Description
Turkish foreign policy trajectory has experienced a neo-Ottomanist shift in the past decade. However, this shift was not only limited to foreign policy decisions, the same theme has been observed at different political sites from domestic politics to cultural production. While the representation of “Turkishness” has gained a retrospect due to the neo-Ottoman turn at the foreign policy level, the cultural production site has become a site of contestation for Turkish identity. By drawing on the literature on cultural diplomacy, popular culture, and cultural producers, this paper aims to explore the role of meaning-making practices in diplomacy and the fluidity of the meaning that is created by aesthetic practices among political sites. By exploring the production process of Ottoman-themed soap operas and their function as emotion generators, this paper looks at the cultural self-portraits (Caldwell, 2008) of producers which come from semi-structured interviews conducted with them. I aim to engage with the empirical case of the research and examine the Turkish identity representations that take part in Turkish popular culture, especially in two Turkish TV shows, The Magnificent Century (2011-2014) and Resurrection: Ertuğrul (2014-2019). In order to explain how these productions became significant elements in the negotiation of Turkish identity after the neo-Ottoman turn, I present interview findings and their analysis.
