Nicholas Danforth, Georgetown University
Last week Prime Minister Erdoğan criticized the popular soap opera Muhteşem Yüzyıl for its inaccurate portrayal of Suleiman the Magnificent. Specifically, he objected to the show's interest in Suleiman's romantic, rather than military, exploits. Though the Prime Minister's willingness to threaten legal action might be new, his criticism isn't. With the 500th anniversary of the conquest of Istanbul in 1953, Turkey saw an explosion of interest in historical films. The cover of the popular satirical magazine Akbaba gives a sense of what these films were about, as does the pointed criticism that appeared almost 50 years ago today in Tarih Dunyası, a popular history magazine of the time.
Under the headline "They Are Killing History," (26 November, 1952) Tarih Dunyası wrote: "with what right do these people exploit the people's love of history just to make a few cents or even a great profit. If these people had a love of history, if they had a pride in their Turkishness inspired by the past, they wouldn't grasp at these themes... To reduce men who made history like Yıldırım Beyazit, Fatih, Yavuz Sultan Selim, Barbaros, Kanuni Süleyman to indecisive characters on the silver screen is an unforgivable sin.... And the decor! the costumes! They are painful. Bad replicas of a few outfits or backgrounds from Topkapı palace make these films so laughable you want to cry. Hürrem Sultan's headgear makes her look like a gypsy dancing girl."
The article featured the following photo as well, under the caption "A scene from a historical film whose every scene is ahistorical."
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