For a decade, TRT (Turkish state broadcaster) has been increasingly producing TV series about Ottoman history. One of the most popular historical drama is "Payitaht: Abdülhamid," which focuses on the final decade of Sultan Abdülhamid II's reign (r.1876-1909). TV series portrayed the sultan as an ideal and just ruler and striving to defend the interests of the Ottoman Empire against domestic and foreign threats as a matter of survival. The drama's plot develops as the Sultan

WORKSHOP: The Popular Outreach of Turkish TV Series (6-10 December 2021) "The Turkish dizi (television series) has yielded a highly profitable industry that, under the influence of Turkey’s “authoritarian turn”, has also developed into an effective tool for exerting political soft power at home and in the world. This workshop aims to investigate the socio-political impact of Turkish television series on a national level, as well as its outreach to the international worl