«A War of Series»? Middle Eastern History between Competing Narratives in Turkish and Arab Television Dramas.

The paper will focus on the intertextuality of contemporary Turkish and Arab historical series. The popularity of television series has increased significantly in recent years on a global scale. The disseminated texts and images thereby assume different meanings of (soft)power relations both in the countries of production and transnational consumption. For decades after the end of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish-Arab relations/perceptions were characterized by distance. This context, however, has begun to change since the beginning of the 2000s, resulting in a re-negotiation process of common, particularly Ottoman history.
One of the main platforms of this conflict is popular culture, specifically television series. Turkish TV series have become increasingly popular in the Arab world over the past decade; it is now one of the largest series exporters worldwide. The broadcast of "Resurrection Ertuğrul" (Diriliş: Ertuğrul, 2014-2019), for example, reflects a narrative of history in which the Ottoman Empire (implicitly Turkey) holds role with the ambition to end the crisis in the Islamic world. In the perception of Arab viewers this has led to Turkey and the Ottoman Empire appearing in a new positive light, combining elements such as "Islamic, secular, modern, economically successful, being conscious of its own history.” Scholarship has so far focused on the political meaning of these series within Turkey and the popularity among Arab audiences. This paper will, therefore, argue that there is also an “Arab” narrative emerging as an alternative to the “neo-Ottoman” Turkish productions.