Television in Turkey - Springer

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 struc-
tures 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 histori-
cally 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 compro-
mised 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, ethnog-
raphy, 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 place-
ment 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                                    Ece Algan
The School of Communication Studies              Institute for Media & Creative
Kent State University                            Industries
Kent, OH, USA                                    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

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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

                                                            v

vi   Contents

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

Contents    vii

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 televi-
sion, 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 lon-
gitudinal 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 publica-
tions and media references citing her ongoing work. In addition, she also
holds a strong interest in research pertaining to the popularity and influ-
ence of Turkish cultural products in foreign markets. Prior to her transi-
tion to academia, Berg worked extensively in broadcasting including stints
at both Bloomberg (London) and Al Jazeera Media Network (Qatar)

                                                                             ix

x   Notes on Contributors

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, gen-
der, 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 sociol-
ogy 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).

Notes on Contributors     xi

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 transna-
tional 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, trans-
national 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 pro-
cedural 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 carry-
ing authoritarian men to power. She is the author of Mainstreaming the
Headscarf: Islamist Politics and Women in the Turkish Media (2019).

xii   Notes on Contributors

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 reg-
ulation, 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 owner-
ship 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 pub-
lished 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 participa-
tion (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.

Notes on Contributors      xiii

                                                                    ̇
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 exten-
sively 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 con-
ducted academic research on Muslim fashion as a post-Islamist phenome-
non, 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   Participants and their political positions              89
Table 5.2   Overall talk time of pro-AKP women and women
            critical of AKP                                         93
Table 5.3   Participants by intrusive interruptions and talk time   94

                                                                     xv