Ready to try some Turkish TV? Watch one episode of "The Magnificent Century"

The ensemble cast
of Süleyman's Ottoman Court

Hollywood is so dominant in entertainment, it's easy for Americans to think no one else in the world produces quality movies and TV series. In fact, Turkey has created soft power for itself with a stream of TV shows which home viewers from the Balkans to the Arabian Sea enjoy. "More, more, more," they clamor.

My Turkish isn't good enough to watch a series in the original language. Fortunately, one of the most popular Turkish TV series subtitled their first episode so that English-language audiences could decide for themselves if they would like more international selection on their television.  I've watched the first and second episode. You don't need that much language as the story is universal: boy meets girl.

Local historians lift their nose at this show decrying that it has as much historical accuracy as a Phillipa Gregory novel, and that may be true. Do we really know if Roksalana's beau went to heaven or hell when he was killed? The details may be embroidered but the broad outlines of the story are true.

German-Turkish actress

Meryem Uzerli

as Hürrem

Besides the theme of boy meets girl, another added delight of this series is the Ottoman costumes, headgear, architecture, and interiors. The Ottomans really did wear the hats in the series that look like waste paper baskets and Jiffy Pop poppers.

The caftans! The divans! The carpets! It's all so evocative of a lost time when the "Orient mystique" of the harem intruiged all Westerners who came in contact with Turkish culture.

How popular is this series? It's credited with increasing Arab tourism to Istanbul by 50% this year. Here's the Wikipedia background on the incredible story of Süleyman and his beloved Roksolana, whom he nicknamed Hürrem, "the cheerful one:"

The "Magnificent Century" of the Ottomans refers to the reign of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent , and the series dramatizes the intrigues of his harem and court. Most of the incidents and actions occurring are based on fictional stories of the Ottomans specifically Sultan Süleyman and his harem but these actions take place on the fixed time of this reign.

 Is it universal that

all heroes arrive on a white horse?

Actor Halit Ergenç

as Sultan Süleyman

At the age of twenty-six, when his rule began, Sultan Süleyman sought to build an empire in this world more powerful and more extensive than Alexander The Great of Macedonia and to render the Ottomans invincible.

Throughout his 46-year reign, Sultan Süleyman became known as the greatest warrior and ruler of the East and West. The young Süleyman ascended to the throne after receiving the news of his crowning at a hunting party in 1520. Unaware that he would be embarking on a reign that would later be considered the pinnacle of Ottoman rule, he left behind his consort Mahidevran and their son, little prince Mustafa, at his palace in Manisa, and, accompanied by his close friend and companion Pargalı İbrahim, took the road to Topkapı Palace in İstanbul.
While they were on route, an Ottoman ship sailed off from Crimea across the Black Sea, bringing kidnapped Christian female slaves as gifts for the Ottoman palace. On this ship was Alexandra La Rossa, the daughter of a Ukrainian Orthodox minister, who saw her father mother, and fiance being killed while kidnapped. This young girl, who had been kidnapped from her family and sold to the Ottoman palace as a slave, would become Hürrem (Roksolana), the consort who so captivated Sultan Süleyman that he took the nearly unprecedented step of making her his wife. She would bear his sons and rule his empire together with him through bloodshed and intrigue.
As Sultan Süleyman ruled his empire, he allowed his great passion for Hürrem a heavy influence in his court.
The television series focuses on the relationships between the members of the imperial household, especially the romantic entanglements and rivalries. The animosity between Hürrem and Mahidevran, and Hürrem's rise as Süleyman's favorite while pregnant with his son, her fall from favor after her son's birth and her eventual return to grace, provide the main subject matter of the series. Significant subplots include the affection between the Grand Vizier and one of the ladies of the royal household and the tension between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire. 

For your enjoyment: episode one of "The Magnificent Century" with English subtitles. After you watch it, tell me if your TV choices would be enhanced by more shows from other countries, such as the Turkish tale contained in "The Magnificent Century." After all, there are many times in our lives when we can't travel. Why not make 'travel' come to us?

A Birthday Hike in the Belgrad Forest

 The entrance to the

Belgrad Forest

Back in Istanbul, after a week in France, I was excited to see that a Turkish friend was organizing a hike in the Belgrad Forest.  It was scheduled to be on my birthday.  As nature can often seem far, far away in Istanbul, I loved the idea of spending my birthday meeting new people by going on a hike.

Aren't you grateful for friends that take the time to organize things? They always deserve a little extra appreciation, don't they? Yasemin, my Turkish friend who put this together, hadn't hiked here before, but she did all the work of finding out what bus to take, where it leaves from, how often it leaves, etc. When someone has done all of that work, it makes it so easy for the rest of us to go out and discover new places and opportunities, doesn't it? If you're one of those people who are always connecting others by organizing events, thank you!

To give you an idea of what a commitment it is to get to an event in Istanbul, I took a bus to Taksim Square (50 minutes), and then got on the 42T bus to go to the Belgrad Forest (another 50 minutes).  That second bus has a route all along the Bosporus, so it often seems like I'm getting a sightseeing tour at a municipal bus price! The scenery was fantastic, and since another hiker from France and I guessed we were each going to the same hike and started talking, so was the company.  The 50 minutes flew by. We got to the end of the line of the 42T and there was the forest!  After paying a 2.25 TL entrance fee ($1.27) we were in.

 It's not every forest

that has a cafe

with checkered tablecloths

 Or horses and bicycles to rent

Paths were wide enough

for all kinds of traffic:

foot, hoof, or wheeled

 Yasemin, our organizer,

is the tall woman in green

in the middle.

Fun folks I met:

Jackie, a fashion designer from Ireland

and Ibrahim, an importer/exporter from Turkey

Beautiful, isn't it?

We were surprised the park was so deserted.

It was the middle of Ramadan though.

Anyone fasting couldn't even

take so much as a drop of water.

Not good conditions for locals to go hiking.

Another view of the beautiful lake

in the middle of the park.

The forest paths were so beautifully maintained

it was as if we were the first people to use them.

It turns out we were.

We came across a maintenance crew laying down

rubber backing (like under carpet)

and then covering it with this natural material.

If you are a runner,

this would be a very healthy place to run.

The path was springy and easy on the joints. 

 The majority of our group
headed back to Istanbul.
I finished our hike around the lake
with Misty and Kristin,
two fun American women
I was meeting
for the first time.

A last calming view of natural beauty.

What a terrific resource this forest

is for the urban dwellers of Istanbul!

The view as the municipal bus starts back to Istanbul.

 This is an Ottoman-era grove of trees. 

In France and in Turkey, I kept coming across these

magnificent tree groves planted under

authoritarianism forms of government.

I kept wondering if democracies

could create such gorgeous groves

for future generations.

  Are there any where you live?

Planting groves like this

requires a long-term view,

doesn't it?

 In my country,

people often don't seem to want to invest tax money

for those living alongside them,

let alone those who aren't even born yet.

On the bus back,

Kirstin and Misty talked up Mehmet's,

their favorite kebabci in the

Istanbul neighborhood of Ortaköy

with such gastronomic fervor

I had to try it for myself, no?

We ate fabulous Turkish comfort food

(mine was chicken shish kebab).

They introduced me to "ezme,"

which they described as a Turkish version of salsa.

On the hike,

these two hip, happening, can-do women

mentioned that they were organizing

a trip to Bulgaria...

The Ottoman Empire from the other side as told in "The Bridge on the Drina"

About five years ago, a friend whose book taste I completely respected told me about this book.  He was so enthusiastic I knew someday I would read it, even though I had never heard of the author, never heard of the book, and knew nothing about Bosnia.

 Who could have suspected that I would eventually be living in Istanbul someday, be familiar with Ottoman history up close, and have walked a historic Mimar Sinan stone bridge with my very own feet. Not me.

What a book! What an author! And what a translator! This book is a haunting wonderful memoir exquisitely rendered in time and place. A young Christian boy is taken to the Ottoman capital to serve the Ottoman Empire. He converts. Eventually, he rises to a position of advisor to the Sultan.  The Balkan native decides to use his position to build a stone bridge designed by the great Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan to commemorate the land he came from and to glorify God. The book "The Bridge on the Drina" is a fictionalized history of all that happened on that bridge over 400 years of village life.

We often assign metaphysical powers to grand urban assets like the Eiffel Tower, but this book made the reader cherish a rural stone bridge as a precious jewel that made life grander and more meaningful for all the villagers who come in contact with it.  Could a man-made creation serve a nobler purpose?

Ivo Andrić is almost like a Balkan "Mark Twain" so great were his powers of observation about human nature, sometimes wryly so.  You can not read this book without feeling he has an enormous love for humanity because he can describe people at their worst, their weakest, and best with such compassion and grace, it's impossible not to love his writing for that fact alone. I found myself writing down sentences within the book just to savor their genius later.

After I finished the book, I looked the author up on Wikipedia and I realized I had no idea while reading the book what faith he was because he wrote about the Christian and Muslim villagers with such insight you could almost think he had both faiths in his family. Ah, such is the Balkans.

Lastly, his patriotism moves me. Ivo Andrić gave all of his Nobel prize money to improve libraries throughout his homeland.  He had an ability to make the whole world care about his little corner and love it as he did. I want to read everything else he has written.

What book has made you see an area of the world for "the first time?"

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