1. This can be seen as a continuation of what Thwaites Diken considers as a “return of religion” in postmillennial Turkish cinema: see Ebru Thwaites Diken, The Spectacle of Politics and Religion in the Contemporary Turkish Cinema (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). In his study on the postmillennial formation of Turkish djinn-themed horror films, Çakırlar has also noted that these horror films “offer a continuity to the recent proliferation of the spectacularized crises of familialism in the wider generic system of Turkish media culture, including the primetime soaps and dramas (e.g.  Kızılcık Şerbeti/Cranberry Sorbet [GoldFilm & ShowTV 2022-], Camdaki Kız/The Girl in the Glass [OGM & KanalD 2021-2023], Aile/Family [Ay Yapım & ShowTV 2023-], and Ömer [OGM & StarTV 2023-]), “prestige TV” dramas (e.g. Bir Başkadır / Ethos [Netflix/Oya 2020]), and women’s daytime reality TV of investigative journalism (e.g. Müge Anlı ile Tatlı Sert [atv 2008-] and Esra Erol’da [atv 2015-])”. See Cüneyt Çakırlar. “Djinns as Transformative Otherness: Forms of Toxic Kinship in Postmillennial Turkish Horror Film”, in Transnational Horror: Folklore, Genre, and Cultural Politics, edited by Cüneyt Çakırlar (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press), 177. “In addition to the thematic parallels”, Çakırlar argues, “these genres are more intimately intertwined”: “The majority of the djinn-horror movies (Alper Mestçi’s films in particular) register their excess by combining the horrific with the pathos of family drama, while soaps, prestige TV dramas, and daytime reality TV shows occasionally spectacularize their contents by concatenating a dramatic pathos with elements of the horrific (e.g. “body horror” through the horrific maternal violence of the “chastity corset” in Camdaki Kız, horrors of coerced marriage and sexual assault in Kızılcık Şerbeti, and horrific crimes committed within morally corrupt families being investigated in Müge Anlı). What the contemporary generic system’s hybrid registers of pathos share, however, is their engagement with family and women as the key sites of excess” (Çakırlar, 177).  [Return to page 1]

2. Dizi, in general, refers to a particular televisual format in Turkish. For a detailed conceptualization of dizi as a genre, see Arzu Öztürkmen, “‘Turkish Content’: The Historical Rise of the Dizi Genre”, TV/Series, no 13 (2018), 1-12. Öztürkmen later revises her conceptualization of dizi as a “metagenre.” See Arzu Öztürkmen, The Delight of Turkish Dizi: Memory, Genre, and Politics of Television in Turkey (London: Seagull Books 2022). For the conceptual and methodological affordances of dizi, see Josh Carney, “Extreme dizi-ness: stretching the bounds of genre in (New?) Turkish Television”, Jump Cut 62 (Winter 2023-24). For dizi’s resonances with other serial formats, in the contexts of soap operas and melodramas, see Baran Germen, “Yalı as mise-en-scene and frontality: an infrastructural take on dizi aesthetics”, Jump Cut 62 (Winter 2023-24).

3. Our proposed focus on the politics of intimacy in contemporary Turkish TV serials does not necessarily suggest that intimacy and political polarization are mutually exclusive phenomena. We argue that treating the representation of intimacy as the primary point of entry into analyzing Turkish dizis bear the potential to better understand the shifting politics of family and gender identification in the context of neoliberal Islam shaping the political status quo in contemporary Turkish politics.   

4. Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Oxford and Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).

5. Berlant, 2.

6. Berlant, 21.

7. Covering the 1960s, the 1970s, and the 1980s, Yeşilçam refers to a period in the cinema of Turkey when film production reached its peak (see Arslan 2011: 63-236). According to Arslan, Yeşilçam “came to indicate a certain type of popular filmmaking [in Turkey] – in a way, comparable to the name “Hollywood””. See Savaş Arslan, Cinema in Turkey: A New Critical History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 11.

8. In Berlant’s thought, the perpetually propagating sense of precarity and political impasse in neoliberal capitalism results in “waning of genres”. See Berlant, 6. Old genres no longer register the new affective universe of neoliberal capitalism, a relevant and progressive political intervention against which necessitates different paradigms of pedagogy and critique that go beyond affirmative identity politics or the conventional aesthetics of protest, sabotage and transgression. For a case study of queer art practices that critically engages with the “waning of genres”, see Cüneyt Çakırlar, “The Non-Ameliorative Art: Erinç Seymen’s Unsettled Scenes of Cruel Optimism”, Erinç Seymen: Homo Fragilis, exhibition monograph (Istanbul: Zilberman Gallery, 2017), 6-22 (Turkish) & 34-55 (English), online, https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/31678/

9. Esra Gedik, Trapped in between state, market and family: experiences of moderately educated divorced and widow women,PhD Dissertation (Ankara: Middle Eastern Technical University, 2015). For Gedik’s relevant studies published in English language, see also Esra Gedik, “Testing the Honor: Divorced and Widow Women’s Experiences in Turkey”, ASOS Journal: The Journal of Academic Social Sciences 6, no. 82 (2018), 314-337; and Esra Gedik, “Single Mothers Doing Family: Re-forming Traditional Family in Turkey”, Journal of Sociological Research 21, no. 1 (2018), 71-101.

10.   For a detailed account of the political and social significance of virginity in Türkiye, see Ayşe Parla, “The "Honor" of the State: Virginity Examinations in Turkey”, Feminist Studies 27, no.1(2001), 65–88.

11. Zafer Yilmaz, ““Strengthening the Family” Policies in Turkey: Managing the Social Question and Armoring Conservative–Neoliberal Populism”, Turkish Studies 16, no. 3 (2015), 371-390.

12. The President of Religious Affairs, i.e. the religious bureaucracy of Turkey, was established in 1924 as the Diyanet İşleri Reisliği with the Law No. 429 adopted by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) as a continuation of the Ottoman institution of Shaykh al-Islam.

13. Sevgi Adak, “Expansion of the Diyanet and the Politics of Family in Turkey under AKP Rule”, Turkish Studies 22, no. 2, 2020, 200-221.

14. Feride Eralp, “How Are Our Lives Shaped through the Protocols of the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) and the Absolute Integrity of the Family?”, Çatlak Zemin, 8 April 2021, online, https://en.catlakzemin.com/how-are-our-lives-shaped-through-the-protocols-of-the-presidency-of-religious-affairs-diyanet-and-the-absolute-integrity-of-the-family/   (Accessed 9 December 2024). See also Sevgi Adak, “Grassroots Familialism? NGO Mobilization and Neoconservatism in Contemporary Turkey”, European Journal of Turkish Studies. Social Sciences on Contemporary Turkey 33 (2021), https://doi.org/10.4000/ejts.7644 (online).

15. Hikmet Kocamaner, “Regulating the Family through Religion”, American Ethnologist 46, no. 4 (2019), 495–508.

16. At the time when we have been finishing this article for publication, the government has been working on a “draft law proposal” that criminalizes of any gender expression or representation that is deemed non-conforming. The proposal also brings further restrictions and challenges against the gender-confirming surgeries. For KaosGL's news report on the draft law, see Oğulcan Özgenç, “LGBTI+'s are targeted with amendments to the Civil Code and Penal Code”, KaosGL (27 February 2025), online, https://kaosgl.org/en/single-news/lgbti-s-are-targeted-with-amendments-to-the-civil-code-and-penal-code

17. Berlant, 10

18. Berlant, 10.

19.  Although mahalle roughly translates to “neighborhood” in English, it refers to a web of relations based on locality. It is officially an administrative unit under the city and district governance, represented by elected officials called muhtars. However, mahalles as communities defined by primary relations, unwritten norms and codes based on lifestyle, and social expectations can survive even after they cease to exist legally.  As Behar explains, “the mahalle is first and foremost a space where people are neighbors and where human relationships are based on being neighbors. It is a bundle of face-to-face, dense daily relationships people and families, women men and children form with each other; whether it is through shopping, praying, playing or conversing.” See Cem Behar, Bir Mahallenin Doğumu ve Ölümü (1494-2008) (Istanbul: Yapi Kredi Yayınları, 2019).

20. Ömer’s nostalgia can also be located in a wider context of nostalgic attachments in Turkish popular culture. The ongoing legacy of the Yeşilçam imagery is not only maintained in dizis but it also prevails in the practices of digital media audiences in Türkiye. As Yeşilçam film archives move onto online platforms, a new wave of Yeşilçam revival has taken over the media spaces. This article’s co-author Zeynep Serinkaya Winter is currently working on her PhD research titled Digital Intimate Publics, Yesilcam Fandom and Nostalgia for Old Turkey, where she explores the new publics and audience discourses emerging around such nostalgic attachments to Yeşilçam. [Return to page 2]

21. See Hülya Uğur Tanrıöver, “Towards a Social History of Turkey Through Television Series”, Series - International Journal of TV Serial Narratives 8, no. 2 (2022), 9-26.

22. Tanrıöver, suggests that mahalle is also useful in technical sense, as it allows for subplot lines and introduction of new characters. It also allows the story to continue seamlessly without “jumps” in the ordinary flow of daily life, from interior space to exterior spaces. The thematic preference is also because mahalle continues to be the main public space in the Turkish social life for most of the population. Depictions of mahalle also evoke nostalgic sentiments in the context of rapid urbanization. It is also a nostalgic reference to wider/extended (geniş) aile living, as opposed to rising nuclear family structure. See Hülya Uğur Tanrıöver, “Türk Televizyon Dizilerinde Mahalle ve Aile Yaşamı”, İstanbul Dergisi (January 2002), 93-96.

23. Tanrıöver, 93-96.

24. This critical observation also applies to the dizi Camdaki Kız/The Girl in the Glass (OGM & KanalD 2021-2023) and its evasion of class in its formative “yalı mise-en-scene”. See Germen, “Yalı mise-en-scene and frontality”, n.p. (online).

25. As a social network that shelters individuals, mahalle has been narrated in considerably different registers in contemporary Turkish television. For example, Çukur (Ay Yapım 2017-2021), a popular crime-thriller dizi, depicted an almost dystopian, poor neighborhood at the margins of the city, with its residents left to their own devices – sustaining themselves through illegal activities, everything but drug and sex trafficking. The show was targeted by censorship of the government as it thematized current political and social issues such as urban poverty and urban regeneration, as well as corruption.  For a detailed analysis of familialism and masculinist protection logic in Çukur, see Ergin Bulut and Zeynep Serinkaya Winter, “Contested Masculinities and Political Imaginaries in “New Turkey” and Çukur as Authoritarian Spaces of Protection”, New Perspectives on Turkey 68 (2023): 49-70.

26. Melodrama is a well-established genre within Yeşilçam tradition, with its style defined by excess and reliance on mise-en-scene and music for mobilizing genre as well as its convoluted storyline and incessant crises, evoking fear, surprise, dread and overall pathos. Yet, as Mercer and Shingler explain, it is also a “sensibility”: it endorses a view of the world as divided between the good and the evil, with moral value assigned to victimhood; a legible moral order amidst the chaos of modern life. For a nuanced take on melodrama as a genre and a mode, or a sensibility, see John Mercer and Martin Shingler, Melodrama: Genre, Style and Sensibility (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).  Such sensibility goes beyond genres and, as Arslan suggests, persists through different genres such as action and adventure. For a re-conceptualization of melodrama in the context of Turkish cinema, see Savaş Arslan, Cinema in Turkey: A New Critical History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). The melodramatic tropes and sensibility continue to influence TV serials in contemporary Turkey. The social anxieties of adjusting to modernity that audiences grapple with are inscribed into the impossible love stories, into the “personal”. Indeed, as Germen defines it, dizis are “television melodrama”, employing this familiar worldview in the television format. See Baran Germen, “Yalı mise-en-scene and frontality”, n.p.

27. The challenge this new group of shows pose against the familialism as waged by AKP is not a new feature, as post-millennial TV shows in Turkey often depicted women protagonists pushing the boundaries of gender roles. Through an analysis of Turkish TV series, popular both home and abroad, Üstek and Alyanak suggest that these protagonists and their stories are a “unique blend”, introducing alternative narratives of womanhood and empowerment while retaining devotion to traditional gender roles as a mother and a wife. As the authors demonstrate, while these stories depict single or divorced mothers, working women as well as extramarital affairs, they always find the middle ground in brokering relations with the patriarchal family structure. Such narratives offer a “palatable hybrid” for the local and international audiences (Üstek and Alyanak, 414), while responding to cultural production conditions defined by the scrutiny of RTÜK. As the authors underline, RTÜK has been instrumental in dictating the boundaries of what is acceptable as representations of family and sexuality, through its punitive authority, hence its role in shaping narratives on screen. See Funda Üstek and Oğuz Alyanak, “The “Unique Blend”: Reframing Womanhood through Turkish Drama Series”, in Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective, edited by Adrienne E. Strong and Richard Powis (London: Routledge, 2024), 405–421.

28. There are several adaptations of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion produced in the Yeşilçam era, recycling the story of an upper-class male protagonist disciplining a lower-class female protagonist into a sophisticated and elegant lady. The male protagonist then falls in love with his own “creation”. For a critical discussion on how the story was adapted and recycled in the Yeşilçam era, see Evren Barin Eğrik, “Türk Sinemasında Pygmali̇on Etkisi̇: Yeşilçam’da Pygmalion Uyarlamaları ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet”, MA Thesis (Istanbul: Marmara University, 2007).

29. Authors’ translation. The original, in Turkish language, is: “Bırak bu hurafeleri! Sen Kuran’a aykırı şeyler anlatıyorsun. Sen ve senin gibiler yüzünden bu din tanınmaz, yaşanmaz hale geldi. En çok da gençleri soğuttunuz. Dinden konuşacaksan Allah’ı anlatacaksın, hurafeleri değil. (...) Ey Müslümanlar, uyanın!” From this point onwards, the English translations of Quranic references will be cited from the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Qur’an translated by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

30. In his critical commentary on the proliferation of religious TV shows, Kocamaner notes: “In 1990, the Turkish state’s monopoly on television broadcasting came to an end, enabling the liberalization of the media sector and the flourishing of any privately owned TV stations, including several Islamically oriented ones [e.g. Samanyolu TV, Kanal 7, and TGRT]. The programming of Islamic TV channels was initially distinctly theological in character, with shows focusing on the doctrinal, scriptural, and ritualistic aspects of Islam. Recently, however, Islamic TV broadcasters have started producing family-friendly entertainment programs as well as family-related shows aimed at solving domestic problems and “strengthening the family””. Kocamaner asserts that “Islamic TV executives and producers of such shows consider themselves moral entrepreneurs aiming to prevent what they see as the increasing corrosion of the “moral fabric of the family (“ailenin ahlaki dokusu”) and the devaluation of “family values” (“aile değerleri”) in contemporary Turkish society”. See Hikmet Kocamaner, “Strengthening the Family through Television: Islamic Broadcasting, Secularism, and the Politics of Responsibility in TV”, Anthropological Quarterly 90, no. 3(2017), 676. 

31. For a critical account of the Turkish remakes of Korean TV dramas, please see Melis Behlil, “Turkish Remakes of Korean TV Dramas”, Creative Industries Journal 16, no. 2 (2023), 163-179.