Reading Turkey’s New Vision Based Real Policies through an Identity and their Presentation in Series as a Soft Power: A Study on the Series, Resurrection-Ertugrul

Abstract

The mass media fictionalizes social reality by rebuilding it within the framework of dominant norms and it presents this new reality to its target group in a way that it substitutes the truth. Especially the television, the most widely used technology among mass media is a communication technology which is preferred as the most effective means in transferring the new reality to the society, as it appeals to both visual and auditory senses. The television is also comprised of a highly organic technological set-up, equipped with mechanical and also social qualities in which identities are also recorded, represented, identified and modeled. In this technological mechanism, especially series, which are widely watched by Turkish society, are a privileged generator with regards to the reconstruction of identities. From this point of view, the purpose of this study is to demonstrate that Turkey, which tries to produce new and active domestic and foreign policies in global politics by taking advantage of the historical and cultural heritage, has started to use these policies as a soft power and TV series have been involved in this process. In this context, the series called Diriliş-Ertugrul has been studied as a sample and the indicators of the real policies based on Turkey’s target vision have been evaluated by content analysis method. The findings put forward that besides providing historical information, Diriliş-Ertugrul transfers Turkey's new political identity pointing to its new vision based real policies and focusing on national unification inside and historical and cultural touches outside, to soft power elements over retrospective codes, and this is ‘carried out’ within narrative, character, decor fiction triangle.