Another Soap Box: Iran’s View of the TV Series Nour
Thanks to a reader for alerting me to this review in the Tehran Times of the Turkish TV series “Nour” that has become so popular in the Arab world that it has led to a fatwa being issued against it and doubled Arab tourism to Turkey. Looks like the series is a kind of Rorschach test, with every country projecting its own fears onto it.
Excerpt from “Turkish Soaps Not So Clean” by Hassan Hanizadeh (referring also to a second Turkish series “The Foreign Groom”, also popular in the Arab world:
The series, each of which has over 200 episodes, have political objectives. Until very recently, Turkey, which has been dominated by secular pan-Turkism for years, had never had any political or cultural influence over the Arab world. Turkish officials of previous governments had always looked to the United States and the West in general because they believed Turkey’s status was above that of Middle Eastern countries.
When the Justice and Development (AK) Party took power in Turkey and a government with Islamic leanings was established, regional Arab states –- and especially Saudi Arabia, which had been seeking an alternative to the model of the Islamic Republic of Iran –tried to raise Turkey’s profile in the region…
Although these series are not high art, they are meant to raise Turkey’s profile in the region in order to reduce Iran’s political and cultural influence.
To counter the Shia culture and reduce its moral influence on the Shias of the Arab world, the Saudis shrewdly provided Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan access to their publicity organs so that Turkey could begin playing a more active role in the political, cultural, and economic life of the Middle East. (click here for full article)
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