Turkey Recasts ‘Top Gun’ to Give Its TV Soft Power a Harder Edge

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(Bloomberg) — Long willing to do battle across the Middle East, Turkey now also wants to win hearts and minds beyond the reach of NATO’s second-largest military.

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And she has a plan to do so.

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Free Sky, a new Turkish TV drama of fighter pilots dubbed Top Gun domestically by local media, not only channels Tom Cruise’s heroics in the cockpit. Like the 1986 American blockbuster film, Free Sky was created in collaboration with real Air Force pilots and equipment used by the Turkish military.

It’s the latest in a growing lineup of Turkish shows heralding a hard-power pivot to a lucrative soft-power sector that has built a global audience of millions, most of it yet with romantic Istanbul melodramas and historical tales of Ottoman conquest.

Other examples include The Shadow Team — a domestic equivalent of American spy movies like Amazon Prime’s Jack Ryan or Apple TV’s Tehran — about Turkey’s intelligence agency MIT, and The Patriots, a show new this year about an elite army unit deployed abroad to confront “global powers.”

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“In the past we used to say the Japanese make these,” says a character in an episode of The Shadow Team as she inspects a model of a kamikaze drone. “Now we make it.”

Initially designed for a domestic audience, the shows are now at the forefront of international expansion by state television station TRT, showcasing Turkish interests abroad just as Ankara flexes its military and diplomatic muscles in contested theaters from Syria and Libya to Ukraine and the waters of the eastern Mediterranean.

TRT is preparing to launch its online streaming service, Tabii, with apps in English, Arabic, Spanish and Urdu later this year, bypassing traditional export methods dominated by foreign networks and distributors to reach viewers directly. Free Jet and Shadow Team will both be featured on the site, while TRT markets The Patriots separately.

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“The motivation is to diversify the content to appeal to younger and diverse audiences while promoting Turkey to the world as a counterweight to Western hegemony, but also to stay in line with traditional, conservative family values,” said Miriam Berg, an assistant professor at Northwestern University in Qatar who has studied the reception of Turkish dramas abroad.

The rise of Turkish television to global prominence coincided with the expansion of the Turkish military’s footprint and its arms exports.

Between 2018 and 2022, arms sales abroad grew by more than two-thirds from the previous five years, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, with Turkey’s share of global arms exports exceeding 1% — well above countries such as Australia and Canada.

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And by mixing military prowess with televised feats, Turkey wants two of its biggest exports to become global, with a large aspect catering to pan-Turkism.

The red color in Free Sky is for scenes with blood and — “the thing we care most about” — the Turkish flag, explains the director of photography.

Encouraging sales abroad is a central plank of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s economic policy as he tries to find enough foreign currency to plug chronic current account deficits that burden the currency and government treasury.

Television programs also indirectly support tourism, another stronghold of the economy, as positive images of Turkey encourage foreigners to visit, move to, and invest in the country.

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TRT says the country’s shows already attract 800 million people in 146 countries from Latin America to the Balkans and the Persian Gulf. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced in January that film and series exports rose to around $750 million in 2022 and are expected to double to $1.5 billion this year.

Tough salad

As Erdoğan struts around the world stage after securing another five years in office, Turkey is showing off both soft and hard power in the military-oriented series on Tabii.

In spy show The Shadow Team, viewers see James Bond-style product placement — but instead of Rolex watches or Aston Martins, it’s the latest batch from Turkey’s burgeoning defense industry.

The first series revolves around a plot to assassinate the engineers working on armed Bayker drones built by Erdogan’s son-in-law and used in conflicts from Azerbaijan to Ethiopia.

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Taking center stage in one ring is an anti-radar system made by the listed state defense contractor Aselsan Elektronik AS; Another features an electronic skirmish with the state-owned company STM. The credits are filled with gun company logos.

The Free Sky F-16 fighter jets are the same warplanes that Turkey wants to expand its fleet by putting pressure on the United States and for which it has developed its own missiles. The Turkish name for the series, Hur, is also the name of a national initiative to build a domestic jet aircraft.

The goal is to spread pilot skills at home and abroad and promote recruitment of young people into the army, Free Sky line producer Selda Gunsay explained in an interview with a local aviation website.

A spokeswoman for the affiliate declined to comment on the nature of cooperation with government agencies and companies offered, or the budget allocated to the broadcast platform.

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“All of our shows are produced independently with some of the leading production companies in the region. Like any other global media production, to ensure factual accuracy, we consult with experts in relevant fields to ensure accuracy,” she said via email.

Superheroes and revolutionaries

Tapi’s catalog also includes dramas about the life of the 13th-century poet Rumi, a devout teenage superhero and businessman-turned-revolutionary whose story is similar to — without naming him — that of Osman Kavala, imprisoned by Turkey for allegedly trying to overthrow the government in the face of criticism from the United States and the European Union.

By cutting out the middleman with Tappy, Berg said over the phone, “they can cut costs and overcome the diplomatic sensitivities that can come with satellite television.”

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In 2018, Turkish soap operas faced a ban – which they have since lifted – by channels in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates after the government in Ankara opposed its diplomatic isolation of Qatar.

Officials know that soft power can help convey Turkey’s view on real current affairs. A 2022 international study by media watchdog RTUK found that TV shows “contribute through their content to building a global perception of Turkey through its social, cultural, economic, military and national security contexts.”

Initial indications are that the series has found its mark with some foreign fans. The Shadow Team’s ratings are lower in number but higher in value terms in the United States, Iran and Egypt than in Turkey itself, according to online database IMDb. Patriots are twice as popular in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as they are in the country.

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Even before Tabii’s official international launch, fans already hooked on previous Turkish shows found unofficial subtitled versions online, with the help of Facebook forums where people exchange recommendations.

“They are fighting a cause, someone who wants to destroy their country,” said Uma Ali, a 66-year-old retiree in Trinidad and Tobago. “If I can’t make it to Turkey, at least I can still see it through the series.”

But for all of the high-stakes military adventures, some viewers are still drawn to the stories of romance that put Turkish television on the map in the first place. Ali said she expects to see the main agents of the shadow team meet by the end.

“If not, it’s a failure,” she said.

– With assistance from Samuel Dodge.

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