New nationalisms in Turkey in the field of popular art: the case of Kurtlar Vadisi

Abstract

In the post-colonial and post-communist world nationalism has become a subject of great interest to academics and political commentators alike. This interest has generated by the fact that after the end of the Cold War, nationalism was expected to be replaced by a cosmopolitan world with liberal values. Yet this has proved not to be the case. Globalization and liberalism have not been able to prevent the rise of a new wave of nationalism, which will be termed “new-nationalism” in this research. New-nationalism of the twenty-first century is not centrally produced and spread by certain groups or parties. Rather, it is produced and spread by the popular culture itself. The aim of this research is to explore the expressions of new nationalisms in Turkey in the artistic field and the political messages disseminated by the new nationalist films, TV series, and books. Among many of the new nationalist cultural products, Kurtlar Vadisi has been chosen as the object of a case study because it has been the most influential new nationalist movie and TV series of recent years with its enormous popularity. Originally created as a TV series its success spawned a spin-off movie. The distinctive features of Kurtlar Vadisi such as mistrust of state authorities, heroism, excessive use of violence, masculinity, variety of enemies and reliance on conspiracy theories can also be considered the basic characteristics of new-nationalism. The overall goal is to arrive at a conceptualization of the new nationalism as a popular art phenomenon in Turkey