Looking into the past from the present: the audience reception research of Dirilis "Ertugrul" and Payitaht "Abdulhamid" TV series

This thesis examines the reception of Ottoman themed period series, Diriliş 'Ertuğrul' (2014-2019) and Payitaht 'Abdülhamid' (2017-2021), broadcast on TRT 1 screens. Both productions, which depict the first and last periods of the Ottoman Empire through a narrative structure parallel to the political discourse of the government by beautifying them with religious and nationalist motifs, have been rendered functional to popularize a new power-driven understanding of national identity and the historical fiction on which this identity is based. This study evaluates the effectiveness of the TV series by focusing on the consumption side. The politics of viewers' making sense of the series is analyzed from the perspective of qualitative audience analysis of cultural studies. For this purpose, two different fieldwork methods were used to support the observational capability 1) Focus group discussions were conducted in three different cities to understand how the audience group makes sense of state-driven popular history narratives. A total of 35 people in groups of 5 were interviewed in 7 different focus group discussions, the shortest of which lasted one hour and thirty minutes. The viewers were selected from among those who stated that they were regular viewers of the series. 2) A voluntary questionnaire was administered to a group of 200 viewers who stated that they regularly watch TV series. Some survey questions were structured with open-ended questions. The aim here was to prevent the viewers from giving routine answers to the questions and to compare their answers to the relevant question with the answers given in the focus group interview. In this way, another wider data pool was tried to be created. The study reveals how the image of the Ottoman Empire, which is presented in the form of official history through TV series by being put into circulation at the intersection of the dominant ideology, contemporary politics, and popular culture, is negotiated and reproduced by the audience on the common denominator of nationalism with different emphases.