Neo-Ottoman Cool: Turkish Popular Culture in the Arab Public Sphere

Abstract

In the past decade, Turkish television drama has enjoyed popular success in the Arab world, fueling wide-ranging controversies in the pan-Arab public sphere. Such popularity is at first sight puzzling. After all, Arabs lived under Ottoman rule for 400 years, and for most of the 20th century Turkey's foreign policy neglected Arab interests. Why, then, would Turkish drama be popular with Arab audiences, especially at a time of unprecedented vibrancy in Arab cultural production? This article grapples with that question via a systematic analysis of pan-Arab discourse about Turkish popular culture, concluding that some Turkish dramas conjure up an accessible modernity while others enact a counter-hegemonic narrative that puts Middle Easterners in the role of heroes. The rise of Turkish television drama in the Arab public sphere offers insights into the geopolitical underpinnings and geocultural consequences of transnational media flows.

Notes

¹“Arabist” means broadly Arab nationalist, opposed to Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and to Western intervention in Arab affairs.

²Drawn from a larger project, this research is based on an extensive textual analysis of the coverage of Turkey and Turkish popular culture by leading pan-Arab and national Arab daily newspapers and magazines, totaling more than 100 Arabic-language items published during the last decade.

³Turkey was the first Muslim-majority country to recognize the state of Israel; as a member of NATO since 1952, Ankara allowed the United States to use its military bases to intervene in the Middle East, starting with the 1958 civil strife in Lebanon. After Western powers declined to support Turkey over its invasion of parts of Cyprus in 1964, Turkey sided with Egypt on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War and denied the United States permission to use Turkish bases to assist Israel in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Because of rising oil prices in the 1970s, Turkey dramatically boosted trade with the Arab states and Iran, bringing the country closer to its neighbors, though Arab lack of support on Cyprus and Syria's sheltering of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan at a time when the PKK was actively involved in anti-Turkish terrorism constrained the rapprochement. Turkey supported coalition forces in the 1991 Gulf War, signed a military treaty with Israel in 1996, and threatened military action against Syria in 1998 if Damascus continued to shelter Öcalan.

⁴The media flow and shift in perceptions of relations between Arabs and Turks have been unidirectional. Turkey has addressed Arab publics and exploited its popular culture exports for geopolitical advantage. However, no Arab country has engaged with the Turkish public on the level of popular culture because, quite simply, the current geopolitical battleground for influence in the greater Middle East consist of Arab countries.

⁵Turkish dramas are not perfect in that regard. In one episode of Nour, the female protagonist appeared with make up as she walked out of a medical operation in the wake of her miscarriage.

⁶The two series al-Gharib (The Stranger) and al-Firaq (Separation) told stories sympathetic to Palestinians: Separation met with Israeli opposition when its first episode showed scenes of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian civilians, including children, women, and the elderly. Al-Firaq's writers and production team saw the series as a call for peace and coexistence. The Turkish government censored some scenes in the second episode showing the execution of Palestinians, but the Israeli government objected to the series nonetheless. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself said that airing Separation on Turkish national television channel TRT was tantamount to a “provocation” and accused the series of incitement to hatred, while Turkish authorities denied that the series had any political agenda (Al-Bayari, 2009). Another musalsal, Sarkhet Hajar (A Stone's Cry) also depicted the daily life of Palestinians under Israeli military occupation and explored Palestinian political division and social taboos (Bilbassy-Charters, 2010).

⁷This reflects Saudi anxiety about Turkish competition for leadership of Sunni Muslims in the Middle East, an economically weak and politically unstable Egypt no longer being a serious contender.

⁸The Turkish government announced that it would give prizes and financial awards to support producers and directors to create media products that help Turkey's image and market Turkish products abroad. Also, actor Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ, who plays Muhannad on Nour, was scheduled to visit Egypt in February 2011 on a trip sponsored by the Turkish embassy in Cairo to promote an Istanbul shopping festival, though the January 25 revolution in Egypt forced a change of plans (Al-Qashuti, 2011).

⁹See Straubhaar (1991). For critical discussions of cultural proximity, see Iwabuchi (2001) and Kraidy (2005).

¹⁰The popularity of Turkish television drama in Greece and Bulgaria and large Turkish economic investments in several East European neighbors, cautions against imputing the success of Turkish cultursal production in the Arab world to a pan-Islamic identity or solidarity.