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Setting is just about as important as characters when it comes to constructing immersive, realistic sequences in a story.Adult Swim’sLazarus, set in the 2050s in a unique futuristic world that is juxtaposed with the “old world”. The world’s structure inLazarusis permanently changed bythe cure-all Hapna drug created by Dr. Deniz Skinner, which enabled humanity to enjoy the most blissful three-year period in human history, but there are a plethora of things we still don’t know about the world presented in the series.
When viewers saw Adult Swim post a clip from Lazarus, episode 3, many ran to comment on their dissatisfaction with the presentation of the former Turkish capital, Istanbul, which many saw as justsome kind of approximation to Arabiarather than a researched understanding of Istanbul and its landscape. Are these comments a fair assessment? Let’s find out.
Let’s Get Into History
Istanbul: One of the Most Important Cities In History
What many people who saw the clip of Axel dealing with the swarms of people chasing them through the streets of Istanbul expressed is how little the city looks like its real-life counterpart. The common criticism of the portrayal is that it looks like an aggregation of Arabia, with variouselements inspired by that particular aesthetic. Even though Turkey would have aspects related to the Arab world due to the city’s history, which dates as far back as its establishment by Greek settlers in the 7th century BCE.
This Arab influence would be more specifically in the 15th century when Istanbul became the imperial capital of the Ottoman Empire. Prior to this, Istanbul was the imperial capital of several dynasties: the Byzantine (330–1204), characterized by the rule of Roman Emperor Constantine, who later named the city Constantinople after himself; the Latin Empire (1204–1261), which replaced the Byzantine; the Late Byzantine (1261–1453), which was known as the Roman Empire after being reclaimed by the Greek Palaiologos dynasty.
1453 saw the fall of Constantinople brought on by Turkish conquest, a dynasty that persisted for six centuries and became the site of the majority of interactions between Europe and the Middle East. By the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire was entering a period of global upheaval, with Muslims being persecuted during what is referred to as the Ottoman Contraction, in which territories formerly ruled by the Ottoman Empire experienced immense violence, leading to mass migration to Turkey to flee the violence that is estimated to have claimed 6 million lives.
Essentially, by the turn of the 20th century andfollowing the First World War, Turkey had long been established as an Islamic territory with centuries of history. So, it isn’t exactly strange to see Islamic architecture inLazarus’sdepiction of Istanbul, but the issue isn’t seeing Islamic influence in the city, but whether such a representation is accurate: Istanbul’s long history and geographic location situated in between Europe and Asia, means that the city has architecture and structures from various aesthetic and cultural perspectives, with the oldest part of the city, located in the Fatih district, which is considered “real Istanbul” as it predates the urban expansion of the city in the 19th century.
…the issue is, even though we’re following characters as they exploreone of the most important locationsin world history, there isn’t a single landmark we can identify with utmost certainty.
What’s the Big Deal?
Misrepresentation Hurts
Lazarus, being set in the 2050s, obviously has futuristic elements in and throughout the story, and Turkey is obviously no different, but there’s a clear sequestering of the city along these lines, with the futuristic buildings serving as the backdrop to some buildings that are somewhat reminiscent of Turkey’s prominent mosques, churches and other important structures; but the issue is even though we’re following characters as they exploreone of the most important locationsin world history, there isn’t a single landmark we can identify with utmost certainty.
Istanbul is home to several major monuments from across time, from the Hagia Sophia to the Sultan Ahmed Mosque; from the Galata Tower to the Walls of Constantinple, yet there isn’t a single structure inLazarusepisode 3 that looks to be a representation of these structures, but rather an approximation towards an amorphous, generalized Istanbul. Furthermore, the lack of neither any definitive Turkish landmarks, nor Istanbul’s very interesting geographical aspects, like the inland Sea of Marmara south of Istanbul, or the Bosporus Strait straddled by the city, makes it difficult to see the depiction of Istanbul as more than an orientalization of the city, which will naturally not sit well with people who live in and hail from Istanbul.
Ultimately, what viewers are asking for is respectful and intentional depiction of the city, an understanding of culture and just someone who will bother to visit the city and obsess over getting the details right. It isn’t enough for entertainment media to approximate towards particular places or cultures, nor is it beneficial to any project tonotemphasize the details of places that have rich, contentious histories. In the series, we know that there was some kind of political unrest in Turkey that led toDeniz Skinner’s parents' deathswhen he was 12, but the series doesn’t get into it.
Skinner, born in 1996, would have been 12 in 2008, which was an incredibly interesting time in Turkish politics as it was an election period, with several parties being shut down, and, for the first time ever, individuals were arrested on suspicion of being part of the clandestine, ultra-nationalist terrorist group(s) known as theErgenekon,an organization that was accused by the Turkish public of seeking to overthrow the democratically elected government. The issue is, we don’t know if the unrest spoken of in the series could have inspired an “alternate Istanbul”, but it’s likely that the erroneous depiction of the city was the consequence of insufficient research.
Further reading: Istanbul onBritannica,Dr. Alpay, S. Turkish Politics in 2008,Human Rights Watch, Alex McDonald (2019)“Ergenekon: The bizarre case that shaped modern Turkey”.
