The City of Terrorism or a City for Breakfast. Diyarbakir’s Sense of Place in the tv Series Sultan

What is it about?

This article focuses on the image of the city of Diyarbakir as it is presented in the tv series Sultan (28 May 2012 to 29 October 2012). It considers the sense of place as portrayed on screen and assesses the sociopolitical implications of the spatial representations of the tv series. It questions the concept of a real image of the city, as discussed by commentators and viewers of Sultan, to show how ‘public chatter’ (Öncü 2011) about the show reinforces arbitrary depictions of Diyarbakir. Finally, this article considers how efforts to commodify the city for the tourist market affect Sultan’s depiction of urban space. All traces of political conflict, violence and traumatic memory are erased, while a tacit ‘ethnic hierarchy’ (Scalbert-Yücel 2015) that structures the Turkish mosaic of cultures informs the series.

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Why is it important?

Depoliticizing Diyarbakir is a political act in itself, especially when public comments reinforce and diffuse as ‘real’ the image of the city produced by the arbitrary representations of the tv series Sultan. The latter implements the substitution of the social reality of the city’s space with an imagined fantasy, supporting a process of selective memory that erases conflicting narratives in order to put the city on the tourist map.