Ultra-nationalist historical series: Turkey finds a new vein after series | Television

Diego and Anselmo are Catalans who were met by Turkish viewers at the beginning of the last season of the series Corolos: Osman (Establishment: Osman), the series that chronicles the exploits of the founder of the Ottoman Empire in the thirteenth century. Always coarse in appearance and with a silver cross on their chest, they speak Turkish as if they had gone to Istanbul for a hair transplant and stayed. It is already known that public television is not very localized, and this was the only way to find out how the Catalans picked up Osman’s veteran followers who went to Anatolia to wipe them off the face of the earth.

Because the Catalans in the series are despicable and elusive. In chapter 68, with the bad arts that everything that comes from the West is supposed to do, they ambushed a retinue of princesses and concubines in which Osman’s wife travels, but they draw their swords and respond. Two seasons later, Diego and Anselmo end up dying at the hands of the series’ hero, after a new ambush is more perverted and equally unsuccessful.

These two soldiers are part of the great Catalan company of Roger de Fleur and Almogavar, these mercenaries who came to Anatolia to kill the Turks on the orders of the Byzantine Emperor, and after the assassination of their leader, they ended up assaulting the Byzantine cities until they killed the Turks. Athena took over. The series has historical consistency From red eagle and the An ideological charge of a restoration script written by Santiago Abascal.

Othman is a sequel to Resurrection: Ertugrul, Which won in Turkey and can be seen on Netflix in many countries. Both are part of the new batch of historical series born to highlight the Turkish and Ottoman past: Velinta, the great Seljuks: the guardians of justice, the barbarians: the sword of the Mediterranean, Kut al-Amara, Alp Arslan … These productions arose in the heat of Turkish soap operas that conquered the world without needing a fight against anyone, especially as a reaction to one of them, set in the 16th century: The Magnificent Century (and its sequel). Kösem). Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan found that the series showed Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent more interest in harem and palace plots than in fighting infidels on the battlefield. For this reason, many studios paid for by Turkish public television (TRT), and private channels close to the government began designing soap operas to show the historical truth that Erdogan loves.

“It’s a high-budget series. In addition to offering a glorious, narrow view of the Ottoman Empire and its predecessors, they put a lot of money into it, and paid a lot of attention to the costumes and choreography of the battles. They say they have an academic team supporting them, I don’t doubt that, but it’s great to see what they look like.” They are all the same,” says Carolina Acosta Alzoro, a professor at the University of Georgia and an expert on Turkish soap operas.

Characters are outlined in bold. The good one is handsome and brave, and fights against all kinds of enemies, if possible, Christians or Jews, frauds and weaklings, because it is impossible for them to rise to the level of the Turk and the good Muslim to whom God has. his side.

Above all, the righteous must confront the traitors in their ranks. There are as many traitors as the Turkish president’s speeches. Therefore, in addition to an entertainment product based on archetypal characters, this series is a way to teach how to see the world. “To learn history, you must see Payitaht,” he said. Erdogan In one of his speeches.

Within these revisionist fantasies, Payitaht is perhaps the most publicized. It tells the story of Abdul Hamid II, who ascended to the throne by promising to swear an oath on the 1876 constitution, only to abolish it two years later and dissolve Parliament, which reconvened in 1908, when a revolution ended his absolutism. He was a sultan obsessed with conspiracies (they tried to kill him once), who surrounded himself with a frightening secret police and was remembered by the press at the time as the Red Sultan, because of the massacres of Armenians and Assyrians he issued. However, he is an idol of Islamists like Erdogan, because he was the last powerful sultan before Mustafa Kemal Atatürk declared the secular republic in 1923. If his text resembles Erdogan’s speeches, it is not a coincidence. Academic Sinem B.

This new generation of Turkish series has been exported beyond its borders. But her success did not reach the success of soap operas: the audience preferred love affairs and Turkish drama to the Islamic sword.

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