T
urkey has become the third largest exporter of TV series in the world, behind the United States and Britain. In recent years, international audiences have become more aware of Turkish history and culture, as well as Istanbul’s beautiful sceneries and astonishing Bosporus views.
This incredible achievement masks difficult beginnings and some controversial trajectories taken by the Turkish film industry.
Until recently, the movie business in Turkey was tightly controlled under military oversight, which pursued a staunchly secularist agenda. However, political shifts invariably impact the cultural landscape. Over the last twenty years, Turkey has been emancipating itself from this oversight, steering towards a more inclusive political and social order. This transformation is mirrored in its cultural outputs, paving the way for global audiences to explore Turkish culture through new and diverse lenses in the future.
It is noteworthy to mention that in the 2010s an important debate about the Turkish movie industry raised the question, “Why are there no characters representing women wearing Islamic headscarves in TV series?”.
Back then, the wife of the elected prime minister, who wore an Islamic headscarf, preferred not to attend receptions on important days because of the reaction of the security establishment. She could not enter a military hospital because of her Islamic attire.
In 2007, the possibility of electing a religious president resulted in the issuance of a memorandum by the General Staff and leading opinion columnists in prominent newspapers, and a significant part of the political and bureaucratic elite made statements in support of this memorandum. When the Justice and Development AK Party cadres came to power as conservative democrats, they fought against the tutelage powers within the state. It was only in the 10th year after the government came into power that the Islamic headscarf was allowed in universities.
Understanding Turkey’s transformation goes beyond high-level political crises and legal changes. The headscarf movement epitomises the religious majority’s fight to assert its place within the political core, modern society, urban spaces, education, the upper echelons, economic spheres, and, naturally, state institutions.
The primary barrier to Turkey’s journey towards democracy has been the military tutelage system and its political backers, which staunchly resisted the integration of religious perspectives into the political mainstream. This division fostered a profound disconnect between the state and its citizens, becoming a pivotal source of social polarisation for years. Issues such as unequal access for religious groups to public resources, cultural disparities, and the security bureaucracy’s dominance over civilian governance have consistently sparked significant debate within Turkey’s political arena.
The AK Party’s coming to power in 2002 was an important turning point in terms of gaining such freedoms in Turkey. Since 2002, The Republican People’s Party CHP, the main opposition party, has supported these anti-religion restrictions and bans under the guise of protecting secularism.
However, having lost several elections since 2002, the CHP has gradually started to change its line. Following multiple electoral defeats in the past two decades, the CHP has been shifting its ideological stance. As the 2023 elections approached, it tried to dilute its earlier positions and move beyond the previously entrenched polarisation. Therefore, in the run-up to the 2023 elections, the political environment in Turkey transcended this axis of polarisation.
The two major contesting alliances, the People’s Alliance and the Nation’s Alliance, both included parties that appealed to secular and religious constituencies. The People’s Alliance, led by the AK Party, included the DSP, which had previously split from the CHP and had a similar ideological position, while the Nation’s Alliance, led by the CHP, included parties founded by people who had left the AK Party. Moreover, the CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s election campaign produced a discourse that criticized and apologized for past practices that excluded religious people.
These developments represent an important milestone for Turkish politics. The alliances and discourses of the parties in these elections were indicative of social progress.
In the meantime, Turkey’s cultural environment was also moving in a similar direction. For some time now, Turkish TV screenplays have been produced on historical figures that feature religious themes more than ever before. Religious lifestyles, which had previously been allocated to low classes in society, such as housekeepers and peasants, have now become associated with successful urban youth characters in modern Turkey. Examples of recent television series in this context include Ömer, which tells the story of a religious young man; Kızılcık Şerbeti, which tells the story of two families, one secular and the other religious, who meet around a love story; and Kızıl Goncalar, which brings to the screen the social encounters between people who belong to a traditional religious sect and the former practitioners of harsh secularism in Turkey.
Given the significant increase in rural-urban migration in Turkey since the 1970s and the emergence of new urban religious practices for over fifty years, it’s evident that mainstream Turkish media was slow to reflect this social trend. Similarly, the CHP’s belated shift towards inclusivity did not bring the success they expected in the elections.
On the other hand, the increase in the number of religious characters in Turkish TV series should be noted as a positive development, both as a sign of overcoming the secular-religious polarization and as a means of socialization and durability of this progress.
It is still difficult to say that the film industry has captured the full societal picture. But, at least, this means that international audiences will watch a more kaleidoscopic and inclusive take on Turkish life.
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