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Old newspaper clippings burn in the darkness as the grim voice of a broadcaster reads the headlines: “Businessman Teoman Bayramli takes over the modernization project of F-16 fighters,” “Bayramli’s new hotel destroys Caretta Caretta turtles’ habitats” and “Bayramli to establish a new bank.” The subject of the news, a tall, lanky figure with a mop of curls, walks through a dark corridor and opens the door to a street riot. Placing himself at the center of the demonstrators in gas masks throwing Molotov cocktails, he faces the camera and breaks into a sly smile.
The short trailer for "Metamorfoz" or “Metamorphosis,” the controversial series on state-run TRT’s new steaming service Tabii, leaves little doubt about who this antihero is. Teoman Bayramli, the shady main character, is clearly Osman Kavala, one of Turkey’s most famous prisoners, right down to his piercing blue eyes and arched nose.
The series is a portrait of the philanthropist and human rights activist persecuted by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, the pro-government press and the Turkish courts. Erdogan calls him a “Soros leftover” in a reference to Kavala’s position on the board of the Turkish chapter of the Open Society Foundations funded by financier George Soros. He's been kept behind bars for the last six years, save for a half day when he was released before being detained with new accusations. The “Metamorphosis” trailer shows that Teo, Kavala’s roguish avatar, is guilty of all the concocted charges such as espionage, financing riots that aim to overthrow the government and more.
The first episode — a dragging one-and-a-half hours of bad lighting and clumsy dialogue — shows Teo taking over his father’s vast business empire after spending several years abroad as an eager but faint-hearted revolutionary. Once he becomes a businessman, he does the bidding of American agents, handing over military secrets (a charge of which Kavala has been acquitted) and establishing a bank (which he did, briefly). He also finances a series of short-lived cultural magazines, a reference to Kavala's patronage of culture and arts, which later gave birth to his popular Anadolu Kultur, an art platform that finances cultural events across Turkey.
The second episode will likely take up his alleged role in the 2013 Gezi Park protests, a wave of civil unrest in Turkey that initially started to contest the urban development plans in central Istanbul but turned to nationwide riots for freedom of expression and secularism and against government corruption. Last year, a Turkish court sentenced Kavala to life in prison without parole, finding him guilty of attempting to overthrow the government by supporting and financing the protests. Kavala denies the charges, saying the accusations aim to “discredit the protests” and “keep him behind bars for life.” Western capitals and human rights groups have sharply rebuked the verdict, which is now under appeal.
A series made to order
The European Court of Human Rights has asked for Kavala’s release and as a signatory of the European Convention of Human Rights, Turkey is obligated to comply. When it refused, the pan-European body’s ministers started an infringement process against Ankara.
Riza Turmen, a former European Court of Human Rights judge, addressed the show in his column in the independent news outlet T24. “The series has used every means to portray Osman Kavala as a criminal and, beyond that, a true villain,” he wrote.
“The message of the series is that there is no dirty job that Kavala hasn’t been involved in and that he is a shady figure who got what he deserved,” Turmen said. He accused the series of using facts selectively, such as Kavala’s acquittal of espionage charges.
Zafer Yoruk is a political scientist whose works include identity politics and the ideology behind Turkey’s soap operas. “The series does not aim to smear the name of Kavala alone but to portray civil movements in Turkey, from the Gezi movement to Saturday mothers who seek justice for their missing relatives, as externally supported acts that are parts of an international conspiracy,” he told Al-Monitor.
Yoruk maintained that Turkish soap operas, Ottoman period pieces such as “Resurrection” and action films such as “The Shadow Team,” which glorifies Turkey’s intelligence service, have all been tools to “legitimize and popularize” the government’s ideology. “Metamorphosis, still another series made to order, aims to criminalize Turkish civil movements and their links with like-minded international groups,” he told Al-Monitor, admitting that he did not have the heart to watch the entire first episode. “The fact that this series aims to smear a real person on the national broadcaster, which is financed by our taxes, is not only sad but should be contested in courts.”
Turmen agreed that the series, which contains no disclaimer that it is not based on real life persons, is unlawful. “There are two judicial proceedings against Kavala. One is the Court of Cassation process regarding the verdict that sentenced him to life imprisonment. The second is Osman Kavala's application before the Constitutional Court regarding his detention. Isn't making such a biased series while these two judicial processes are ongoing the crime of influencing the judiciary?” he asked. He said the issue falls under the scope of Turkish Penal Code Article 227 on seeking to influence the judiciary and Article 125 on attacking the honor and dignity of an individual.
“Had we lived in a country where the judiciary was independent, there is no doubt that the makers of this film would be penalized and the next episodes would be banned. But it would take a judge with exceptional guts to do this in today’s Turkey,” he wrote.
Can Nergis, the young actor who plays the role of Teo, seemed unmoved by the criticism toward the series as he defended it in an interview with YouTube channel TV100. “This is a three-season saga of international espionage about a revolutionary who turns into a capitalist. There is a bit of love, but it is, above all, a thriller that will appeal to the international audience and that is why I decided to be part of it,” he said.
Human rights lawyer Kerim Altiparmak mocked Nergis' statement on Twitter. “It will indeed appeal to the world. This propaganda film will be presented as concrete evidence of [Turkey’s] insistence on violating the European Court’s decisions,” he tweeted.
Several international human rights groups, including PEN English, rebuked the series and asked their governments to condemn Ankara for it. Sezgin Tanrikulu, a deputy from the opposition Republican People’s Party, called on the producers and actors to abandon it. Cengiz Candar, the newly elected deputy of the Green Left Party and a contributor to Al-Monitor, brought the series to the parliament’s agenda. “It is a scandal that the public broadcaster is involved in a character assassination,” Candar said. “Is it a coincidence that the plot is so close to President Erdogan’s accusations and references to Kavala?”
Pro-government pundits, on the other hand, have applauded the series. Ozlem Dogan, the Ankara bureau chief of arch-conservative Milat and a vocal advocate of government’s social and cultural policies, said the series would reveal the truth about Kavala.
Kavala: Sad about young artists
Kavala’s reaction, like his others over the years, was brief and muted. He said that the series, which was clearly about him, though it omitted using his name to avoid legal charges, resorted to distortions of real events and used conspiracy theories to create the perception that he was guilty.
#OsmanKavala's statement about the series broadcast on TRT's digital platform 👇https://t.co/uhIjglCQr0 pic.twitter.com/y55vhnuQpn
— Kavala'ya Özgürlük (@FreeOsmanKavala) June 20, 2023
Kavala, a patron of the arts, said he was surprised that young actors were willing to participate in this series promoting character assassination.
Ferhat Boratav is the former editor-in-chief of CNNTURK. “What is sad is that Tabii — a new platform whose slogan is ‘Stories that Unite Us’ — makes its debut with such a series,” he told Al-Monitor. “How would such a series ever unite us?”
#OsmanKavala hiç bir zaman böyle kötücül, öfkeli bakışlarla bakmadı dünyaya.
Şahidi çok!#Metamorfoz'muş...
Dönüşenler bunu akıl edenler.
İnsanlıktan çıkıyorlar yaptıklarıyla. pic.twitter.com/f9BunnpsVd— Ferhat Boratav (@ferhatboratav) June 20, 2023
When the trailer came out, Boratav tweeted a shot of Can Nergis as Teo. “Osman never looked at the world in that angry, evil way — anyone can testify to that,” he wrote of the man he described to Al-Monitor as “a man who mobilized his resources for bringing justice to the world.”
