A Monument to Obsession: Why Istanbul’s Most Famous Love Story is Reclaiming the Screen
By the TBMag Editorial Team
For the past fifteen years, a small, wine-red building in the backstreets of Istanbul’s Çukurcuma neighbourhood has stood as a quiet defiance against the passage of time. The Museum of Innocence, established by Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk in 2012, is not merely a collection of 4,213 cigarette butts and faded saltshakers; it is a physical manifestation of a fictional obsession. Now, that obsession has found a new, digital home.
On 13 February, Netflix premiered the much-anticipated nine-part limited series adaptation of Pamuk’s seminal 2008 novel. Within twenty-four hours, it had surpassed one million views, proving that the world’s appetite for Turkish “dizi” storytelling—now the third-largest exporter of scripted content globally after the US and UK—shows no sign of waning.
The Battle for Creative Sovereignty
The journey from page to screen was, by Pamuk’s own admission, a fraught one. In a recent, illuminating interview with the New York Times, the 73-year-old author revealed the “nightmares” he endured during an aborted Hollywood attempt. Horrified by American scripts that suggested outlandish plot twists—including the protagonist Kemal getting his cousin Füsun pregnant—Pamuk fought a multi-year legal battle to reclaim his rights.
“I decided I wouldn’t let anyone film my books without seeing the script in full,” Pamuk told the NYT. His collaboration with Turkish production powerhouse Ay Yapım was marked by a “punctiliousness” that mirrors his protagonist’s hoarding of memories. For a year and a half, Pamuk worked alongside screenwriter Ertan Kurtulan like a strict tutor, reviewing every page of all nine episodes. No contract was signed, and no money exchanged hands until the Nobel winner was satisfied that his Istanbul remained intact.
Saccharine or Sophisticated? The Critical Divide
The series, directed by Zeynep Günay and starring Selahattin Paşalı and Eylül Lize Kandemir, attempts to navigate the treacherous waters of 1970s Istanbul—a city caught between Western aspirations and traditional values.
While the production design by Murat Güney is undeniably exquisite—capturing the lush, velvet-draped interiors of the Nişantaşı elite—early critical reception has been polarising. Some Western critics have pointed to a “syrupy” quality in the adaptation, suggesting that the satirical edge of Pamuk’s prose has been softened into a more traditional melodrama.
The story follows Kemal, a wealthy businessman engaged to the perfect Sibel (Oya Unustası), who risks his social standing for a forbidden affair with his distant, impoverished relative, Füsun. Kemal’s subsequent spiral into “kleptomania of the heart”—stealing everything from lipstick-stained teacups to porcelain dog figurines—is depicted with a golden-hued reverence that some find “creepy,” yet others see as a faithful portrayal of the “Middle Eastern male perspective” that Pamuk himself has acknowledged and invited feminist critique upon.
A Living Legacy
What sets this adaptation apart is its symbiotic relationship with reality. The series frequently references the actual museum in Beyoğlu, and Pamuk even makes a cameo appearance, playing himself as the chronicler to whom an ageing Kemal tells his tale. It is a meta-fictional flourish that reminds the audience: in Pamuk’s world, the line between life, art, and the objects we leave behind is permanently blurred.
As the series climbs the global charts, the small red house in Çukurcuma prepares for a new wave of pilgrims. Whether viewers find Kemal’s obsession romantic or repulsive, one thing is certain: Orhan Pamuk has successfully colonised the digital landscape on his own terms.
About the Author: Orhan Pamuk
Born in 1952 into a wealthy Nişantaşı family, Orhan Pamuk is Turkey’s most prominent literary export. Since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, his works—including My Name is Red and Snow—have been translated into over sixty languages. Often described as a “melancholy” chronicler of Istanbul’s soul, Pamuk’s career has been defined by his exploration of the “hüzün” (melancholy) that defines his home city.
