Soap opera diplomacy: How Turkey is winning the Balkans and losing Israel

Much has been reported lately of Turkey's renewed confidence as a regional power and its moves for even greater worldwide influence. Firm evidence of this is the Iran nuclear deal it brokered along with an equally ambitious Brazil. What hasn't been picked up as much is that Turkey is finally winning the hearts and minds of a group of peoples with deep-felt historic animosity towards it - the Christian peoples of the Balkan. Last week, the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan an made important visit to the Balkans, visiting majority Orthodox Christian countries Serbia and Bulgaria along the way. Despite hysterical and at times ridiculous protests by ultra-nationalists in both countries, Erdoğan's meetings were extremely successful, resulting in many and much needed infrastructure projects being discussed and approved.

Historically Turkey has been seen by the Christians of the Balkans as the cruel occupier, with Turks themselves painted as vicious and murderous, a view much more reflecting the Western stereotype of Muslims from previous centuries than actual first hand experience. It doesn't take long for Christian Balkanites to bring up how much they suffered under 5 centuries of Turkish rule, which is a throw away excuse given for any perceived backwardness they may have. Whole national identities, such as Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian ones, are based around this hatred of Turks and sense of revenge for the humiliation and degredation over such a long time.

Turkophobia naturally does not extend to the Muslim populations of the Balkans, many of whom are ethnic Turks themselves, who see Turkey as a protector of their interests and welfare, a role Turkey has always willing accepted. Turkey provided as much support as it could to the Bosniaks in the Balkan Wars, was one of the first countries to recognise Kosovo independence, maintains very strong relations with Macedonia and has always championed the rights of Muslims throughout the region. This is the basis for the argument Balkan Christian ultra-nationalists have that Muslim populations represent a fifth column showing more loyalty to Turkey than to their homelands.

So why are things different now? Serbs should be angry at Erdoğan for recognising their 'Jerusalem' (Kosovo) as a separate country, but they aren't. Television is the answer. Turkish soap operas, subtitled or dubbed depending on the country, have taken the Balkans by storm in the past 2 years. After almost 2 decades of constantly watching increasing monotonous plot lines of cheap Latin American soaps, the higher production values, more intricate storylines and, most importantly, the closeness of Turkish cultural dynamics with those of the Balkans, has seen ratings for Turkish soap opera, and consequently for Turkey, go up. The first soap to make a breakthrough was Binbir Gece (1001 Nights), making its stars massively famous beyond Turkey.

The success of Turkey's soap operas has come as a surprise to Turks. Turkey has been wanting for decades to regain a part of past glories when the Ottoman Empire was responsible for bringing technological and culinary advances to peoples around the world. With the fall of Communism, Turkey hinged its hopes at spreading its influence to Turkic speaking countries of ex-USSR and to Muslims in the Balkans. Results from this policy have been patchy, whereas Turkish culture and business ties have made some inroads, it still faces very hard competition (from Russia in particular) in most fields. Turkey's ineffectiveness in exerting any influence over recent conflicts between Turkic speaking Uzbeks and Kyrgyz showed the little extent Turkey's political reach has over Central Asia, for instance.

While Turkish soap operas have been instrumental in building closer ties with the Balkans, unfortunately the opposite can be said of once-close Turkish-Israeli relations. Part of the rather rapid deterioration of relations between the Western allies came at the hands of controversial Turkish soap opera Kurtlar Vadisi (The Valley of Wolves). Playing on deep-held Turkish public views of widespread political conspiracy, Kurtlar Vadisi has sporned a whole series of politically-based soaps and films that have been hugely popular in Turkey and Turks everwhere, and now abroad (the first series is currently being shown in Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia). Topics the series has covered include US military activity in Iraq, Kurdish terrorism, Turkish army control and the mafia, mainly in a populist/Islamist viewpoint much in line with the beliefs of the main Turkish viewing demographic. What made Israel's foreign ministry particularly angry (coming after Erdoğan's outburst at Davos in January 2009 - the startpoint to the current Turkish-Israeli rift) was one episode depicting Israeli Mossad agents stealing Turkish babies. The soap had come under earlier criticism of anti-semitism when it depicted a Jewish-American doctor harvesting body organs from captured Turkish soldiers in Iraq and selling them in Tel Aviv. Israel's foreign ministry, run by the far-right Avigdor Lieberman, later handled the situation very undiplomatically (and stupidly) by publicly humiliating the Turkish ambassador in Israel, resulting in a worsening of relations with its closest Muslim ally. As often is the case in such pathetic acts, the Israeli deputy foreign minister's farcical actions of oneupmanship did not lead to any improvement of the situation, nor did the Turkish authorities apply the extra censorship requested. On the other hand, by actually making an issue out of it only caused Kurtlar Vadisi to gain more viewership especially from secular Turks who otherwise were not watching the soap as they were well aware of its pro-Islamist/populist tone.

Nevertheless, the future looks bright for Turkey and its greater aspirations of cultural expansion, thanks to the glitz. With the EU in economic crisis, membership into the Christian European club seems unlikely, but Turkey's economy and confidence is growing without it. It remains to be seen whether Turkey can capitalise more from the soap opera success in opening the minds of the Balkans. But, if so many centuries of animosity can help cast off the image of the bad Turk in the Balkans, then what if Israel were to have a chance at watching a Turkish soap (other than Kurtlar Vadisi)? Perhaps these once friends now enemies could, like in the soaps, have a happy ending.