Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has so far won many political battles against all odds, but it keeps losing on the public relations front, particularly in cinema and TV, in spite of vigorous and costly efforts.
Enjoying strong electoral support, the party has been forming governments for more than a decade, has consolidated its power in all state apparatuses, channeled large amounts of money to pro-AKP businessmen and created its own partisan media network. Still, all the pro-AKP dramas, whether on the big screen or TV, keep failing at high costs.
Take the movie "Kod Adi: K.O.Z," a political thriller whose title ("kod adi" means code name) uses the Turkish word "koz" (trump) as an abbreviation for the phrase "it's time for a mole operation."
"Kod Adi: K.O.Z" was an attempt to project the AKP's grand narrative to the masses — a narrative that basically argues that Turkey's president and national intelligence chief are two knights who fight against an international conspiracy spearheaded by their former political allies, the Gulenists and "Great Britain."
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