Magnificent Century and Magnificent Controversy

The Turkish Drama Divide

“Muhtesem Yuzyil” which can be translated as “Magnificent Century” is one of the top news of the year 2011 by Cihan News Agency. This peak viewing time period drama about Suleiman the Maganificent and Hurrem, the slave girl who later became queen has aroused a bitter controversy over the life of Suleiman Ⅰ. 

Suleiman Ⅰ is the longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 until his death in 1566 at the height of its glory. He is known in the West as Suleiman the Magnificent and in Turkey, “Kanuni” meaning “The Lawgiver” for his complete reconstruction of the Ottoman legal system. 

The drama mainly focuses on the relationships between the members of the imperial household, especially the romantic entanglements and rivalries. Angry viewers criticised it as a disrespectful, indecent and hedonistic portrayal of the historical figure. Suleiman the Magnificent stayed as a sultan for 46 years conquering half of Europe and Africa but the drama shows him but none of the war scenes were shown on the drama but only his sexual life in Harem at Topkapi Palace with so many women and alcohol. 

Groups of Islamists and nationalists staged a protest against Turkey’s biggest TV station, Show TV. They read passages from the Quran, chanted “Allahu Akbar (God is greatest)”, blocked highways, egged the building of Show TV station, threatened to boycott the corporation, tore down advertisements and sang the tunes of the Ottoman military band. Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) received 75,000 complaints in 25 days against the drama whereas RTUK received 64,000 complaints in nine months.  

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc threatened the broadcaster saying, “Those who try to humiliate the important people of our history should face retribution. What is necessary will be done.” The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)’s deputy parliamentary group chairman Suat Kilic said, “600 years of Ottoman history was not built on the harem.” Even the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Edrogan called the drama disrespectful and said, “An attempt to insult our past, to treat our history with disrespect and an effort to show our history in a negative light to the younger generations.” 

On the other hand, Meral Okay the screenwriter had an interview with Reuters and said, “We have been saying the same thing from the start: this is fiction inspired by history. By entering the harem, we made all those untouchable and respected characters of history closer to us. We gave them a material existence as humans with fears, anger and passions.” 

Mustafa Akyol, a columnist who frequently writes on religion and politics for Turkish newspapers said, “The first problem is the over-idealisation of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans might have been good servants of Islam but they were also humans with sins temptations. Quite a few Ottoman sultans were indeed wine drinkers and while their harem was not the orgy ground, it was not a sexless monastery either.” 

Meanwhile, this steamy period drama completed its Season 1 of 24 episodes last year and its Season 2 is airing currently. In spite of all the fuss over the drama and the sultan, it remains popular with viewers with consistently high ratings.