Islamist views is useful to inform television stations regarding what can be portrayed and what cannot. To curb commercial risk, the broadcasting television station, ANTV, invited Muslim clerics from traditionalist Muslim organisation NU to give a stamp of approval in each episode. This process is exemplary of what Rakhmani (2019) argues elsewhere as halal consumption. We found that the protests towards Abad Kejayaan expressed by various actors inform us firstly about how the modern value of female subjectification is at odds with female objectification represented in practices of concubinage in the past. Secondly, it informs us of the expectations of the Muslim middle class’ about the way Islamic history should be portrayed in global texts. These protests show how Abad Kejayaan as a global product is expected by the public, Muslim figures, and its audience to justify their modern, Islamic views. In this case, Abad Kejayaan is not treated as a secular, market-oriented cultural product. Rather, market mechanisms are

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actually used to regulate Islamic representations to align with the way the Muslim middle class uses religion to survive the social world they live in. The case of television is useful to explain the broader effects of neoliberal transformation, as television is instrumental in promoting middle-­ class lifestyles that are compatible with market capitalism. It tells the Muslim middle class which products to consume, which values are compatible with the modern world, and which are not. Conservative, Islamic values—practised through halal consumerism (Rakhmani 2019)—is effective as a mental tool for the Muslim middle class to navigate the precarious neoliberal social world they live in. Taking the case of the consumption of dizi by the Indonesian market, this paper argues that Muslims leaders and Muslim audience reconcile their Islamic views and modern values by creating a compatible construct that reinforces conservative, Islamist values through secular market mechanisms. As posited in the beginning of the paper, the authors argue that rather than resisting the secular values embedded in global texts, the commercialisation of the relationship between Muslim clerics and their congregations is mediated by the television industry. This symbiotic relationship ensures that the consumption of dizi is halal, and that it does not contradict the Islamic values that are useful for the audience. Likewise, we agree with Hadiz’s (2016) thesis that the rise of Islamism is indeed a reaction towards social dislocations experienced by Muslims due to neoliberal capitalist developments.

Note 1. This section was developed by purposively selecting Abad Kejayaan episodes that stirred socially significant discussions on the YouTube page. The names of the users are anonymised by means of initials, and the translations belong to the authors.

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Index1

A Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) founder, 93 government, 13, 39, 42, 91, 92, 98, 152, 164, 166–168 Islamist, 220n2 media, 41–43, 164, 166 party, 41, 99 representatives, 94, 95 Africa, 11, 165 AGB Nielsen, 252 Alevi Kurds, 18, 207–219 Al jazeera, 14, 167 Al jazeera Türk, 6, 223 Anatolia Anatolian culture, 164, 168 Anatolian villages, 70 Anti-communist, 55, 56, 60 Arab audiences, 10, 12, 18, 223–240 viewers, 18, 225, 229, 232, 233, 236–239

women, 225, 226, 234, 237–239 world, 18, 165, 223–240 Audiences, 2, 5, 6, 9–12, 14, 15, 18, 19, 29, 33, 36, 48, 49, 52, 55–58, 67–79, 106, 108–110, 112, 113, 136, 141, 143, 144, 151, 152, 155–158, 174, 189–191, 197–201, 210, 217, 223–240 AVOD advertisement, 191 B Balkans, the, 10, 164, 194, 201 Bayar, Celal, 54–56 Behzat ç, 126, 134 Beştaş, Danış, 93, 95–98 Bianet org, 122n3 Binbir Gece (A Thousand Nights), 197, 252 Birand, Mehmet Ali, 48, 49, 52, 54, 56, 57, 60, 61, 63n1, 228

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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267

268 

INDEX

Blu TV, 14, 18, 140, 190–192, 194–197, 199–201, 202n1 Böhürler, Ayşe, 88, 93–97, 99 Bollywood aesthetics, 251 Brazilian telenovela, 250, 254 British culture, 213, 214 British police procedurals, 128, 129, 131 Broadcasting license, 8, 9, 28, 37 Broadcasting tradition, 156 C Cable television/alternatively cable TV, 14, 174, 177, 192 Cagney & Lacey, 128, 134 Çaplı, Bülent, 35–38, 49, 154, 190, 202n1 Ceren Kenar, 90–93 Chalaby, Jean K., 11, 108, 176, 210 Charlie's Angels, 5, 70, 128 Cinayet (The Killing), 17, 126, 138–140 Cinta di Musim Cherry (Cherry Season/Kiraz Mevsimi), 252 Class/social middle class, 246 upper class, 142 Coalition government, 34, 58 Commercial television, 190, 248–252, 261 Conservative Islamic turn conservative Islamic discourses, 260 conservative politics, 162, 246 Consumerist society, 178, 249 Content policy, 31, 35, 39–41 Corruption allegations, 39, 41 Coup attempt, 40, 42–43, 90, 217 Crime dramas, 5, 128, 130, 138, 195 Cultural convergence, 189, 190, 194, 202 Cultural differences, 209

Cultural dynamics, 2, 50 Cultural identities, 15, 40, 154, 161, 168, 190, 211 Cultural policies, 11, 152, 162, 165 Cultural presence, 162, 167, 168 Cultural proximity, 227, 232, 239 Cultural values, 68, 164, 167, 168, 212 D Democrat party (DP), 29, 54–56 Developing countries, 154, 249 Diaspora, Turkish, 5, 17, 152–162 Diasporic groups, 153, 154, 168 diasporic viewer, 152, 156–159, 167 Digital platformsstreaming platforms Amazon Prime, 141, 191 Hulu, 141 Netflix, 141, 191, 199, 201 Digital television, 14, 15, 19, 192, 197 Diyarbakır, 8, 9, 62 Dizi popular dizi, 252, 261 Turkish dizi, 19, 248, 252, 253 Doğan, Aydın, 41, 42, 195 Doğan Holding, 6, 14, 19n2, 195 Doğan medya, 195 Doğuş media, 195–197 Domestic market, 9, 10 Dudullu Postası (Dudullu Post), 192, 199 Dündar, Can, 49, 50, 52, 56, 57 E Ecevit, Bülent, 60, 61, 180 El Arabia, 152, 164, 165, 168 Entertainment culture, 33, 70 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip, 13, 41–43, 86, 88, 90, 99, 166, 167 Esra Erol, 104, 106, 109–113, 117, 121 Esra Erol’da Evlen Benimle, 17, 104

 INDEX 

Ethnic conflict ethnic minority, 208, 210, 219 ethno religious, 210, 212, 213, 217 Ethnographic fieldwork, 16, 67 Ethnographic research, 79, 104, 208 Europe, 6, 8, 11, 27, 33, 36, 39, 52, 155, 157, 158, 161, 168, 176, 178, 184, 207 European Commission, 40 European Union (EU), 8, 39, 40, 153, 163 F Family values, 2, 107, 122, 193, 238 Far right, 34, 49, 58, 60 Fatmagül’ün Suçu Ne? (What is Fatmagül’s Fault?), 196, 215 Female detectives, 17, 125–145 Female viewers, 224, 232, 233, 237, 238, 240 Feminist critique, 133, 137, 138, 140, 144 Feminist debates, 17, 127, 131, 145 Feminist discourses, 128, 129, 133, 135, 140 Feminist studies, 127, 140 Feminist television antifeminist, 127 liberal feminism, 127 Fi (Phi), 195, 196, 200, 201 Football, 17, 176, 177–179, 181–184, 186 Foreign policy, 30, 55, 152, 160, 163, 228 Forensic medicine, 135–137 G Galip Derviş, 138 Gender equality, 133, 135, 138, 145, 145n1

269

Gender essentialism, 86, 87 General elections, 72, 76, 78, 162, 163, 168 Gezi Park, 41, 42, 166 Global audiences, 1, 2, 13, 15, 18, 166, 167 Global context, 3, 17, 127, 135, 140, 174, 186 Global cultural, 18, 210 Globalisation of media content, 189 of sport, 174, 179, 185 Global market, 2, 4, 11, 12, 245, 246 Global media, 1, 3, 108, 153, 169 Gözaydın, Iştar, 92, 93 Gülen community, 7 Gümüş (Silver), 9, 10 H Habertürk TV, 90 Hakan Muhafız (The Protector), 14, 192, 194, 196, 201 Historical documentaries, 47, 48 Historical juncture, 16, 47–63 Homosocial, 106, 114 Hyper commodification, 17, 173–186 I Identity politics, 19, 85 Ideological position debates, 3 rifts, 4 shift, 50 ̇ Ilter, Balçiçek, 90, 91 Indian melodrama, 250–253 Indonesia Indonesian broadcasting, 251 Indonesian television, 246, 249, 251–254

270 

INDEX

Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia, KPI), 254–257, 261 Internet, the, 74, 76, 77, 176, 190–192, 195, 197, 198, 200, 201 Interventionist military, 60, 61 Islamic authority, 18, 246 Islamic doctrines, 246, 247 Islamic history, 164, 256, 257, 261 Islamic interpretations, 18, 260, 261 Islamic melodrama, 248, 253, 254 Islamic populism, 246 Islamic practices, 7 Islamic sinetron, 253 Islamic values, 245, 248, 251, 254, 259, 262 Islamist movements, 260 Islamist organisation, 254, 257 Islamist values, 261, 262 Islamist women, 16 Iwabuchi, Koichi, 232 J Journalistic documentary, 48 Junta, the, 29, 57–59, 174, 181 K Kablo TV, 14 Kalyon Group, 42 Kanal D, 6, 14, 19n2, 90, 126, 193 Kanıt (The Evidence), 17, 126, 134–138, 140 Kanun Savaşçıları (Crime Fighters), 125, 134 Kazakhstan, 9, 155, 159 King Suleiman, 251, 255–259 Kirgizstan, 155, 159 Kraidy, Marwan M., 1, 11, 163, 165, 224, 228, 232

Kurdish broadcasting, 8 Kurdish community, 18, 208 Kurdish language, 8, 9, 220n1 Kurdish media, 210, 214, 215 Kurdish television, 9 Kurds, 8, 40, 62, 63, 207, 210, 214, 220n1 Kurtlar Vadisi, 215 L Latin America, 11, 194, 201, 250 Liberalisation of, 129, 184, 249 Live broadcast, 33, 104, 106, 114, 117, 122n2, 180 Local media, 9 M Magic Box, 5, 6, 52, 182, 183, 190, 202n1 Magnificent Century (Muhteşem Yüzyıl; Abad Kejayaan), 9, 10, 14, 18, 215, 248, 249, 251, 253–261 Mainstream media, 41–43, 210 Mainstream TV, 15, 16 Market penetration market-capitalist, 245 market spaces, 246, 261 Marriage show, 17, 74, 103–122 Mass communication, 27, 67, 68, 78, 174 mass media, 78 Masum (Innocent), 194, 195, 200, 201 McKinsey & Company, 39 Media alevi, 208 Media architecture, 163 Media conglomerates, 61, 62, 195, 201 Media consumption, 168 Media convergence, 13, 189, 194

 INDEX 

Media corporations, 42, 225 Media culture, 70, 71, 215 Media ethnography, 73 Media group, 195, 201 Media industries, 2 Media monopoly, 13 Media ownership, 16, 42, 54 Media production, 79, 176, 189 Media sector, 7, 34, 38, 42, 108 Media technology, 78 Mediatised culturalisation, 18, 207–219 Media transnationalisation, 175 Menderes, Adnan, 54, 55, 57 Meral Beştaş, 88 Meral Danış, 93 Mesaj TV, 7 Middle class, 99, 113, 180, 200, 246–248, 253, 260, 262 Middle East, 5, 8, 10, 17, 53, 162, 164, 167, 194, 196, 201 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 17, 152, 162, 164, 165, 167, 168, 223–225, 230, 239 Migrant communities, 209–212 Military coup military intervention, 29, 34, 35, 49, 50, 57–59, 63 military regime, 54, 56–58, 62 1980 military coup, 162 Miller, Toby, 1, 48 Minority group, 207, 212 Modernity, 2, 72, 174, 178, 224, 232–234, 239, 247 Muslim audience, 18, 250, 251, 253, 257, 261, 262 Muslim clerics, 18, 246, 254, 256, 257, 261, 262 Muslim middle, 248, 249, 254, 260–262 Muslim organisations, 246, 255, 256, 260, 261

271

N National borders, 168, 169n2, 175, 176 National broadcasting, 4 National government, 70, 72 National security, 30, 34, 41 Neo-conservative, 129, 132 Neoliberal condition, 105, 108 Neoliberal economic, 5, 51, 182, 185 Neoliberal globalisation, 246, 248 Neoliberalisation, 183 Neoliberal media, 3 Neoliberal order, 17, 34–36, 47 Neoliberal restructuration, 51, 60 Neoliberal rule, 181 Neoliberal social, 62, 246, 262 Neoliberal transformation, 185, 246, 262 Neo-ottoman cool Ottoman empire, 160, 165, 168, 228 Neo-Ottomanism, 152, 162–165, 228 New media, 1, 13, 18, 42, 62, 69, 78, 200, 225, 239 The 1950s, 29, 49, 55, 59, 68, 179 The 1980s, 1, 3, 5, 34–36, 49, 51, 52, 59, 60, 62, 68–70, 76, 79, 125, 128, 131, 134, 162, 174, 178, 180, 181, 185, 186, 193, 207, 230 The 1990s, 5–7, 9–11, 13, 16, 17, 33, 36–39, 42, 47–63, 73, 108, 112, 143, 151, 152, 154, 155, 157, 162, 167, 178, 183, 186, 190, 193, 207, 214, 249, 250, 260 The 1970s, 5, 33, 34, 60–62, 68, 128, 145, 157, 180, 181, 183, 185, 190 The 1960s, 4, 16, 29, 31, 32, 48, 51, 57, 58, 79n1, 157

272 

INDEX

O Ogan, Christine, 4, 6, 11, 168, 176, 209 Öncü, Ayşe, 5, 7, 108, 246, 247 Online streaming, 166, 186, 191, 195 Oprah, Winfrey, 112, 113 Özal, Turgut, 5, 36, 52, 162, 163, 174, 180–183, 185 P Patriarchal norms society, 16 values, 125, 145 Pay TV, 54, 178 Phallic girl, the, 135–138 Philippines, the, 153, 226 Police detectives, 17, 125, 126, 133, 143, 145 Police procedural, 17, 125–145 Policy makers, 30, 39 Political actors, 55, 58, 60, 131, 173, 174, 182 Political culture, 47, 53, 54, 208, 213, 217–219 Political economy, 3, 12, 15–17, 49, 50 Political history, 50, 55 Political parties, 37, 52, 58, 75, 86 Political position, 89, 90 Political power, 17, 55, 85–100, 168 Political solidarity, 85, 86 Political subjects, 59 Popular culture, 33, 129, 219, 223, 224, 232, 246 Postfeminism postfeminist debates, 128 postfeminist discourses, 131 Power dynamics, 88, 99 Press, 12, 34, 35, 56, 90, 140, 256 Prime Suspect, 129, 130, 143 Private broadcasting, 5, 7, 36, 51, 70

Private television, 5, 6, 15, 36, 50, 52, 53, 175, 182, 183, 194 Pro-AKP, 42, 43, 93, 95, 98 Public broadcasting, 5, 19, 70, 74, 79, 154, 159 Public diplomacy, 12, 228 Public service broadcasting, 154, 157 Public television, 69, 179, 181 Puhu TV, 14, 18, 126, 140, 191, 192, 195–197, 200, 201, 202n1 Q Qatar, 10, 12, 14, 18, 225–227, 229–230, 232–235, 237, 239, 240n4 R Radio radio broadcasting, 27, 28, 30 radyo televizyon, 10 Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK), 7, 8, 13, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 141, 158, 161, 190, 196, 202n1 Ratings, 10, 121, 140, 198 Reality show, 53, 75, 77, 105, 106, 108–110, 213, 215 Reality television, 17, 108, 110, 120, 121 Reflexive ethnography, 73 Religious affairs, 247 Religious conservatism, 34, 91, 247 Representation of female police detectives, 126 of gender, 15 of hegemonic masculinity, 127 of historical facts, 18 of women, 127, 128, 132, 135, 141 Republican people’s party (CHP), 28, 54, 60, 93, 96

 INDEX 

Romantic love, 109, 138 Rural communities rural Turkish television audiences, 16 villages, 16 S Şahsiyet, 17, 126, 140–145, 195, 196 Salamandra, Christa, 16, 224, 232 Samanyolu TV (STV), 7, 157 Satellite television, 17, 53, 155, 161, 168, 174, 176, 177, 185, 194, 218 Saudi Arabia, 226, 240n3 Secular market, 262 media, 61 secularists, 58 values, 245, 246, 248, 262 Sexual abuse, 112, 141, 143 Şile district, 68, 69 Sinetron, 248–254 Sisterhood, 17, 85, 86, 100 Soap opera, 11, 133, 230, 232, 238, 250 Social change, 16, 67, 68, 73, 78 Social media, 43, 44, 76, 121, 122n3, 218, 224, 255 Social policy, 94–99 Social transformation, 16, 67, 78, 186 Socio-cultural norms, 237 Socio-cultural reality, 237 Socio-economic status, 110 Sociopolitical transformation, 17 Soft power, 11–13, 152, 160, 162–167, 228 Sönmez, Berrin, 95 South Korea, 250 Soviet Union, 154, 155, 159, 179 Sport broadcasts, 177, 179–181, 186 Star TV, 14, 19n2, 126, 195

273

State monopoly, 5, 6, 10, 27–44, 182, 190 Straubhaar, Joe, 1, 227 Sunni Islam, 49, 55 T Technological convergence, 35, 189, 190, 197, 198, 201 Technological determinism, 68, 69 Television audience, 250 Television corporation, 4, 28, 51, 151, 179 Television series, 4, 14, 53, 70, 74, 75, 79, 132, 190, 192–198, 201, 251, 261 Television technology, 176, 177, 179, 185 Transnational broadcasting, 17, 152, 155 Transnational broadcasts, 17, 151–169 Transnational communities, 168, 218, 219 Transnational consumption, 168, 178 Transnational endeavors, 162 Transnational engagement, 210–212 Transnational enterprises, 155, 157, 159, 165–168 Transnational expansion, 1–19, 152, 155, 161, 167, 169n2 Transnational identity, 18, 167 Transnational imagination, 208, 210, 211, 218, 219 Transnational markets, 3, 175 TRT avaz, 152, 164, 168 TRT avrasya, 5, 155, 159, 160, 162, 164, 166, 167 TRT int, 5, 152, 155–159, 162, 167 TRT türk, 152, 155, 160, 162, 166 TRT World, 152, 166, 167, 169n2 Turkic Republics, 155, 159, 160, 164, 167

274 

INDEX

Turkish audiences, 5, 10, 14, 16, 53, 179 Turkish broadcasting, 15, 151 Turkish cultural, 17, 152, 154, 168, 224 Turkish culture, 156, 158, 164, 208, 215, 216, 219, 228 Turkish diaspora, 5, 17, 152–162 Turkish dizi, 19, 248, 252, 253 Turkish drama, 11, 16, 18, 201, 216, 223–240, 251 Turkish government, 9, 20n3 Turkish melodrama, 248, 250, 261 Turkish migrants, 155, 157, 161, 209 Turkish nation, 154 Turkish nationalism, 63, 154, 173 Turkish news, 6, 217–219 Turkish political, 50, 208, 213, 218, 219 Turkish radio, 4, 28, 51, 70 Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) management, 39 transnationalization, 151–153, 162, 166, 167, 169 Turkish satellite, 52, 161 Turkish serials, 12, 18, 223–240 Turkish shows, 229, 231, 234–236, 238 Turkish society, 125, 133, 161, 167 Turkish state, 17, 51, 59, 154–157, 160, 165, 167, 207 Turksat, 14 Türk telekom, 14

TV dramas, 2, 9, 11, 14, 16, 18, 126, 135, 138, 190, 202, 236 TV entertainment, 213, 217 TV exports, 2, 3, 10, 15 TV industry, 1–4, 9–13, 15, 19, 190 TV series, 3, 10, 13, 18, 20n3, 33, 76, 127, 128, 132–134, 140, 141, 191, 193, 194, 198, 201, 202 The 2000s, 1, 5, 7, 9, 13, 39–41, 54, 74, 112, 155, 162, 190, 193, 197, 246, 247, 250, 253 U United Kingdom (UK), 35, 36, 128, 207, 208, 216, 217 Uzbekistan, 155, 159 V Viewing habits, 15, 16, 76, 78, 79 W Westernization, 2, 28, 131, 233, 234, 239 Y Yazgülü Aldoğan, 92, 94, 97 Youtube, 7, 18, 50, 191, 195, 197, 199, 224, 249, 257–259