New Turkish TV series labels Arabs as 'enemies of Turkey'
"Teskilat" is the title of a new Turkish series that began airing on the first state-run television channel Turkiye Radyo Televizyon Kurumu (TRT1) in March. The plot is based on a story about Turkish secret service agents who allegedly died in a plane crash during operations against "Western enemies". In this sense, it is not the first time that Turkey has portrayed the West as a rival in the audiovisual world, but "Teskilat" is the first Turkish production to present an Arab and Muslim character as an enemy.
The character who embodies the Arab antagonist is presented under the name of Zayed Fadi. At first glance the name may sound like an Arab name without any apparent relevance, but the meaning carries certain subliminal messages in terms of diplomacy as Zayed Fadi would be a combination of the names of UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed and former Fatah leader Mohammad Yusuf Dahlan, whose nickname is "Abu Fadi".
In this respect Zayed Fadi would be a simile of exiled Palestinian Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan. After his exile, Dahlan moved to the United Arab Emirates where he worked as a security adviser and was accused of cooperating with Abraham Golan, a Hungarian-Israeli veteran of the French Foreign Legion who would hire US Special Forces mercenaries. Dahlan was accused of collaborating in the 2016 coup attempt against the Turkish government. In this regard, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu branded Dahlan a "terrorist ringleader" and the government formally added him to its most wanted terrorists list, offering up to $700,000 for information about his whereabouts.
Turkey's relations with the Emirates began to strain following the Gulf crisis in which Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain severed diplomatic relations with Qatar in 2017. They were joined in this rupture of relations by Jordan along with the support of several other countries.
In this vein, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan posted a tweet in 2017 indirectly attacking Zayed after he issued a tweet about an Ottoman commander in Medina. Erdogan criticised the "obviousness" of some Arab officials' hostility towards Turkey about "covering up their own lack of ability and resilience and even treason by not knowing anything about our ancestors". The release of the series could be part of a political strategy to divert the general public's attention from the problems the country is facing.
Similarly, in the course of the series it is subtly glimpsed how the UAE supports the PKK organisation, which is considered by the Turks to be a terrorist organisation. In this sense, the Turkish protagonist known as "Serdar" joins the organisation to thwart a terrorist attack. Zayed Fadi, on the other hand, serves a group called Company, which aims to eliminate Turkey as a regional power.
In the series, Fadi is the newest member of a secret society known as "The Organisation". Until the sixth episode, Fadi's goal is to render Turkish drones ineffective. In this sense, one of the marketing messages of the series mentions the relevance of Turkish drones after issuing the slogan "you can't escape the Turkish drone". In this vein, the series is intended to highlight the superiority of drones over rivals in the region.
In addition, sources point out that the Turkish president, his family members and business partners benefit enormously from the defence industry and military sales. One example of this is the links of Erdogan's son-in-law and chief technology officer of Baykar Makina, a factory that manufactures armed and unarmed drones that have been used in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Azerbaijan in the past.