Turkey
TURKEY is located in eastern Europe.
Profile
| Country Number (63) | 1988 | THIRD WAVE |
| Region | Europe | |
| Television commenced | 31 January 1968 | |
| Colour System | 15 March 1984 | PAL |
| Population | 1987 | 51.420 million |
| TV Sets | 1987 | 5.01 million |
| Language/s | Turkish | Dubbed |
Television Stations / Channels
Turkey began its television service in January 1968.
There is just one television station: Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT). This station operated two channels.
Colour transmissions commenced on 15 March 1984, using the PAL colour broadcast system.
Language/s
The principal language of Turkey is Turkish. Imported foreign television programmes are dubbed.
DOCTOR WHO (DOKTOR WHO / DR KIM) IN TURKEY
Turkey is (we estimate) the 63rd country to screen Doctor Who (see Selling Doctor Who.)
BBC Records
Turkey is not named in any of our main BBC Records sources.
In DWM issue #52 (May 1981), a reader states: "Turkey has had the Doctor Who series for many years now but apparently the show goes out over there under the banner of "comedy"".
Given the early 1981 publication date (the letter would have been written a few months earlier), and that colour broadcasts did not commence in Turkey until 1984, any episodes of Doctor Who this reader claims to have seen would have been in black and white, which rules out these being Tom Baker stories.
If these were Jon Pertwee stories, there are no BBC Records supporting this. Some indistinct BBC documents indicate that sales of some early Pertwees stories were "Cancelled" in 1977/1978.
It is possible that the reader was actually referring to the novelisations that were published in Turkey in 1975.
Doctor Who did screen in 1988; this places the sale over a year after the 1987 listing from The Eighties was compiled which is why Turkey is not recorded there.
Novelisations (1975)
More than ten years before the television series aired, publisher Remzi Kitabevi of Istanbul released seven of the early Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee Target novelisations in 1975. They used the same artwork as that adorning the Target novels. These were released under the name "DOKTOR KIM":
- DOKTOR KIM VE DALEKLER (The Daleks) (The Daleks)
- DOKTOR KIM VE SIBERMENLER (The Cybermen) (The Moonbase)
- DOKTOR KIM VE KORKUNÇ KARADAMLARI (The Scary Snow Priests) (The Abominable Snowmen)
- DOKTOR KIM VE OTONLAR (The Autons) (Spearhead from Space)
- DOKTOR KIM VE GIZLI SILAH (The Secret Weapon) (Colony in Space)
- DOKTOR KIM VE DALEK BASKINI (The Dalek Attack) (Day of the Daleks)
- DOKTOR KIM VE PELADON GEZEGENI (The Peladon Planet) (The Curse of Peladon)
. .
Doktor Kim ve Dalek Baskini, as an example, has the following points of interest:
- The Turkish equivalent of "EXTERMINATE!" is "ONLARI YOK EDIN!"
- The head of UNIT gets a promotion to: General Alasteyr Lethbric-Stüvirt
- The Doktor is a Zaman Lordlari
- The Daleks have ape-like servants called Ogronlar
Stories bought and broadcast
TOM BAKER
Four stories, 14 episodes:
| 4A | Robot | 4 | Gizli Silah | Secret Weapon |
| 4B | The Sontaran Experiment | 2 | ||
| 4C | The Ark in Space | 4 | ||
| 4D | Revenge of the Cybermen | 4 |
Turkey therefore bought the standard package of GROUP A Tom Baker stories. (Presumably Genesis of the Daleks was not part of the package due to the usual rights issues associated with the Daleks.)
The series would have been supplied as PAL colour video tapes with English soundtracks, that were later dubbed into Turkish.
Transmission
TOM BAKER
The series aired on TRT's second channel - Program 2; it commenced on Thursday, 9 June 1988, at 7.35pm.
Four weeks later, from 9 July, the series shifted to Saturdays. The final episode aired on 17 September 1988. The newspaper actually accounts for 15 listings for the series; presumably one of the episodes in June or July was pre-empted.
Thirteen of the billed episodes aired at 7.35pm; two aired at the slightly earlier time of 7.30pm.
The series aired – as was usual for foreign broadcasters – in production order, as per the table above. The printed synopsis for the first story mentions a "robotu", the second featured "Santrallers", the third was set on a "satellite", and the fourth had "Saybirmenler" and "Vogans".
There is no clear record that Turkey screened Doctor Who again.
TV listings
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← AIRDATES ...... (CLICK ICON TO GO TO TABLE SHOWING EPISODE BREAKDOWN AND AIRDATES - N/S = story title is Not Stated) |
TV listings have come from Gazete Arsiv. (These are viewable online at GAZETE ARSIV (but you have to register [it's free] to access the pages.)
The listings used several different ways of billing with "Dr Who", "Doktor Who" or "Dr Kim" used as the series title. ("Dr Kim" was also the title used for the 1975 Turkish novelisations – see above.)
Some of the scanned Sunday editions also had full TV listings for the week, and these generally always contained full synopses (in Turkish) for the upcoming episodes, whereas the daily billings only sometimes had a plot description or nothing at all in the way of descriptive text.
Although no episode titles are given, it is possible to translate the synopses to determine what the story was.
The second and fourth billings both carried the additional description "Gizli Silah", which translates as "Secret Weapon"; although this shares the same title as the novelisation of Colony in Space, this serial was definitely Robot rather than that 1971 Pertwee serial.
For the 23 July episode, the synopsis contains the word "Santrallar", which translates as "power plants" (as in nuclear power plants), however this might simply be an attempt to find an equivalent for "Sontaran"!
For the final episode of the run, the synopsis contains the words "Saybirmenler, Voga'yi". For the novelisation of The Moonbase, "Cybermen" became "Sibermenler", whereas for this Revenge of the Cybermen listing they became "Saybirmenler".
Turkey in Doctor Who
- The Trojan War was in Asia Minor, which is now Turkey (The Myth Makers).
- Kemel (played by Sonny Caldinez) was a wrestler from Turkey (The Evil of the Daleks).
- There was a T-MAT terminal in Izmir (The Seeds of Death).
- The Doctor thought he might have been wounded at Gallipoli (The Sea Devils).
- The Brigadier was impressed with the muscular-control of Music Hall "Turkish delight of the East", belly-dancer, Scheherezade (Planet of the Spiders).
- The Doctor acquired a hookah pipe from a Cash N Carry in Constantinople (The Deadly Assassin).
- The Doctor mentions Troy in The Stones of Blood.
- The Rani visited the Trojan War during her travels (The Mark of the Rani).
- And it was in Turkey that actor Roger Delgado (the Master) was tragically killed, on 18 June 1973.
