What does banning Turkish series save?

Yesterday the Dubai-based MBC broadcasting group announced that it had suspended the broadcasting of all Turkish TV series until further notice. MBC group spokesman Mazen Hayek, who announced the decision to the 11 channels belonging to the group, has not yet given a reason, but there is a reason that has quickly become clear through commentators giving their views on all the Arab channels. That is that Turkish TV series have recently been creating more sympathy than necessary among the Arab peoples toward Turkey, Turkey's history, and the Ottomans.

Those commenting on the official channels of the Arab countries do not hold back from openly complaining that this sympathy is preparing the ground for Turkey's growing influence in the Arab Middle East. It is understood that the Turkish sympathy increasing day by day among the Arab peoples has caused serious discomfort for some.

Why is this happening? Turkish TV series did not cause this discomfort until now, so why have they started to cause it now? It is worth examining.

Indeed, it is known that for the last 10-15 years a huge Turkish TV series craze has been sweeping the Middle East. Turkish TV series have turned into a serious sociological phenomenon. There is almost no one who does not watch some Turkish series in their home. Of course, these series have a very serious effect on cultural production, on historical consciousness and on the shaping of popular culture, and through it on determining life and consumption habits.

As a sociological case, this is an effect that very few developments can enjoy. That is why this development does not escape the attention of sociologists, communication scientists and cultural studies groups.

Only 6-7 years ago, in all the Arab Turkish Social Sciences Congresses (ATCOSS) we organized on behalf of the Strategic Thinking Institute in Jordan, Cairo, Kuwait and Marrakesh, Turkish TV series formed one of the important research and paper topics: the contribution of Turkish series to the formation of a new historical consciousness; the role of Turkish series in the formation of the climate of the Arab Spring; the new bridges formed between Arabs and Turks with Turkish series; the increase of interest in Turkish products in the Arab world through Turkish series, and so on, were the sub-topics through which Turkish series were addressed.

Of course, those were the days when the Arab Spring process was being experienced at full speed. Moreover, at that time TRT's new series Diriliş-Ertuğrul, Payitaht Abdülhamit or Kutulamare were not yet on the agenda. Among the series in vogue were Gümüş, Aşk-ı Memnu, Muhteşem Yüzyıl, Ihlamurlar Altında and many other romantic series, and of course, foremost among them all, Kurtlar Vadisi.

If we exclude Kurtlar Vadisi, the other series of course had no claim or role of reflecting political and sociological developments in Turkey. On the contrary, those series were also the object of serious criticism in the Arab world because of their role in causing moral corruption. The lifestyles reflected in those romantic series were in fact far from ordinary Turkish family life, and closer to a Western lifestyle. Those who watched those series were in fact seeing a Turkey very different from the real one.

Even so, the public took it as a cross-section of Turkey and embraced it, and this did not disturb the rulers. Interestingly, under the influence of those series interest in Turkey really did increase more, the places where the films were shot became tourist destinations, and demand arose for the products used.

It is really not easy to understand and explain this effect. The personality of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was identified with all the heroes in the series, and as a result it was seen that sympathy for Erdoğan in particular and for Turkey in general was increasing.

Of course, the political context in which those series showed their effect is very important. Today there is a very different international political environment. Therefore there is a different reality of Turkish series. This difference arises both from the difference in the content of the series and, even if the content is the same, from the effect of perception added by the environment. In the Arab Middle East, in contrast to the freedoms, good quality of life and aesthetics reflected in those series, the Arab geography, whose spring was left unfinished because of the coups carried out against democracy and the intensifying despotism and civil war environments, is passing through a circle of serious suffering. In this environment it experiences betrayal, repression, oppression, treachery done by brother to brother, jealousies, and the sale of the homeland and all values for a trifling price.

The Arab peoples are the victim of all of these. In such an environment, series like Diriliş-Ertuğrul, Payitaht-Abdülhamit, Kutulamare and Aliya in particular are a great consolation to them. They are not only a consolation, they provide a new historical consciousness. When the Arab viewer identifies the types in the series with the types he encounters in the world he lives in today, things begin to take a dangerous turn. He reads the background of the hostility some leaders or elites display toward Turkey through the "traitors within" types of Diriliş-Ertuğrul. He sees in his own ruling offices the heirs of those who betrayed Abdulhamid in his struggle against Zionism and, ultimately, against the imperialists who imposed Sykes-Picot.

Will it be possible, by banning these series, to break their effect and prevent their messages from reaching the masses? Let us say this much: the series in question are not broadcast on MBC anyway. The series broadcast there are the romantic dramas we know and have no political implications.

Yet even if no channel broadcast TRT's series in question, they now go onto the internet with subtitles within an hour or two of being first broadcast in Turkey, and reach millions of viewers that way.

These viewers, with these series they watch, nourish the most critical consciousness both about history and about what they themselves are living today.

When some accuse Fahreddin Pasha of theft, without Turkey needing to say anything further, it is plain to see who the thief is, who the traitor is, who it was that, a hundred years ago, cooperating with the imperialists, sold the homeland, the religion and honor.

By banning Turkish series, the realities in which the Islamic world finds itself cannot be escaped. What gives those series their power is nothing other than the magnificent harmony between their dramas and those realities.