The critic Mustafa Al-Kilani to "White Ink magazine":

“We allowed the bloody Turkish colonialism to take hold of our region by promoting "Al-Asmali drama".

The tone of sorrow rises in the presentation of the Egyptian art critic Mustafa Al-Kilani about the decline in Arab drama in light of the penetration of Turkish drama in the Arab world. Therefore, the specialized artistic opinion that corresponds to the general concern of the Arab region appears between the scientific opinion in the historical discourse, and what is translated from Turkish drama or what confronts it in terms of Arab drama.

Mustafa Al-Kilani hardens Arab drama and its supporters, saying: “We must punish ourselves, as drama makers, government and private production companies. This is because we allowed the return of bloody Turkish colonialism to our region, after we voluntarily opened the door for them through Turkish drama at the beginning of the second millennium. The Turkish colonialist did not make any effort to be in our country except that he presented series for us. His servants on Arab channels supported the presence of those series that marketed the Turkish dream to us”.

Our main challenge is correcting the consciousness of entire generations that were left to Turkish drama to mess with.

And about not sensing the danger, he affirms, “Since the beginning of the second millennium, several pens have written about the Turkish invasion, and have provided a detailed description of what will happen next. But no one was able to comprehend the extent of the coming danger, until Turkey now became intellectually controlling a large segment of the Arabs, and it is actually moving in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Sudan, and has become on the borders of the rest of the Arab countries”.

Al-Kilani notes that Syria has opened the door to a Turkish invasion through drama, “The Syrian state has acted against itself, to the point of criminalizing talk about the massacre of Armenians, among the Syrian Armenians, and allowed series to enter from its gate to the rest of the Arab world. It was the first victim of that colonialism. The Turkish works were received as if they were the savior, so the Gulf channels stopped buying the Egyptian series for the Turkish benefit, and some North African channels stopped production and opened the way for the colonization of their brains. All this in the presence of a pretended Islamic sponsor, “means: a person aiming to earn money through religion,” penetrating into society to present Turkey as an alternative to the homelands, and to present the Turkish model instead of the national leadership”.

While he sees that “Al-Asmali” has a strong political and popular supporter, and whole generations have formed their awareness of the violence, bloody, incest, and insult to women presented by the Turkish series. “To the extent that the famous Turkish actress among the Arabs, Beren Saat, indicated in several press interviews that she is not satisfied with what is shown on the Turkish screen of series that encourage violence and oppression of women”.

Regarding the generations that were brought up on the Turkish series, Kilani asserts, “Groups go out in demonstrations and on social media pages in order to support the Turkish colonialist against their country, under the pretext of what they called the “Islamic Caliphate”. And as if the rightly guided caliphate was in Turkey, as if there was no caliphate in Medina, Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo. No wonder that they distort the Qur’an and the Hadith to prove that only Turkey represents Islam. We are not surprised that there are generations that will come out later to talk to us that the Prophet of Islam was Turkish, just as the black community in America speaks that the Prophet Muhammad was from Africa. Aside from the losses in Arab society from the dependence of brains on what Turkey offers, there are gains on the other side. The most important of these gains is that Turkey’s revenues from selling its series reached nearly a billion dollars in 2020 from Arabs only”.

He points to an article on a Turkish alliance website that Turkish dramas have led to the number of Arab tourists reaching more than three million Arab tourists a year, and there are more than a million from the Gulf alone who visit Turkey annually. Even after the boycott, there are still many people out of their minds who support the Turkish economy and tourism. All this in addition to the increase in Turkey’s exports of clothes and accessories in the countries of the Middle East, and the opening of many branches of Turkish brands in most Arab countries after the increase in popular demand for what they see in Turkish series and movies. Al-Asmali has turned into an important milestone in the “Islamic fashion” that has recently penetrated the Arab markets in conjunction with the dramatic invasion.

According to Al-Kilani, Al-Asmali series also led to the desire of the Arab citizen to acquire the furniture that he watched in them, which led to an increase in the imports of one of the Arab countries of Turkish furniture from 81.2 million dollars in (2013) to 159.7 million dollars in (2015). And the matter came under the influence of Turkish drama, to the extent that Arabs began to name the newborns after the characters of the series, or Turkish actors. They completely forgot the crimes committed by Turkish colonialism against the region, and made it retreat for more than 1,000 years in the path of human development, after withdrawing from it all the doctors, engineers and skilled workers, in order to build its cities and treat its people. They have deliberately impoverished and ignored their colonies.

بينما يرى أنه أصبح لـ”العصملي” ظهيرٌ سياسيٌّ وشعبيٌّ قويٌّ، وأجيالٌ كاملة تكوَّن وعيها على ما يقدمه المسلسل التركي من عنف ودموية وزنا محارم ومهانة للمرأة “لدرجة أن الممثلة التركية الشهيرة لدى العرب بيرين سات أشارت في أكثر من لقاء صحفي أنها غير راضية على ما يُعرَض على الشاشة التركية من مسلسلات تشجع على تعنيف النساء واضطهادهن”.

باعتراف التركية بيرين سات: الدراما التركية تشجع على تعنيف المرأة.

وعن الأجيال التي تربت على المسلسل التركي يؤكد الكيلاني “تخرج جماعات في مظاهرات وداخل صفحات التواصل الاجتماعي لكي تدعم المستعمر التركي ضد بلدها، بحجة ما أسموه “الخلافة الإسلامية”، وكأن الخلافة الراشدة كانت في تركيا، وكأنه لم تكن هناك خلافة في المدينة المنورة ودمشق وبغداد والقاهرة، ولا عجب في أنهم يحرفون القرآن والحديث لكي يثبتوا أن تركيا فقط تمثل الإسلام، ولا نستغرب أن هناك أجيالاً ستخرج فيما بعد لتحدثنا أن نبي الإسلام كان تركيًّا، مثلما يتحدث مجتمع السود في أمريكان أن النبي محمد كان من إفريقيا. وبعيدًا عن الخسارات في المجتمع العربي من تبعية الأدمغة لما تقدمه تركيا، فهناك مكاسب على الجانب الآخر، أهمها أن تركيا بلغت إيراداتها من بيع مسلسلاتها ما يقترب من مليار دولار عام 2020 من العرب فقط”. 

ويشير إلى مقالة على أحد المواقع التابعة للحلف التركي أن الأعمال الدرامية التركية أدت إلى وصول عدد السائحين العرب إلى ما يزيد عن ثلاثة ملايين سائح عربي في العام، ومن الخليج وحده أكثر من مليون يزورون تركيا سنويًّا، حتى بعد المقاطعة، مازال هناك الكثيرون من مسلوبي العقل ممن يدعمون الاقتصاد العصملي والسياحة التركية. وبخلاف زيادة صادرات تركيا من الملابس والإكسسوارات في دول الشرق الأوسط، وافتتاح فروع كثيرة للماركات التركية في معظم الدول العربية بعد زيادة الإقبال الشعبي على ما يشاهدونه في المسلسلات والأفلام التركية، وتحول “العصملي” إلى علامة مهمة في “الموضة الإسلامية” التي اخترقت الأسواق العربية مؤخراً بالتزامن مع الغزو الدرامي.

وبحسب الكيلاني فإن “مسلسلات العصملي أدت أيضًا إلى إقبال المواطن العربي على اقتناء الأثاث الذي يشاهده فيها، ما أدى إلى زيادة واردات إحدى الدول العربية من الأثاث التركي من 81.2 مليون دولار عام (2013م) إلى 159.7 مليون دولار عام (2015م). ووصل الأمر بتأثير الدراما التركية إلى أن العرب أصبحوا يسمون أبناءهم بأسماء شخصيات المسلسلات، أو الممثلين الأتراك، وتناسوا تمامًا الجرائم التي ارتكبها الاستعمار التركي ضد المنطقة، وجعلها تتراجع أكثر من 1000 سنة في سلم التطور البشري، بعدما سحب منها كل الأدمغة الأطباء والمهندسين والعمال المهرة، لكي يبني مدنه ويعالج شعبه، وتعمد إفقار مستعمراته وتجهيلها.

The imported drama supported the army of Turkish ambitions in the Arab region, according to the art critic. Therefore, he believes that it must be confronted with force, closing all doors, whether on the channels or on social media, and presenting a product of series and films that covers the hunger of the Arab citizen for the romantic and heroic regions, in which Al-Asmali encapsulated his hidden messages.

Al-Kilani concludes his opinion, “We have a lot of Arab heroes. Instead of spending billions on providing a weak dramatic product, we must open the door to full support for Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Gulf, world-class production. We have to promote it in all ways. We have an example of “Al-Ikhtiyar” series in Egypt. If we had made series like it in every Arab country, we would have had a great outcome standing in front of the Al-Asmali cultural invasion”.

We imported the army of Turkish ambitions to our Arab world.