The Role of Intertextual Associations in Localization Processes: The Case of Suskunlar

This article aims to discuss localization processes in scripted format adaptations by particularly focusing on Turkish TV series Suskunlar which is later adapted in the U.S. as Game of Silence. By adopting a discursive approach, the article aims to investigate a wide range of information that is spread about Suskunlar and Game of Silence in the Turkish and American media sphere. The article is especially interested in investigating the role that ‘intertextuality’ play in localizing scripted formats and intends to point at the different localization processes that the series go under in different localities.


Introduction
Television industries all around the world have been recycling popular genres like soap opera, sitcom and police procedural for many years. Along with this on-going practice, they keep harvesting successful television shows from different countries to be broadcasted in various destinations in 'canned' formats. to difficulties that life handed to them. On the day of Bilal's circumcision feast, following the group's escape plan to save Bilal from circumcision they highjack a van which carry a local supplier's baklava trays and unintentionally hit an old man who gets seriously injured as a result of the accident. In an attempt to protect Ahu from the consequences, Bilal, Ecevit, İbrahim and Zeki take the blame and are sent to a juvenile detention center where they are tortured and sexually abused.
The tragedy that they face in the prison is never spoken when they grow up and move on with their own lives. But when Zeki encounters one of their tormenters and takes action the group gets together again to initiate their revenge.
When Suskunlar started to be promoted as one of the most ambitious TV dramas of the year in 2012 a rumor followed up about the series' being an appropriation of the well-known Hollywood film, Sleepers (1996) which originates from Lorenzo Carcaterra's book with the same title. This article takes off from this rumor and investigates the significance of intertextual knowledge for localizing scripted formats.
By dominantly focusing on the information that is spread on Turkish media, the article adopts a discursive approach and explores how the knowledge that circulates in the local context plays a vital role in the localization process.
After introducing transnational format adaptation practices in Turkey, the article explores the worldwide popularity of transnational formats and investigates the ways of approaching local variations of global formats in conducting research. Later on, it concentrates on the localization of Sleepers in the Turkish context as Suskunlar with a particular interest in the intertextual connections that are built between the series and the local discourses. Following this analysis, the article examines the scripted format adaptation of Suskunlar in the U.S. as Game of Silence and looks at the diversity of information that surrounds the same story in a different cultural context. In this way, the article intends to investigate a wide range of information that is spread about Suskunlar and Game of Silence in different localities and elaborate on how the source texts are transformed in relation to their surroundings when they travel to multiple destinations.

'Turkifying' Television Contents
Television broadcasting in Turkey was under state control until the establishment of private television channels in the early 1990s. When the official television broadcasting started in 1972 it was difficult for the public broadcaster TRT (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation) to include locally produced TV dramas in its schedule. Similar to the stories of other local television industries in the era of scarcity (Ellis, 2000), Turkish television audiences encountered with different cultures through the imported films and television series due to the limited number of locally produced programs.
In an attempt to increase the number of local programs, after the production of the first local sitcom Kaynanalar (1974), devoted directors of Turkish cinema were invited to adapt Turkish literary classics for the public broadcaster. Among the produced TV dramas, Aşk-ı Memnu (1975) which was directed by Halit Refiğ turned into the most celebrated local drama of that period. Despite the fact that Turkish television and film industry were connected through this collaboration their approach to culture was highly different. In an attempt to represent the 'official' Turkish national identity, TRT strictly controlled television contents by imposing restrictions on broadcasting particular types of music or using different variations of Turkish language in its programs (Öncü, 2000, p. 303). On the contrary, Turkish cinema which was known as Yeşilçam between the 1950s and the 1980s created a platform for celebrating the 'unofficial' components of the culture.
Yeşilçam might be considered as one of the few options of Turkish people to access popular culture during that period.
Due to this intense engagement, the industry always worked under the pressure of meeting the high demand coming from the audiences beginning from the 1950s. In order to cope up with producing 150 films per year, production companies invented their own methods such as making the 'Turkified' versions of foreign films and TV shows (Arslan, 2011, p. 80).
This wave of appropriation resulted in the creation of various kind of films that use foreign contents as their inspiration. Savaş Arslan explains this type of filmmaking during the Yeşilçam period by referring to a German word, 'getürkt', meaning to make things 'Turkified' by bending the rules (p.

81).
When private TV channels established in the 1990s in Turkey they did not only break the state monopoly over broadcasting but also escalated competition in the industry.
As the private channels mushroomed, the need for TV content rose up, especially at the end of the 1990s. Apart from relying on foreign, mostly American, TV series broadcasted in canned formats, production models of Yeşilçam companies came in handy in meeting the high demand and Turkish TV series started to appropriate foreign films and TV shows as they produce local content.
However, similar to Yeşilçam films, these appropriations were not direct imitations. Frequently, the essential features were taken from the source texts and adapted in the way that  (2017) continue to appear on Turkish TV channels. Suskunlar belongs to this second group which derives from another format in the first few episodes and goes to a different direction as the story gradually develops.

Approaching Transnational Format Adaptations
Silvio Waisbord describes contemporary global television scene as a "wall-to-wall format" (Waisbord, 2004, p. 359) by which he means that national variations of particular program formats dominate television channels worldwide. Waisbord defines format as "programming ideas that are adapted and produced domestically" (p. 359). For him, the popularity of the formats can be explained through two developments in contemporary television scene. On the one hand, television as a business has started to be conducted in accordance with a global model. On the other hand, international companies rely on formats as a strategy to cope up with the resistance of national cultures. Albert Moran states that "TV program format appear to signal the triumph of media globalization even while asserting the continued importance of local or domestic programming" (Moran, 2009b, p. 116). However, Waisbord states that although the global distribution of formats may suggest the global integration of television economies and the standardization of TV contents, the bigger picture indicates that "television still remains tied to local and national cultures" (Waisbord, 2004, p. 360). In accordance with this assumption, he asserts that "television is simultaneously both global and national, shaped by the globalization of media economics and the pull of local and national cultures" (p. 360).
At this point, the division between the scripted and unscripted formats has to be underlined due to the challenges that they bring to the localization process. As Jean K. Chalaby explains, adapting scripted formats is much more difficult than adapting programs that travel without a script (Chalaby, 2016, p. 4). Apart from various kinds of challenges that could be faced during the production process, the adaptation process itself brings more difficulties when it comes to recreate the program for a new target audience in a new destination (p. 7).
However, despite the challenges, scripted formats became the focal point of broadcasters around the world. Whereas in the early 2000s the percentage of travelling scripted formats was 6.6 this number is doubled later in the decade, reaching almost 15% in 2008 as Chalaby notes from FRAPA report (p. 6).
Approaching transnational format adaptation, either being scripted or not, is another issue to be discussed in determining a theoretical framework for the research. As he discusses the localization of global formats, Albert Moran suggests analyzing the linguistic, cultural and intertextual codes in order to understand this process. According to Moran's framework, adapted programs could be examined by looking at the stylistic transformations that happen in the process of localization. Alternatively, exploring the role that is played by cultural factors such as language, religion and ethnicity in adapting a format in a different national context could reveal various aspects of this process (Moran, 2009a, pp. 44-52).
In addition to the linguistic and cultural codes, Moran introduces intertextual codes that "appear to connect with specific bodies of knowledge held by particular communities" (p. 48). What concerns this article at the most is the intertextual codes that Albert Moran defines in this framework in four different sets. One set is concerned with television industries that redesign the formats in accordance with the production culture in their country of destination. Second type of intertextual codes is related to the combination of technical necessities and personal choices whereas the third type deals with the genre of the format, balancing between the needs of the format and the aesthetical, historical and cultural requirements of the local contents. The last type of intertextual codes that Moran defines is concerned with the perception and practice of a genre in another territory which naturally change the dominance of one character or event within the plot after the localization process (pp. 46-49).
Moran's types of 'intertextual codes' are mostly related to the production processes of format adaptations and mainly concentrates on unscripted formats. His approach that invites researchers to explore various factors deriving from local production practices to possible affective connections that the local stories expected to foster could be expanded by taking different processes of meaning making into consideration. In Moran's terms, once the formats are completed and disseminated 'specific bodies of knowledge' continue to be activated (p. 48). Relying on this activation, it could be claimed that the knowledge that the audiences and critics bring to interpreting the programs could significantly contribute to the localization process of adapted contents.
Intertextual associations that people make among different kinds of texts could be considered as a part of this process. John Fiske defines intertextuality as a theory that "proposes that any one text is necessarily read in relationship to others and that a range of textual knowledges is brought to bear upon it" (Fiske, 1987, p. 108). According to Lothar Mikos who gets his inspiration from Fiske's definition, TV texts could be associated in relation to many other things ranging from the genre to other TV series. For him, intertextuality could be created by anyone, from authors to producers, or by audiences who could associate the TV contents with novels or other kind of multiple texts (Mikos, 2016, p. 51). Fiske explains that "studying a text's intertextual relations can provide us with valuable clues to the readings that a particular culture or subculture is likely to produce from it" (Fiske, 1987, p. 108 The similarities between Suskunlar and Sleepers have not only been picked up by the audiences who have been familiar with both texts but also addressed in television reviews, making the associations a part of the discourse surrounding the series. In the popular online dictionary and public forum, ekşisözlük, in which a wide range of authors from different backgrounds gather to discuss politics, popular culture and everyday instances in Turkey the entries primarily focused on the resemblance between the film and the TV series at first. In some of the entries, the series was condemned for being a straightforward imitation (Ekşisözlük, n.d.). Besides, Suskunlar is included in the lists which ranked popular Turkish TV series which were adapted from foreign shows (Yabancı dizilerden uyarlandığını, 2016).
Its association to Sleepers was also mentioned by TV critic and academic, Orhan Tekelioğlu (2012) and expressed by the actors in an interview that was conducted with them.
In this interview, when Murat Yıldırım, playing the lawyer, Ecevit, was asked to address the critiques about the series' being an appropriation of Sleepers he states that the series is actually inspired by Lorenzo Carcaterra's book from which the film was adapted. As he addressed the question, Sarp Akkaya who plays Bilal in the series also emphasizes that the series in not an 'all American' story but a tragedy which unfortunately had also been happening in Turkey (Bu acıları, 2012). Orhan Tekelioğlu additionally emphasized the same sensation as he reviewed Suskunlar's first season finale. According to him, the rumor was that Suskunlar's story was based on Barry Levinson's film but the essence of the story allowed to be localized in the Turkish context due to its focus on sexual abuse in a detention center. The violence and exploitation that had been told in the story had an equivalence in the Turkish prison system so that the series did not have any problem to create cultural verisimilitude (Tekelioğlu, 2012).
Documentary filmmaker and writer, Çağnur Öztürk, attracted the attention to the same issue, stating that it was not fair to call Suskunlar a straightforward imitation of Sleepers because its story had a correspondence in the current realities of Turkey. She reminds the news story that occupied the agenda of Turkey for a long time in 1997 concerning the imprisonment of four teenagers for stealing baklava from a local shop in Gaziantep. One of the teenagers who was 20 years old at the time was sentenced to 9 years in prison whereas the other three who were 17 years old sentenced to 6 years. After serving time for 19 months, the teenagers benefitted from the amnesty that was granted by the government and released (Öztürk, 2012). Öztürk (2012) states that the scriptwriters of the series did not officially deny the story's association with the film but they had taken the narrative far away from that association by adding different levels of social commentary such as referring to the tragic story of the teenagers from Gaziantep. globalization as a process introduces people to diversity and variety (Featherstone 1995, pp. 86-89). Despite being initially associated with Lorenzo Carcaterra's book and Barry Levinson's film, intertextual relations allow Suskunlar to be linked with local news stories and to be seen from a brand new perspective. In this way, examining the localization process of the series does not only indicate the plurality of texts but also the influence of intertextuality on creating this plurality. America. Nowadays, exporting television content constitute a major financial strategy for TV producers and distributors (Yesil, 2015).  (Semercioğlu, 2015).

Suskunlar's adaptation as
This achievement meant the recognition of Turkish TV series industry by the American television industry which has been imagined as the equivalent to quality, progress and success in Turkey.
Historically, the connection between the Turkish and the American television industries was based on Turkey's being the receiving party. Turkey was either importing American television programs or getting inspired from American TV shows in order to create domestic TV series. The scripted format adaptation of Suskunlar was a milestone in reversing this relationship. However, since the series was rumored to be inspired by Barry Levinson's film, Sleepers, it also exemplified the complexity behind the circulation of television contents and demonstrated that despite being recycled by local TV industries, the same stories could show themselves in many shapes in different national contexts.
When the series adapted in the U.S. the narrative had to go through a secondary localization process. The discourse that appeared in Turkey acknowledged the story's origin in the U.S. but what was purchased by NBC was the already Turkified version of that original text. However, in an interview conducted with David Lyons who plays Jackson Brooks in the series, he states that he did not watch Suskunlar as a part of his preparation for the role. Lyons underlines that this was the suggestion of the showrunner, David Hudgins, who explained to him that they were only looking at the Turkish TV series as a template. For that reason, he only read the pilot as an independent text and he did not have any preconceived ideas about the character that he would play in the series. His knowledge was limited to the pilot script of Game of Silence (Odegard, 2016).
In such a way to affirm Lyons's statements, in order to become an independent text that functions as a template for the production of Game of Silence, Suskunlar's script had to be redesign to be more in harmony with the cultural values of the U.S. Besides, by keeping the U.S. scheduling structures, storytelling traditions and television watching habits of the target audience in mind, the textual features of Game of Silence had to be transformed. When Suskunlar was broadcasted Turkish TV series lasted almost 90 minutes without the commercial breaks. This long duration which almost corresponds to a feature film has a big influence on storytelling in Turkish television. In contrast with this, one episode of Game of Silence lasts half the time of Suskunlar. For that reason, major changes had to be made in the source text in order to fit in the scheduling structures of the U.S. In an attempt to achieve all these transformations, new characters were added to the story. Some character traits, settings and the main conflicts were changed and certain side stories were omitted from the plot.
Apart from this localization process which could be associated with Albert Moran's linguistic and cultural codes, Game of Silence built different kinds of intertextual connections in the U.S. mediasphere. Due to the revenge story that the series focused, some of the critiques associated the series with Stephen King's It (1986) (Lowry, 2016;Fienberg, 2016;Dowling, 2016) whereas some of them built the same connection with the audiences and reviewers in Turkey and touched on the resemblance of the story with Carcaterra's book and Levinson's film. (Dowling, 2016;Fienberg, 2016;Gilbert, 2016;McNamara, 2016;Ihnat, 2016;Andreeva, 2015) However, apart from these, other texts are also mentioned in the reviews such as Lord of the Flies by Golding (1954) as well as films including Spotlight (2015) (Bianco, 2016), The Shawshank Redemption (1994) (Gay, 2016) and Stand by Me (1986) (Owen, 2016;Roush, 2016).
So, in the U.S. context, the intertextual connections that were built in relation to the series varied but mostly remained limited to other books and films, not being related to local realities. One of the interesting connections that are made with the series was the association between the series and the film Midnight Express (1978) (Bianco, 2016;Gay, 2016) which has been perceived as a highly controversial film in the Turkish context due to its offensive depiction of Turkey. The association was made in order to highlight what has been told within the narrative does not make sense in the contemporary U.S. context but could be comprehensible in Turkey or on Turkish TV.
The emphasis on the possible lack of cultural verisimilitude in these reviews does not only indicate that the potential difficulty to relate the plot of Game of Silence with the everyday realities of the U.S. but also marks the activation of a different kind of localization process in comparison to Suskunlar. On the one hand, in accordance with Albert Moran's conceptualization, the intertextual codes could be found operating when the issue comes to local production practices, personal choices of showrunners, redesign of dominant genre formulas and changes in character developments. On the other hand, whereas the intertextual relations that are built with local discourse play a significant role in localizing Sleepers in the Turkish context in an additional level a similar kind of association cannot be found in the localization of Suskunlar in the U.S.

Conclusion
Recycling the same kind of stories could be perceived as a highly significant strategy to meet the high demand for TV content nowadays. In the Turkish context, Yeşilçam filmmakers resorted in the same strategy for many years and made 'Turkified' versions of foreign films and TV series by keeping the values and tastes of local audiences in mind. The same strategy was later embraced by Turkish TV producers in the 1990s and still practiced in contemporary television scene.
By particularly focusing on the case of Suskunlar, this article intended to understand what happens to these recycled stories when they travel to different localities and encounter with various discourses. The article was especially interested in extended the scope of Albert Moran's 'intertextual codes' and concentrated on Suskunlar's association with local news stories in Turkey by approaching intertextuality from a wider perspective. As a result of the comparison between the localization processes of Suskunlar and Game of Silence it was seen that the intertextual codes that are activated in both adaptations allow the series to be transformed to a great extent but in different ways and at different degrees.
Consequently, recycling successful stories from different locations could be seen as reusing the same source without damaging its core. However, what comes out of this recycling process could be definitely approached as something innovative which touches on different nerves and addresses different sensations in local contexts by diversifying the stories in a distinctive manner. Further research could be conducted by taking Moran's approach to another level and suggesting a new set of codes that could be found by examining the reception of transnational texts in different localities.