Production
The series is written and produced by Mehmet Bozdağ and directed by Metin Günay. The theme music is by Alpay Göktekin. Broadcasting began in December 2014 on TRT 1 (Turkey).
Bozdağ stated:
An artist's task is to reconstruct history. The history changes with the opinion of the author. And for one thing, there is very little information about the period we are presenting – not exceeding 4–5 pages. Even the names are different in every source. The first works written about the establishment of the Ottoman State were written about 100–150 years after its establishment. There is no certainty in this historical data. But history has a soul. We think that we describe the spirit of the 13th century in history. We are shaping a story by dreaming.[36]
The Daily Sabah reported TRT representative İbrahim Eren as claiming that the series aims to strengthen the national sentiment of Turkish people by "teaching the audience how the Turkish state came into existence, through a combination of history and quality entertainment."[37]
Development process

Mehmet Bozdağ and his wife during a ceremony for promoting the first season
Preparations for the first season began in February 2014. In five months, the stories and drawings were ready. Gambat from Mongolia had drawings made in three months. The teams started their work in May 2014. The decoration and art team consisted of sixty people and worked for 4 months for the first episode. 4000 square meters of fabric were used for costumes and décor. As for the choreography of the show, Nomad, the special choreography crew of movies such as The Expendables 2, 47 Ronin, and Conan the Barbarian, from Kazakhstan, was invited to Turkey. The crew prepared special choreographies for actors, horses, and other scenes. The cast took riding, sword fighting and archery lessons for 3 months. There were 25 horses on the set, attended by a veterinarian, who specially trained them. All are maintained on a horse farm in Riva. A special area similar to a zoo (but on a smaller scale) was created for all the animals which appear in the show, which include gazelles, sheep, goats, nightingales and partridges. The shooting time of the first episode was about a month. A total of 5000 people were cast for all 5 seasons of the show.
Costume designs
For the series, around 1800 costumes and thousands of war supplies and accessories were made from scratch. The TV series is a milestone in Turkey with respect to its administration of art. Copper and other metallic accessories are accumulated from various parts of Turkey.[38] Nearly everything all over Turkey was 'confiscated', from jewellery to a piece of cloth. Wooden materials were made by hand, one by one.
Shooting locations
Season one was filmed around Beykoz and Riva[39] in Istanbul. Diriliş: Ertuğrul set up two plateaus for Riva and Beykoz Kundura Factory for the first season. The plateau in Riva was erected on a total area of 40,000 m2 with 35 tents built according to the original. In the Beykoz Kundura factory, Aleppo, Aleppo Palace, supply room, guest rooms, corridors, dungeons, Kara Toygar's room, the Seljuk pavilion, temple halls, and rooms, lodges, and tent interiors were built on a closed area of 6,000 m2.[41] In the Kundura factory, the Aleppo Bazaar, the interior of the fortress, the interior of the tent by Süleyman Şah, the dungeon, the corridor, and the altar of the temple were built on an open area of 5,000 m2.[42]
Reception
The pilot episode was the most watched Turkish television episode on the day of its release.[43] Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, president of Turkey, visited the set with his family more than once.[44] The series has been called a Turkish Game of Thrones, and fans include Venezuela's president Nicolás Maduro[45][46] and the queen of Malaysia Tunku Azizah Aminah Maimunah Iskandariah.[47]
The series is one of Turkey's most successful television exports, and echoes with the message of Erdoğan and his party. According to professor Burak Ozcetin, "They are, in a way, rewriting the Ottoman history for the current Turkish public."[48]
Along with Turkey, the series is popular in Azerbaijan, due to a perceived common heritage.[3] The series has attracted audience from several other countries, especially those with large Turkish or Muslim populations.[49]
Pakistan
The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, praised the show publicly and recommended people in Pakistan to watch it.[45] He requested the state-owned Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) to dub the Turkish series into Urdu and broadcast it on TV.[50] PTV secured television rights for the series from TRT, and the first episode was eventually aired in Pakistan on the first day of Ramadan (24 April) on PTV Home in 2020.[51][52][53]
The show is called Ertugrul Ghazi in Pakistan,[54] and was noted to be a major success there particularly due to Khan's recommendation, and also partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine.[55] PTV's YouTube channel for the series had gained over 5 million subscribers as of June 2020.[56][55][57][58] According to PTV, the series in Urdu had acquired a viewership of over 130 million people as of mid-May,[59] and as of September, its subscribers crossed 10 million.[60] 25 per cent of the series YouTube audience overall in the world is from Pakistan.[61] It has been very successful in Pakistan (ratings were even better than in Turkey).[62]
Several of the actors expressed gratitude for the attention from Pakistani fans, Engin Altan Düzyatan and Esra Bilgiç adding that they would like to visit the country.[63][64] In December 2020, the Turkish embassy in Pakistan announced that Düzyatan will be visiting Pakistan.[65] He arrived in Lahore and visited historical Lahori sites including Badshahi Mosque on his short trip.[66]
Bangladesh
The series was popular in Bangladesh.[67][better source needed]
Turkish Ambassador to Bangladesh Mustafa Osman Turan said that the Turkish TV series plays a significant role in bringing the people of the two fraternal countries together. "People of Bangladesh learn about Turkey's history, culture, and norms through Turkish series, and thus a cultural bond is developing between the people of the two Muslim countries," he added.[68]
Elsewhere in South Asia
The series is also quite popular with Indian Muslims and amongst Kashmiri Muslims in particular in Jammu and Kashmir,[46] where people see it as an inspiration in the Kashmir conflict despite internet shutdowns.[69] A Kashmiri public relations professional said "Every Kashmiri must watch it. A small tribe of 2,000 people triumph. It's inspirational. If you have a goal and the will to achieve it, nothing can come in your way."[69] Abhinav Pandya, author, compares Diriliş: Ertuğrul's success in India with that of the Israeli drama Fauda, saying that "Just as Fauda fandom signals the shift of India's influencers towards a more militant and exclusionary nationalism, the Ertugrul craze is a signpost written for the alienation of many of India's 180 million Muslims from that dominant political culture and their search for solidarity elsewhere. "[70] According to Renuka Narayanan while tv series provides interesting window into imagined Muslim culture of 13 century, the serial does not seem to be innocent enough.[7] Narayanan says the serial amounts to be state-endorsed vigorous promotion of Islamic revivalism by the Turkish government.[7] Episodes are peppered with the word ‘kafir’ or ‘infidel’.[7] Ertrugrul's aide Bamsi, otherwise a captivating character, jokes ad nauseam about killing non-Muslims, and Ertrugrul constantly declares his ambition of making the whole world Muslim.[7] His enemies, be they Christian or Mongol, are portrayed as amoral and cruel.[7] The script even takes a subtle dig at Iranians by naming a slimy trader-spy ‘Afrosiyab’ after a Persian hero.[7] Narayanan contemplates re-mosqueing of Hagia Sophia is a strong influence of reel life on real life, bemoaned by writers like Orhan Pamuk and moderates in Turkish society.[7]
Arab World
On 10 February 2020, Diriliş: Ertuğrul was banned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Egypt's Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah announced it was forbidden to watch the series. It also targeted Turkey's President Erdoğan in a statement, stating that his intention was to restore the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East and restore sovereignty over the Arab countries that had previously been under Ottoman rule.[71] Despite the ban, the series remained quite popular in these countries.[4]
Political agenda
Some journalists have commented on the series political agenda. Hüseyin Topel says that Diriliş: Ertuğrul is more effective than any other TRT series at conveying aspects of the government agenda, and that the AKP government messages in the series increased as the show grew more popular.[72] Selim Aydın also names the series as one criticized for being a mouthpiece of the government.[73] The show blurs the difference between entertainment and state-sanctioned propaganda, according to Josh Carney in a study published in Review of Middle East Studies; he points at a four-minute commercial that TRT (and a private pro-government channel, A Haber) ran to promote the 2017 Turkish constitutional referendum, presenting Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a successor to a list of historic Turkish leaders including Ertuğrul, using the music from the show.[74] Unlike other similar shows, such as The Magnificent Century (which ran on Turkish TV from 2011 to 2014 and focuses on Suleiman the Magnificent), it has female characters that are "equal partners" to the men in the show.[75]
Accolades
Historical accuracy
Bozdağ has noted that historical records from the period are scarce.[36] Historical inconsistencies include:
- Halil İnalcık stated that Ertuğrul Ghazi's father was Gündüz Alp, not Süleyman Şah. The coins exhibited in the Istanbul Archeology Museum also support the claim that Ertuğrul Ghazi's father was Gündüz Alp.[76]
- Sungur Tekin returned to their ancestral homeland with his brother Gündoğdu after the death of Süleyman Şah in history. In the series, Ertuğrul decides to go with them and later separate.[77]
- Afşin Bey, who came to Kayı in the series, is a Seljuk commander who fought in the Battle of Malazgirt in real history. It is impossible for someone who was on the stage of history in 1071 to communicate with the Kayı in 1225.[78]
- In the series, Ertuğrul Ghazi's wife, Halime Hatun, is shown as the daughter of a Seljuk prince, but Halime Hatun did not have any blood ties with the Seljuk ancestry.[79]
- Baiju Noyan is a commander who turned the Anatolian Seljuks into a state dependent on the Mongols in history and has no contact with Kayı. In the series, he fought with the Kayı and was even taken as prisoner by them in an episode.[80]
- The encounter between İbn-i Arabi and Ertuğrul Bey in the series has been criticised because the age difference between them is very high. The historical Ibn Arabi died in 1240 and Ertuğrul Bey in the 1280s. The Crusader threat has also been perceived to have been exaggerated over the Mongol threat.
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