Two Waves of the Neo-Ottoman Invasion: The Turkish Dizi and Pakistani TV Drama

• Published in: BioScope South Asian screen studies Vol. 15; no. 2; pp. 134 - 163
• Main Author: Gopal, Sangita
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New Delhi, India SAGE Publications 01.12.2024
• Subjects: Transnational television; Turkish dizis; televisual geopolitics; spiritual geography; pious publics; Neo-Ottomanism; Pakistani dramas
• ISSN: 0974-9276; 0976-352X
• DOI: 10.1177/09749276241307319

This article explores the dynamics of transnational media formation by comparing the reception of Turkish television serials (dizis) in Pakistan with how Turkey is signified in dramas produced in Pakistan and set in Turkey/Pakistan. It identifies two phases to suggest that when the dizi first arrives in Pakistan, the values and visibilities projected on Turkish serials remain ‘foreign’ and ‘other’ to many audiences, even if their flawless presentation of ‘modernity’ is alluring. Even as Turkish content was flooding Pakistan, the Turkish government offered incentives to Pakistani media companies to shoot on location in Turkey. I focus on two Pakistani dramas set in Turkey to discern how the encounter with Turkey was thematised as both lure and threat to Pakistani social norms and the formal conventions of the national genre of Urdu TV drama. I then move to the second and current phase and examine the statist reconfiguration of Turkish television in Pakistan. Historical dizis, such as Dirilis Ertuğrul and Kuruluş Osman, reframe the confrontation between foreign and domestic forms through a trans-territorial Islamic world-making that enables Turkish and Pakistani states to direct their televisual publics via a shared past to possible futures.