By ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ (GREEK) TÜRKÇE (TURKISH)
Brothers and sisters, for the time being drop your guns, helmets, uniform kits and grab your keyboards. The liberation of Famagusta starts from IMDb where a secret war has been raging for days.
You see, hordes of barbarians have resorted to a merciless review-bombing of Famagusta, resulting in a relatively low rating on the most popular movie site on the planet: 3.7 at noon on Tuesday, only to rise to 4.3 in the afternoon after Greek users responded to the call to reverse the situation. Since yesterday, fellow Greeks have been invited to rush to IMDb to register and rate the series with a 10 so that the creation of Andreas Georgiou – Koulis Nikolaou can acquire the high rating that suits its correspondingly high patriotic spirit. We don’t play with that, fellas.
The review-bombing of Famagusta is an after-effect of the “war” of statements from the Turkish side as soon as it was announced that the series will be on Netflix on September 20. We are talking about proper paranoia. The first to start the party was Ersin Tatar who commented saying that it is a distortion of history while insisting on the Turkish narrative of the “peace operation” (talk about deception and national fantasies of our own, but also in the occupied areas whatever they’re on must be of top quality).
Justice and Development Party (AKP) Vice President Omer Çelik said that “it is very worrying that a series that distorts the 1974 Cyprus Peace Operation and propagandises the Greek side will be broadcast on Netflix,” Turkish Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism, Batuhan Mumcu, added that it is “unacceptable for a platform like Netflix, which is aimed at a wide audience, to present historical facts by distorting them”, while even the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying that Famagusta “serves black propaganda”. On our side, the President of the Republic (who comments on current affairs more often than Aristotelous’ panel) [Editor’s note: reference to TV presenter Christiana Aristotelous], the series’ contributors and of course thousands of keyboard warriors who resorted to their favourite nationalist masturbation, which, apart from personal gratification, never liberated any occupied territory, responded to the Turkish reactions.
Except that none of them, on either side of the green line and the Aegean, noticed (deliberately?) one small detail: The series will only air on Netflix Greece and Cyprus. That is, it will be shown in two countries where it has already been aired with great success and completely unscathed. Meaning much ado about nothing and all our own articles about “damage to Turkey”, “internationalisation of the invasion and occupation through Netflix” and “raising awareness around our national issue across the globe” were for nothing.
For nothing? Hmm maybe not so much, since the audience is satisfied, both here and there. The identical way we react to a version of history that is diametrically opposed to our version of history, which is – no surprises here – the only true one, is truly remarkable. Some years ago we had exactly the same [issues], with reactions in reverse, on the occasion of the TRT series Bir Zamanlar Kıbrıs / Once Upon a Time in Cyprus, which describes the events before and during the invasion from the side of the Turks. Back then we were the ones barking about black propaganda, people who don’t know history etc. Criticism of the one-sided presentation of events was also voiced within Turkey, just as happened for Famagusta within the Greek-speaking world. I wrote about the series in this column after its premiere in January: ‘“You expected an in-depth analysis of the events, inclusion of our own responsibilities, self-criticism, historical accuracy and reflection from a… soap opera”? What exactly are you looking for from a series filmed in Cyprus but intended for Greek audiences who devour Christian patriotic epics such as “Kokkino Potami” and “Agios Paisios”?’ [Editor’s note: references to TV series]
Mega’s announcement was clear. The series will only air on Netflix Greece and Cyprus for internal consumption only, but never let the truth fuck up a good narrative, right? The production indirectly conveyed the message that there was a prospect of it going global in the new year but that possibility is even more remote than Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (google it to understand). There’s simply no way Netflix would risk disrupting relations with an 80 million market and one of its key content suppliers (Turkey has in recent years emerged as the world’s second largest exporter of TV programming after the US, surpassing Mexico and Brazil). And especially for a series that is offered for nothing more than internal consumption-pastime in two markets that are insignificant for the giant. However, it is an undeniable success for the creators because it was selected from all the Greek-speaking content for inclusion on the platform, even locally – for that to happen that means it meets the platform’s high standards.
Of course, even so, the narrative could change from “Netflix slaps Turkey” to “Turkey removed Famagusta from Netflix because it’s afraid of the truth” or something like that. Because if there’s one thing we like more than celebrating, it’s whinging…
