Viewing Turkish TV series in Skopje: Audience memories on travelling cultural products

Abstract

Despite gradually increasing consumption patterns, the notion of memory remains a key concept that is rarely drawn on by scholars to better understand television (TV) series. This research contributes to the existing literature on the reception of Turkish TV series in the specific case of Macedonian audiences by conducting interviews in Skopje, the capital city of Macedonia. By focusing on a majority Christian demographic that does not speak Turkish and has no familial bonds to Turkish people, this study hopes to move beyond cultural proximity arguments. The findings suggest the crucial importance of photographic (eidetic) and prosthetic memories from mediated accounts of Turkish series in creating cultural and collective affinities with local audiences.

Keywords

Turkish series cultural memory Skopje Macedonia Balkan Ottoman Turkey counter-flow eidetic memory prosthetic memory audience research TV drama

Introduction

Reception studies on Turkish television (TV) series and their widespread consumption has become a highly researched issue, particularly over the past half-decade. However, only few studies investigated their popularity in the Eastern European or Balkan without utilising ‘cultural proximity’ (Straubhaar, 1991) or ‘multiple proximities’ (La Pastina and Straubhaar, 2005), cultural affinity and similarity as arguments to explain the audience’s appreciation of that content. This study looks at Macedonian individuals’ relationships with Turkish TV drama series from a cultural memory perspective by conducting interviews as the main method in Skopje. The study examines Turkish TV series viewership that has rejuvenated a collective cultural memory pertaining to Turkey and Turkish society. The reason this study focuses on this particular phenomenon is to move beyond cultural, religious and language proximity arguments (Straubhaar, 1991) in the search of audiences who are, at present, predominantly Macedonian Christians or South Slavic people. The recruited participants do not speak Turkish and have no family bonds with Turkish people. Despite this, they consume Turkish dramas broadcasted in their local TV schedules or other media platforms present in their everyday life.

Just like memory, culture is a fluid and transparent concept. Despite the importance of the dynamic, performative and productive nature of memory, memory and TV viewership is rarely the subject of scholarly debate in media and reception studies. Paradoxically, the study of memory is an integral part of most, if not all, core media psychology curricula. This study points to the importance of cultural memory with limited space and storage, as the viewers must be selective in order to be collective (Assmann, 2008). In respect to culture, people are always entangled within its ‘webs of significance’, as culture consists of an entire way of life, encompassing everything from public discourse to different ways of doing and remembering things (Geertz, 1973, p. 36). Culturally shaped memory is embodied in the gestures, habits and practices of how people shake hands, how they behave at a doctor's appointment, how they adopt a certain style of parenting or how they make sense of a pandemic (Meretoja, 2022). It should be noted that personal and intimate memories are mediated by culturally shaped practices as discussed in the ‘social frameworks of memory’ (Halbwachs, 1980[1950]). Thus, cultural memory is understood as the collective practices that societies use to build and uphold their relationship to the past in this study (Assmann, 2008). Cultural memory is needed in order to live in the present and to be prepared for the future. In addition to implicit embodied modes of remembering, there are intentional efforts made by artists, writers, journalists, historians and politicians to narrate and articulate where they come from, in order to make sense of their place in the world.

This present study focuses on the intentional efforts of viewers to narrate and articulate cultural memory by using Turkish series. The study is delimited with what was selected and taken with or rejected and left behind in the cultural memories of the interviewed viewers. Viewing Turkish series as an activity refers to collective practices and draws attention to the social and cultural dimensions of remembering. To contextualise the discussion, the study draws upon a brief discussion on cultural memory, an overview of Macedonian history to exist today as an independent nation state and Turkish TV series as a distinctive genre. Contributing to discussions on memory and viewership, the findings are explored under the lens of multiple subthemes to expose how the past continues to weigh on the present and demonstrate how cultural memory remains a significant factor in reception studies pertaining to mind, identity, social reality and international relations.

The horizons of cultural memory

The substantial role of TV series in the formation of national identities has been little explored empirically (Dhoest, 2007). The present study contributes to filling this glaring gap by using the concept of cultural memory due to the abstract nature of ‘national identity’. The leading scholar on memory studies, Aleida Assmann (2021), indicates the lack of clarity on the meanings of memory which is deliberately used to replace ideology like collective memory, cultural memory, social memory, popular memory, national memory and communicative memory. In respect to TV series, these various meanings of the memory will be elaborated upon here to explain what encompasses cultural memory at its core. Here, popular memory is understood to be the story-telling of popular beliefs, of things in which people make sense of their lives and culture (Spigel, 2001, p. 363). As it happened during the interviews, participants sometimes shared with us their enthusiasm for seeking ‘truth’ in the lives of historical characters or historical events from their popular memory. The search for truth is a basic human need and it is very common for people to check facts, dates and figures by using Google or history books. Understanding the truthfulness of the historical events or popular beliefs depicted in Turkish dramas for the Ottoman or other historical periods is beyond the scope of this study. The participants’ interpretations of the series indicate the presence of a wider context pertaining to curiosity and a search that reaches beyond the limits of popular memory.

Collective memory also provides little room for doubt, owing to the fact that the template it provides for individual memory is located within libraries, museums, commemorations, conversations, poems and school textbooks (Assmann, 2021). Of course, we learn school curricula, keep the essentials and forget, however, that an ordinary citizen only occasionally goes to museums, exhibitions, libraries or reads poems. In contrast to this, Turkish series’ daily mediated presence transformed cultural memory ‘from an everyday objectified state into a subjective psychological experience’ (Hewer and Kut, 2010, p. 20). These series become selective, subjective objects that belong to people as personal belongings rather than a collectivity.

Likewise, national memory also implicates a limited viewpoint. Former Yugoslavian states were divided for centuries between the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, both of which were former allies of Germany during First World War before they both collapsed. This strategic alliance was never mentioned in the Western or European media by left or right wing politicians during the annual commemoration of the First World War. In respect to memory, this instance indicates its cultural and political construction (Assmann, 2021). ‘Memory is emanating from the social order as a position that exceeds the limits of scientific research and ventures into the world of history and politics’ (Hewer and Kut, 2010, p. 20). This decision of systematically forgetting most significantly exposes the privilege of what is kept aside and remembered and commemorated as part of European national memory. As Assmann (2021) indicates, culture is in being, developing, transmitted, endangered, yet it is also constructed of certain things that outlive other things. Citizens cannot intervene in the decision of what becomes public or control the publicness of their memory (Hamilton, 2010).

Moreover, considering the extent and the power of cultural memory over national memory, the Macedonian Minister of Information Society, Ivo Ivanovski, proposed a change of law in 2012 to ban Turkish series as he said: ‘no matter how beautiful these series, Macedonian people did not want to re-enter 500 years long Turkish captivity again’ (Zalewski, 2016). Participant 10, aged 43, speaking in a ‘we’ form addressing her own Macedonian group identity commented on this proposed ban as follows:

‘You cannot prevent people from watching something pleasurable, what for? It is on TV, so what? There is no Amazon, Disney + and iTunes, we have Google TV, HBO, Netflix and Rakuten TV. We will not become Turkish or Ottoman again because we watch these series. This is absurd (laughing). I am Macedonian and will always remain one, but it is good to know the why of some habits, laws, customs, gestures, words that might have further meanings in this society (…) In the newspapers and Internet, we read political assaults for revenge, but ordinary people also do this, in the workplace or even at the school. Personal revenge, challenge, conspiracy are part of life. Human nature is full of surprises, sometimes good and bad (…) everybody knows this is just the series’ narrative’. (Participant 10)

This participant unfolded the symbols and the hidden meanings that spread from family stories, secrets, gossip, things she may have heard from her parents or from simply enjoying what the existing literature calls as trivial pleasures that come from TV soaps or serials (Morley, 1992). Examining this under the lens of cultural memory presents a case of great relevance to the memory and TV viewership debate, as it implicates contemporary issues, settling accounts with the past and TV drama productions. First, an important question remains to be asked: What is cultural memory? Aleida Assmann (2021) defines culture as the memory of a society that is not transmitted by genes, so, if it cannot be inherited biologically, it has to be transmitted via symbols. Cultural memory needs to be contested, revised, revived and sometimes rejected. Authors agree that the core and canon of cultural memory is composed of stable institutions and foundations, great discoveries that indicate 3000 years of long-term memory. Groups need this kind of equipment as a culture that they grow into, that they are not fully aware of until they get to know other cultures. Human beings use culture and cultural memory as a space of resonance within which they live and carry it with them as a suitcase on their journey through history (Assmann, 2021). What is important for individuals to have is a horizon of images, concepts, ideas and values to construct their own biographies and histories in accordance with these meanings and values (Pajala, 2010). At the same time, the history that is transmitted to the individuals by grand and great grandparents, indicating that a time period of 80 to 100 years of memories are communicated to them via communicative memory. Again, this is a limited understanding of memory, as the absence of family bonds creates a huge gap of knowledge. As stated by Assmann (2021), ‘cultural memory creates a framework for communication across the abyss of time like the Internet creates a framework for communication across wide distances in space’ (p. 97). From this perspective, Turkish series as a framework contribute to the canon of cultural memory because their content retrieves data from the forgotten past and challenges it to be remembered by participants. Cultural memory is an active exchange over a framework that is both stable like archives and libraries and permeable like the Turkish drama series that came to be added to its core (Confino, 2008). Turkish drama is retrieved from the lost or forgotten part of cultural memory, such as the forgotten memory of the working class or women's history, among many other stories that made their way back into the canon. This is the way cultural memory is kept flexible: it changes and adapts to our new forms of consciousness (Assmann, 2021). This point will again be discussed in the findings section to discuss quotations of participants in which they reclaimed the Ottoman past as ‘theirs’ (Confino, 2008).

From Macedonia province to the North Macedonia

Since 2019, the country is officially called North Macedonia. This orthodox Christian country was one of the non-Muslim monotheist cultures of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman civilisation was a common product of various religious communities: the Greek and Eastern Orthodox Christians, Armenian Gregorian, Christians and Jews coexisted for centuries within the same society and preserved their separate corporate identities (Mango, 1999). Although the country had a Roman and Byzantine past, the dominant theme herein is of its past as one of the former monotheist cultures of the Ottoman empire for more than 500 years. Over the past 200 years, the map of the former Yugoslavia region has been continually redrawn under the shadow of the Balkan Question. Due to its geopolitical location, Macedonia has been vulnerable to invasion, occupation and partition from both the East and West. The country experienced diverse ethnic and imperial identities as a kingdom in Greek antiquity, a Roman administrative unit, a province of the Byzantine Empire, a province of the Ottoman Empire, and a part of the former Yugoslavia (1945–1991) as Socialist Republic of Macedonia (SR thereafter). The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) came into existence after First World War in 1918 and had six constituent republics: SR of Bosnia and Herzegovina, SR Croatia, SR Macedonia, SR Montenegro, SR Serbia and SR Slovenia. After its dissolution and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, Turkey has successfully seized opportunities to expand its cooperation and influence in the region (Linden and İrepoğlu, 2013). As part of state policy, Turkey has been involved in peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, as well as played an active role in peace talks (Linden and İrepoğlu, 2013). These diplomatic acts have tremendously increased the appeal of its drama series, which are argued to have ‘a Western identity blended with Oriental values’ (Çevik, 2015).

Turkey was one of the first countries to recognise Macedonia's sovereignty in 1991. Turkey and Macedonia have increasingly stronger economic relations and are full members of the Council of Europe and of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The aspiration to become a prosperous member of the European Union has been part of the political agenda in both countries. Today, Turkish presence is strongly felt in the Skopje square through the considerable number of Turkish companies, including TAV Airports, Şişecam, LC Waikiki, Halk Bank and others. This granted us, as researchers originating from Turkey, the feeling of being at home or in an Anatolian town because cities are important sites of memory. This indescribable feeling instantly minimised the role of language and religion differences, despite that these are both powerful forms of cultural memory.

Turkish TV drama series genre

Beginning in the mid-90s, the number of private TV channels increased while US soap operas and telenovelas from Brazil, Argentina and Mexico filled prime-time TV schedules (Yeşil, 2015). These occurrences obliged Turkish TV drama producers to increase the aesthetic and narrative quality in their products (Yeşil, 2015). Over the years, Turkish series producers have acquired the features of transnational TV drama historical legacy series to offer a ‘Westernised, modern and traditional content’ (Jenner, 2018, p. 230) that later assisted them in securing international distribution deals (Gül, 2021). Mimicking successful marketing strategies in international TV fairs like MIPCOM and MIPTV, these series produced in Turkey were exported to Arab countries, the Middle East and then to the markets in the Balkans, Asia and South America (Özalpman and Sarikakis, 2018). Turkish drama combines qualities found in high-end drama that sells local colour, local identity and diversity (Jenner, 2018, p. 230). Turkey has currently become the world's second-biggest TV drama exporter after the United States (Vivarelli, 2017; Gül, 2021).

In the Turkish drama genre, a broad variety of themes are showcased including the challenges of everyday life in urban and rural areas, division between the rich and poor, terrorism, mafia–government relations, romantic love, sexual harassment, marriage, adultery, family values, religious and nationalist sentiments and such themes open up debates on the coup d’état peroids (Kaptan and Algan, 2020). ‘Themes [in Turkish series] include the lives of Ottoman sultans, tensions between different ideological markers such as Islamism and laicism, and love stories as symbols of societal unity as a panacea against fragile relationships’, as discussed by Işık (2019, p. 185). These themes are inspired by transnational topics such as subject democratic values, human rights, and gender roles in society (Jenner, 2018). With the increase of digital streaming services in Turkey like the launch of Netflix Turkey, Turkish series’ narrative structures offer diverse genres beyond drama, including comedy, humour, thrillers, fantasy, suspense, detective, period and crime fiction (Kaptan and Algan, 2020).

International audiences have been particularly enthralled by this content as they see common culture, common values, respect for the elderly, compassion to younger ones, behaviours that contain messages, and often the family and family values situated at the centre of life (e.g. Kharroub and Weaver, 2019). Scholars argue that these constitute the core of audiences’ interest, specifically in the former national cultures of the Ottoman empire. Therefore, seeing and recognising ‘similarities in food culture, music, dances, markets/bazaars, textile goods, close family bonds, common words, family surnames, expressions and even gestures’ attracted Greek audiences, for instance (Yörük and Vatikiotis, 2013, p. 2371). This century-long system of common values has visibly created ‘the nostalgia of the lost tradition, [and] externalised Orient and demoded religious values’ between Turks and Greeks (Yörük and Vatikiotis, 2013, p. 2371). This argument states that audiences see their culture or part of their in this Turkish drama content, creating what is called the ‘cultural proximity thesis’ (Straubhaar, 1991).

Although we agree with this idea, as researchers we observed much more than are implied by this concept. Participants showed that they were left with memories of the presence of the Ottoman Empire in their region. A cultural context, something that their memory could rely on, was missing for them. The Turkish series’ visual and narrative settings provided participants with a template, with which their memory could work in a productive and positive manner.

Methods

A purposive sample of 13 Macedonian nationals, all females aged 28 to 52 years, was recruited through snowballing techniques within the personal networks. Semi-structured interviews were conducted by appointment, in English and Macedonian, with the help of a translator in 3 cases. Participants were high school teachers working at schools in Skopje. These particular school teachers were selected for their ability of speaking English fluently, as they could explain their Turkish TV series’ viewership to us in detail. The interview schedule was comprised of 23 questions that were divided into relevant sections (i.e. identity, Ottoman and Turkish history, the politics of remembrance, the Balkan region, Turkey and international relations). The interviews were recorded and transcribed into English. Interview times ranged between 40minutes and 1 hour, resulting in an average of 4.5 pages (range 4–8 pages) of transcripts and translations per interview. Themes were coded, labelled and clustered into major categories that allowed superordinate themes emerging from the data to be structured in such a way that represents the dominant patterns within the data. Once these themes were established, they were checked against the data, refined and examined for theoretical connection and coherence. The result was an interpretative position taken on cultural memory and TV viewership, most specifically eidetic (photographic) and prosthetic memories.

Findings

Pre-interview debriefing revealed that the historical nature of the interview questions had the potential to invoke a sense of willingness to talk, curiosity and stress because recalling some of these historical events sometimes made interviewees feel a bit disturbed by their thoughts and feelings. A sense of national pain and trauma was apparent and, although all the accounts were not always chronologically or factually comprehensible for us as non-historian researchers, this did not detract from their emotional significance or their currency. Three principal themes emerged from the data: (1) eidetic (photographic) personal memories, (2) history and identity and (3) prosthetic memories.

Eidetic (photographic) personal memories

The ‘eidetic memory’ form, also known as photographic memory, is a form of visual memory with the ability to place highly accurate visual information into visual memory (Kringelbach, 2009). When participants were asked to describe the remembered images or scenes from the series, they were good at remembering actresses/actors’ faces, eye contacts, hair and makeup style, jewellery forms, the colourful decoration, the appearance of the streets, bazaars, buildings, Bosphorus and cafés. Whether historical or contemporary, set in the time of the Ottoman Empire or in the present Istanbul settings, inside or outside of participants’ life-span, the distance from interviewees’ own lives is obvious. Participant 3, for example, commented on the aesthetic qualities of the series in great admiration: ‘perfect, beautiful, impressive, very rich setting’. Participant 1 considered them as being representative of the richness of the current Turkish state. Participant 11 said ‘the view from Bosphorus is amazing, the sea, the birds flying on the blue sky, the ships passing behind, this whole decoration of Istanbul is naturally beautiful’. Participant 11 later said through the series she feels a great appreciation for the aesthetic qualities in the series.

In light of the complexities of grand historical narratives, personal mediated memories as a collectivity show strong patterns. Scholarship on media and memory argues that ‘individuals are also active collectors of mediated culture in a culture of media abundance, people often wield technologies to record selected pieces of culture, items they consider worthwhile additions to their personal collection like the decision to buy a book or record or to watch a television programme’ (van Dijck, 2004, p. 274). In Matter and Memory, the leading philosopher working on memory Henry Bergson (1911) explains his theory of ‘pure perception’, which is beyond realism and idealism, as our knowledge of things, in its pure state, takes place within the things it represents. Likewise, we agree on memory in the Bergsonian sense, who argues that memory belongs entirely to the soul, which is unique in that sense as a composition of memories collected throughout our lifetime (Bergson, 1911). As this statement makes explicit, participants wish to collect visually beautiful things in their memories. Skopje as the capital city is a modest place compared to the metropole city of Istanbul. The luxurious lifestyle, five star hotels, big brands, big restaurants and glamorous places showcased in the Turkish series are less visible in Skopje.

Participant 4 acknowledged the selective and subjective nature of her account as she said she very much liked Forbidden Love (in Turkish: Aşk-ı Memnu, TV Series, 2008–2010). She indicated her professional career as an English teacher as an excuse for admiring one of the antagonist characters. She explained:

‘Watching that woman is like reading a book to me, sometimes kids could be too exhausted and when you feel tired, the narrative richness of Turkish series are remarkable in that sense, (…) it is like reading Virginia Woolf books (…) I like this woman, first you think she has no morality as she is so much after money but in a smart way, she knows very well the norms, values and Islam as the religion of the country, she warned her daughter within that societal perspective (…) her wardrobe was amazing, she has so many clothes, she is always so chic, and she is not even young, she is an old lady, but the prettiest one, even more elegant than her daughters’ (Participant 4)

Owing to the limitation of space in this article, the feminist side of that statement could not be further developed as a subject of discussion. However, one other point is clear: the visual resources of producers who use Istanbul as a setting deeply increased aesthetic pleasures of the participants. Particular frames from the series are captured, for example, using the time-lapse photography technique to be remembered in participants’ memories. Annette Kuhn (2010) called this notion ‘memory text’: the result of ‘memory work’ as the staging and performing of memories in accounts of the past. Participants discussed memories of individual, isolated shots, scenes and images which are obviously still resonant in all their intensity after years of consumption. It is clear that, ‘in the moment of telling in the present the remembered feelings or sensations associated with these memories are in some way being re-experienced’ (Kuhn, 2010, p. 87). As Participant 4 stated in her interpretation, she still admiringly remembers a gold digger character very well. As a ‘memory work’, what Participant 4 selected and acquired from that TV series does not create critical reactions for the dramatic representation of money that makes inequalities visible. The logic of cultural memory has followed television's commercial logic. Participant 4 appreciated rich characters as she could read Turkish norms, values, mentality, stereotypes and prejudices through them. To clarify this point, the following instance is helpful as the series titled Yaprak Dökümü (TV series, 2006–2010) tells the story of a modest family within low income settings:

‘The events that happened in that house reminded me of my town, where my family came from. It is a beautiful, warm and welcoming home. We moved here in Skopje two decades ago, originally our family land remained in today's Greece. This Ali Riza family moves to the city of Istanbul but they live like in their village, they don't look for the city's amenities. They moved for the better education of their children. With my husband we also did this. Children come first In Turkish series in general they love their children very much. They do all sacrifices for them, not only on monetary terms, taking care of them, preparing food, investing for their future’. (Participant 6)

Participant 6 apparently embraces the poor settings and characters of the series in relation to her personal cultural memories very well. From this perspective, rich characters are appreciated as a source of information about the society and the poor characters are understood through symbols. It is important to keep in mind that the long years that passed after the series’ consumption should normally cloud remembering. However, these series were very well memorised owing to aesthetic appreciation of the content.

Time period pertaining to cultural memory had two dimensions. The first one is the present Turkish dominant culture spreading from TV channels and private investments occupying considerable place in the private and public sphere. Assmann (2008) defines cultural memory as ‘a cultural sphere that combines tradition, awareness of history, myth in action, and self-definition, and that—a crucial point—is subject to the vast range of historically conditioned changes, including those brought about by the evolution of media technology’ (p. 10). Participants said Macedonians travel to Turkey frequently, establish commercial bonds, buy all types of products, try to learn the Turkish language and visit many different places in the country. These personal visits strengthen the extent of travelling Turkish media content, making participants’ cultural memory durable and stronger. The second point pertaining to cultural memory implicates participants’ etched memories from parental, familial and national acquisitions as former members of a lost territory, lost connections between their ancestors. Participant 12 explained this further:

‘We have always watched Turkey on television. We watched whatever you watched, we found our own way, we didn't live in Turkey, but we kept Turkey alive inside the four walls. As you can see, we have always watched you, because we know you very well; we couldn't break up, we found a way, we always opened a window towards you’. (Participant 12)

This quotation is a key example of seeing is remembering in relation to eidetic (photographic) personal memories. The visuals have contributed to remembering symbols of cultural memory as they showcase why the memory works that good in remembering Turkish series’ content.

History and identity

Historical events such as the First and Second World Wars, Balkan Wars, living under communism and the rise of nationalism and independence in the 1990s influenced the way in which the participants perceived themselves as Macedonian nationals. National history was significant to all participants, although it raised an important existential issue about the cultural consequences of remembering:

‘The Ottoman era was too long for Macedonians, a very long time under this empire. Greeks left, Byzance collapsed and the Ottomans came to this land. They took taxes from people, not too much and gave them food and jobs, let them practise their religion freely, they didn't touch their beliefs. Compared to what comes afterwards, these were really happy times, a peaceful epoch in the Balkan region’. (Participant 3)

‘Because we were Christians, our people had to join the Janissary corps and go to wars within the Ottoman units (…) there is more in the Turkish series for us. Through the Turkish series people remember’. (Participant 7)

‘Very few series show us in the media. Just a few genocide story, not even call it genocide, they say Balkan wars. The big states betrayed everyone, all they wanted was to get a piece of land from the rich Balkan region (…) They all used us, they purposefully distributed weapons to make people revolt and fight more and more (…) they poured oil in the frames’. (Participant 13)

‘Memory is assimilated history’ and Macedonian history is no exception, as Balkan history, Ottoman history and world history, is a traumatised history (Hewer and Kut, 2010). The Balkan Wars were between nation-states and inter-ethnic groups fighting one another for their own survival, national independence and territory. Their cultural memory was sometimes heavy and disturbing to the participants, causing silence and hesitations in their words and phrases. Within the narrative of this Ottoman period of Macedonian history, themes of injustice, abandonment and betrayal were prominent in the responses of all participants. As part of the interview questions, participants were asked what Turkey represents for them. Participant 2 legitimately made claims to specialist knowledge acquired through her history studies at the university:

‘I know Turkish history very well. I studied the founder of the Republic, Kemal who was a Macedon. But the worst thing for me is all these hidings and the denial of its real identity. Yes he was born in Thessaloniki but he had Macedon descendants. When you really know history… you see clearly (…) betrayal. Bulgaria and Greece conspired behind our back with Serbs and Russians. (…) Just like what happened against the Sultan in the series. He left home and when he came back they all betrayed him’. (Participant 2)

To remember as a gerund indicates here an honourable act of being attached to a touchstone. To remember means not to be lost and erased, to keep in mind something that will be transmitted to future generations about what happened before. ‘Not in a tragic, fanatic way people remember’, participant 10 added. Through Turkish series’ viewership, cultural memory is updated, revisited and refined. So, why is remembering so important here and what is forgotten to be remembered? Memories of the events in the 1990s Balkan War evoked strong emotions. Most strikingly, not being remembered in the Western media has evoked very strong feelings. Participants know they have been systematically forgotten in the West and Western media. Although the content of Turkish dramas was occasionally criticised for being too violent, it serves as a particularly powerful conduit of symbolic interaction with interviewees’ trauma of being forgotten. Participants legitimately emphasised the gravity of non-existence in the Western media as a cause of trauma associated with national identity and national memory.

Prosthetic memories

Prosthetic memory is a concept put forth by Alison Landsberg (2018, pp.149–150) who defined a new form of public cultural memory as ‘mediated acts of post-war remembering as a consequence of violent scenes’. As Landberg (2018, pp. 149–150) claims, ‘prosthetic memories’ are not authentic or natural, they are derived from engagement with mediated representations. Prosthetic memories could also be problematic when ‘they open up the possibility for collective horizons of experience and pave the way for unexpected political alliances’ (Landberg, 2018, p. 150). In this case, participants do not have any patience or endurance for the least violent scenes. When interviewees see films about the Holocaust, for instance, this strong presence on all media forms reminds them of the salient absence of the filmic material on the violence they had been living through in the Balkan region. As such, their traumatic memories remain relatively historically and geographically specific, serving to reinforce and naturalise their group's identity. In the meantime, the mediated under-representation in the mainstream dominant Western products prevent generating empathy and articulating an ethical relation to them and a sensuous engagement with the Balkan history. Especially in the past two decades, the collective remembrance of the genocide after a period of relative suppression did not make a big echo in the Western world. Balkan memory implicates remembering the traumatic loss of cultural identity that has lasted almost 600 years. This has naturally positioned the concept of memory at the centre of this study as an act of curiosity, loyalty, research and struggle. Following the collapse of the Serbian Empire in the 14th century, all of the central Balkans were gradually conquered by the Ottoman Empire and remained under its domination for centuries as part of the province or Eyalet of Rumelia (Turkish: Rumeli, meaning ‘Land of the Romans’). ‘Rumelia’ refers to the lands conquered by the Ottoman Turks from the Byzantine Empire (e.g. Phillips, 2004). The symbolic name ‘Rumeli’ is used as a title for a Turkish TV series Elveda Rumeli (TV series 2007–2009, Farewell Rumelia) that has become a hit in Turkey, in Macedonia and elsewhere. As Participant 2 explained below:

‘My great great grandparents moved to Skopje from Anatolia, a village close to Manisa. But I do not know this place, I never visited it, maybe one day who knows. In the series with Rumelia, I was very curious to learn more about the village life you described, the traditional village clothes fascinated me. They try to earn money and do their jobs. Many people living in Skopje moved here from other places of Macedonia, Greece or Albania because the capital Skopje is the most developed city (…) Many of us used to live in villages, I like this nostalgic feeling in that series (…) They showed stones in the Suleiman series (she means Magnificent Century (TV series 2011–2014). They took these stones and used it to build walls around the palace (…). We also did this here, so many construction works are still going on (…) When the war ended and the city had to be rebuilt, they carried stones from my village’

As is seen here, the participant explains that her memory is not a tabula rasa template because she already learned about the past from her grandparents. Moreover, she collected some pieces of the Turkish series from both factual genres (such as documentaries) and fictional genres (such as historical TV series). One TV series she mentioned, Magnificent Century (TV series, 2011–2014), is a globally popular historical drama. In her transcribed memory text, she discussed the truthiness of the persons and wars at length (p. 3 in this study). It should also be noted that the formation of memory is shaped by media that might limit the scope of cultural memory by focusing on the viewpoints of socially dominant groups. At the same time, the media can also offer space for more diverse voices and create new connections between the memories of different people (Pajala, 2010).

Transmission and symbolic forms of memory related to media has found more widespread interest in the past two decades with the increased accessibility of digital streaming services and new media forms. Media provide assistance for the internalisation and externalisation of history and viewers’ individual or group identity. This identity in Macedonia has been enhanced by wars, massacres and genocide during the World Wars and Balkan Wars (Romaniszyn, 2005). Mass media generate empathy through the production and dissemination of memory (Landberg, 2018). As a result of Turkish series viewership, it has become possible for audiences to have an intimate relationship to memories of events happening in Turkey or in a Turkish context in which they did not live (Landberg, 2018, p. 149). This is not, however, an argument that audiences are brainwashed or passive.

Memory and TV viewership

Memory studies offer a wide range of research opportunities for media and reception studies in the theoretical understandings of TV series. This study uncovers the idea of cultural memory and discusses its potentials and pitfalls in TV and reception studies through the case of Macedonian viewers. Without over-emphasising the role of the arts or assuming that Turkish dramas can singlehandedly overturn the negative nature of the past, the study stresses the ongoing movement between individual experiences of viewing that, on the one hand, involve imagination and affect, and large-scale frameworks of memory in making and challenging cultural memories on the other. Therefore, this study may serve as a call for scholars to expand the interpretative, explanatory and narrative potential of the notion of memory, while at the same time exercising cross-cultural comparative rigour. The study shows that Turkish TV series viewership, as an artistic visual form, contributed to: (1) unforgetting the ethnically divisive aspect of the war; (2) regulating negative emotions pertaining to past experiences; (3) working as a cure for national trauma and victimisation; and (4) facilitating emotional discomfort during the transmission of historical events to the next generation.

Memory scholarship argued that ‘the past continued to influence interviewees’ relationships with other countries and their nationals’ (Hewer and Kut, 2010, p. 27). This study slightly disagrees with this view, as is seen in the participants’ comments: current relations between the two countries are considerably positive, which is why these series are so popular and not vice versa. Turkish brands of textile, banking and construction companies are equally popular in the region. Similarly, being systematically forgotten by Western media and Western states has strongly fortified the popularity of Turkish cultural products among Macedonian viewers. Turkey played a major role in peacekeeping forces during the 1990s Balkan War and this has not been forgotten in the memories of the participants. The participants did not consider Turkish dramas as something proximate to their culture, on the contrary, instead viewed them as another culture's media products: a distant culture that is supposed to be part of their cultural memory. The Turkish series bring back a past that lasted more than five centuries. This is a highly unlikely timespan that the two current nations spent together if we limit the cultural memory of any nation to a maximum of 3000 years.

Cultural memories were remembered via Turkish drama. This is problematic because relating memory to collectivities is like connecting what is personal and singular to the plural, to a collectivity. As it is explained on in this study, as discussed by Bergson (1911): ‘every memory belongs entirely to the soul, which is unique in that sense as a composition of memories collected throughout our lifetime’. This is one of the main criticisms addressed to the notion of collective memory argued by Halbwachs (1980[1950]). In response to this criticism, he argued that looking for how memories are made collectively is rather important. This approach focuses on media and transmission. In this study, we partially saw how cultural memories were constructed through participants’ comments. National memories and other types of memories are mentioned in this discussion mainly to expose to what extent cultural memory is so much broader and inclusive as it encompasses much more than national memories.

For instance, the Ottoman era is constructed as part of cultural memory and not part of national memory, as Macedonians were not a nation at that time and they were instead attached to their own community by religion, language and territory under another state regime. They were part of a bigger cultural mosaic than national memory invented within the 19th century. During their viewership experiences, participants imagined history, art, and identity for themselves in clearly distinctive forms and from other cultures like Turks or Ottomans. National memory is created today, while cultural memory that is already present through familiar words, phrases, customs, traditions and morality in the personal memories of the participants, who collected these via symbols during viewership experience. National memory has religious orientation and starts with the national language(s). However, cultural memory is always translated (Assmann, 2021). This study was one of the first to utilise cultural memory as a concept in the reception of Turkish TV drama series as a communal point rather than cultural proximity argument with hopes of inspiring other works.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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