Interview with Arzu Öztürkmen
2021
In this interview Arzu Öztürkmen discusses dizis, Turkish serialized television dramas. She discusses how they are different from musalsalat but also have parallels, how they have been influenced by other media including theater, and who and where they are being watched.
Arzu Öztürkmen is professor of performance studies and oral history at Bogaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. Trained in folklore studies, she has published articles on Turkey’s cultural history and was co-editor of Medieval and Early Modern Performance in the Eastern Mediterranean and Celebration, Entertainment and Theater in the Ottoman World (both 2014). Her research considers oral history, folklore, history of performing arts and historical ethnography in the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean and, most recently, memory and genre in Turkish television drama.
Arzu also contributed a chapter, ‘The Emergence of Turkish Content: Situating the Dizi in Global Markets’, to the Voices and Conversations publication accompanying The World is Watching Musalsalat, available at the university Bookstore and online retailers.