Turkish TV series "The Magnificent Century." The Dirt, and the Soap, on the Ottoman Empire

[rick murphy]

Ottoman empire was never a democratically elected representative of
Turkish nation or any nation at all. Turks were forced to live under
Ottoman yoke for nearly 700 years. Ottoman Empire was an extreme
Islamist, Jihadist system of oppression based on conquest and plunder.
Its sole purpose was to conquer, plunder and establish Islamist Sheria
law. It had no banking system or a viable, contemporary economy, or
industry. It had no nationality. It was in stone-age and primitive.

Every Ottoman official low or high was a person of non-Turkish
origins. Every member of the Ottoman dynasty was a child of slave
concubines of non-Turkish background. It had no desire to reform
itself. It oppressed the Turks under its yoke the most. It kept the
Turks under its yoke totally powerless economically, politically,
socially and every other possible way just to prevent them from
rebelling and toppling its rule because Ottoman dynasty established
its rule on the ruins of many Turkish states and principalities in
Anatolia with very bloody and brutal wars.

As if that was not enough, Ottoman Empire made the whole Christian and
Moslem-Arab Worlds the staunch enemies for the Turks under its yoke.
It kept the Turks in the stone-age darkness; kept all the advancements
in science, technology and fine arts away from Turks as Europe went
through an enlightenment period and made enormous advances.


Ottoman system of oppression declared every contemporary innovation
and advancement in science, technology and fine arts as a major
Islamist sin until its very last day. In spite of tremendous odds
(internal and external), it is an absolute miracle that Turks as a
nation survived, won their independence and established their
Democratic Republic of Turkiye.


By the way: Suleyman was a child of a slave concubine of his father of
non-Turkish origins, just like all his ancestors and descendants were.
His favorite concubine Hurrem was a child of Ukrainian (Ruthenian)
Orthodox priest. She was captured by Crimean Tatars during one of
their frequent raids into this region and taken as a slave, probably
first to the Crimean city of Kaffa, a major centre of the slave trade,
then to Constantinople, and was sold to Süleyman’s harem. She gave
birth to six children: Mihrimah, Selim, Beyazid, Abdullah, Cihangir
and Mehmed.

+++++++++++++++





http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/middleeast/17iht-m17-soap.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The Dirt, and the Soap, on the Ottoman Empire

By SUSANNE FOWLER

Published: March 17, 2011

Picture: A still image from the Turkish TV series "The Magnificent
Century."

ISTANBUL — For the show’s producers, it is nothing less than a
Magnificent Controversy.

“Muhtesem Yuzyil,” or “Magnificent Century,” a lavish prime time soap
opera about the life of Suleiman the Magnificent and Hurrem, the slave
who became his powerful wife, is as admired here as it is reviled.

Suleiman ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1520 to 1566 at the height of
its glory and is still revered as Kanuni, or Lawgiver.

The series attracted a wave of protests from irate viewers and even
government officials. Critics said it was disrespectful to the sultan
because it showed him drinking alcohol — banned in Islam — and
womanizing with concubines in the harem. They also complain that its
scriptwriters take liberties with historical events and depictions of
royal lives.

Still, despite warnings from the government media regulator, or
perhaps because of them, ratings remain sky high on Wednesday nights
as each colorful chapter of fictionalized history unfolds.

After receiving what it said was more than 70,000 complaints when the
drama first aired in January, the Supreme Board of Radio and
Television, known by the Turkish acronym RTUK, said that Show TV, the
channel broadcasting the series, had wrongly exposed “the privacy of a
historical person” and owed the public an apology.

Even Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who leads Turkey’s Islamist-
rooted government, weighed in, calling the program disrespectful and
“an effort to show our history in a negative light to the younger
generations.” Dozens of egg-throwing protesters chanted “God is Great
“ outside the Show TV studios. And descendants of Suleiman himself
vowed to mount a series of their own to set the record straight.

It is challenging to know exactly what went on in Ottoman times,
according to Leslie Peirce, professor of Ottoman studies at New York
University.

“In the Ottoman era,” she said during an interview, “polite society
did not talk about women and they wrote very little about them. So we
don’t have any Ottoman saying ‘This is how the harem worked.’ We get
these stories from the Europeans: Some were well-informed, especially
the Venetians.

“There’s a whole lot we don’t know about Hurrem and other successful
products of the concubine track, so the producers would have to invent
plausible scenarios there.”

According to reports by Venetian diplomats of the time, Hurrem, known
in Europe as Roxelana, “was one clever lady,” said Dr. Peirce, author
of “The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire.”

“She did play the politics but mothers of princes were expected to do
that,” she said.

“She acquired a public political role that no woman had had before,”
Dr. Peirce said, “and she is the model for the queen mothers, or
valide sultans, who come after her.”

RTUK, the media regulator, has been known to ban or suspend
programming it deems offensive, but thus far “Magnificent Century” has
survived, though not without an initial frenzy of edits to shorten
kissing scenes and rewrites of later episodes.

Meral Okay, the screenwriter, said viewers were angered by the
portrayals of the inner workings of the royal court.

“We have been saying the same thing from the start: This is a fiction
inspired by history,” Reuters last month quoted Ms. Okay as saying.
“By entering the harem, we made all those untouchable and respected
characters of history closer to us. We gave them a material existence
as humans, with fears, anger and passions.”

Ms. Okay refused requests for an interview for this article.

In a statement, the production company, TIMS Productions, said the
show handled “criticized topics” in a sensitive manner. “We believe
that when the people watch future episodes, complaints will decrease.”
Accusations it had misrepresented the Ottoman royalty were unjust, it
added. “With the decor, costumes, visual effects, ‘Magnificent
Century’ is one of the most ambitious TV series in Turkish TV
history.”

Producers also said that the actor’s goblet contained juices rather
than wine.

Meanwhile, ratings have set records in Turkey, which reportedly earned
$50 million last year from soap opera exports, with more than 70 shows
being broadcast in more than 20 countries, largely in the Middle East
and Balkans.

With its sparkling jewels, sumptuous gowns, attempted poisonings and
juicy palace intrigues, the show has spawned a resurgence of interest
in modern-day versions of all things Ottoman, from calligraphy to
cuisine. Visits to Topkapi Palace, home of the sultans, have soared
since the show began.

The lusty Suleiman, 10th sultan of the Ottoman Empire, is played by
Halit Ergenc, a veteran of Turkish soaps who reportedly has been the
target of threats and hate mail because of this role. But the show has
made a celebrity of the little-known German actress who plays Hurrem,
the scheming, flame-haired Christian abducted from her father’s church
in what is now Ukraine.

The 27-year-old actress Meryem Uzerli, who was born in Berlin and
bears a slight resemblance to Drew Barrymore, told the glossy magazine
Tempo in a recent cover story that modern women could learn a lot of
things from Hurrem, “the most important being strategy. If you have
those kinds of skills, you can get whatever you want.”

The intensity of the protests against the show frightened her at the
beginning, she added. “It’s not normal for me because I am not from
here.”

Under the name “Nageyec,” for example, one person wrote on a news Web
site that the makers of the show “should know that they have a right
to hate Islam if they want to, but they have no right to lie about the
history of this superb individual.”

In contrast, “Yabanci,” or foreigner, wrote “It’s a soap opera, for
entertainment purposes only. Get a life.”

Others are attracted to the historical aspects of the program.

Cem Sahin, 37, a textile merchant in the Eminonu neighborhood near
Topkapi, said in an interview that “I love the show because I love the
magnificent Ottoman era. I really don’t get why people have protested:
It’s only a TV show.”


A version of this article appeared in print on March 17, 2011, in The
International Herald Tribune..