Kizil Goncalar

This series tells the story of Turkish society in its extremes: on one side we have an ultra-Islamic religious group, on the other an ultra-secular family. The story begins where their roads intersect.

The truth is, I think most of Turkish society swims somewhere in between these two groups, but this series decides to focus on the extremes- that is, on the pure black and pure white, and shows how they mix to become grey. I saw somewhere a quote saying "like front and back side of the same paper, we go through life together, but never see eachother". This series is kind of bringing the front and backside together, forcing them to look at eachother and accept eachother.

The characters are extremely interesting, as well as the dynamic between them. The conversations between psychiatrist Levant and Cuneyd are a thrill of every episode, with how profound and philosophical they can get.

To me the most interesting is the dynamic between Zeynep and Cuneyd. You find yourself in a strange position observing two individuals who understand eachother as if they're soulmates, so much so that you tend to forget how inappropriate the situation is.

So far, I have only watched the first season and I am positively surprised at how thought-through the scenario is. It's promising so far. There are, obviously, inconsistencies tied to the plot, and also the super annoying advertising within the series, but what can you do. As far as Turkish series go, this is just about the most thought-provoking one I have ever seen.

Warning for the future watchers: The series includes heavy themes of trauma, mental health, religious sects and secularism, feminism and anti-feminism, domestic abuse, as well as child marriage and child abuse. While there are no extreme scenes, these topics are around the centre of the story and it can get disheartening and disturbing at times. The topics are there to serve the message however, and in contrast to the the other series, there are no blatant displays of heavy topics such as showing abuse just for the sake of it.