Sultan Of Swing

An erotically charged Turkish TV drama has been drawing increasingly hostile fire from some very powerful people, according to reports in the New York media. Magnificent Century, a sort of Ottoman-era Sex and the City set during the reign of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, is wildly popular in Turkey and across the Middle East. Yet one person who is decidedly not a fan is Turkey’s conservative prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is so incensed at the show’s steamy depiction of the heroic sultan that he has urged legal action against the series.

In the latest cultural battle to erupt in Turkey, the New York Times reports Mr. Erdogan last weekend slammed the lavish historical drama, which chronicles the palace and harem intrigue swirling around the sultan, including the rise of Hurrem, the slave who became his powerful wife. Suleiman ruled the Ottoman empire from 1520 to 1566 at the height of its glory and is revered as a valiant warrior and wise Kanuni, or Lawgiver.


Responding to criticism from the opposition that Turkey’s intervention in the region was undermining the country’s security, Mr. Erdogan baffled some observers by apparently conflating the critique of Turkey’s robust foreign policy with the portrayal of a debauched Suleiman on the show. Suleiman, he seemed to underline, had been a brave and adventurous conqueror. Critics "ask why are we dealing with the affairs of Iraq, Syria and Gaza," Mr. Erdogan said in a speech Sunday at the opening of an airport in western Turkey, according to Reuters. "They know our fathers and ancestors through ‘Magnificent Century,’ but we don’t know such a Suleiman. He spent 30 years on horseback, not in the palace, not what you see in that series."

He said that the director of the series and owner of the channel that broadcasts it had been warned, that judicial authorities had been alerted and that a judicial decision was expected. "Those who toy with these values should be taught a lesson within the premises of law," he said, according to The Hurriyet Daily News.

Cultural critics and political rivals railed against Mr. Erdogan, accusing him of cultural authoritarianism and censorship. Muharrem Ince, deputy chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, accused Mr. Erdogan of behaving like a sultan, saying that he was jealous of the series’ popularity and determined to be the only sultan in the country. Mr. Erdogan, whose governing party has Islamic roots, has sought to embrace and rehabilitate the Ottoman Empire, a period of grandeur when the sultans claimed the spiritual leadership of the Muslim world before the empire’s ignominious decline by World War I.

Turkey’s culture and tourism ministry responded that popular Turkish soap operas were generating tens of millions of dollars in export income for Turkey and were widely watched across the region, expanding the exposure of the country. Magnificent Century attracts a third of the prime-time audience in Turkey and draws an audience of up to 150 million from Cairo to Kosovo, analysts said.

Even the sultan’s real heirs appeared more sanguine than Mr. Erdogan. Osman Selaheddin Osmanoglu, son of the last prince in the Ottoman Palace, told The Hurriyet Daily News that while he did not appreciate the lascivious portrayal of his ancestors, he wasn’t all that bothered as it was only a fictional work. "I am following the series," he said. "But I don’t take it seriously since it is only a soap opera."

The show is no stranger to controversy. After it was first broadcast in January last year, the Supreme Board of Radio and Television said it had received more than 70,000 complaints, and said that Show TV, the channel broadcasting the series, had wrongly exposed "the privacy of a historical person" and owed the public an apology.

Mr. Erdogan at the time called 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. Some viewers were irate because the series showed the Sultan drinking alcohol — banned in Islam — and womanizing with concubines in the harem. They also complained that the scriptwriters were engaging in dangerous and disrespectful historical revisionism.

Melis Behil, a film studies professor at Kadir Has University, said in an interview that the show, which has helped spur a cultural revival of the Ottoman Empire across the country, had been inspired by the success of historical dramas like ones about the Tudors and thus focused on the manners and personal lives of the characters as opposed to the traditional battlefield scenes of many Turkish epics. "The religious right are complaining that Suleiman was a great leader and all you are showing is his sex life and private parts," she said.