Soft power put to the test of reception

Based on the data that I collected in my empirical study of the reception of Turkish soap operas by the Greek population, in this paper I test the notion of soft power (Nye, 2004). While Turkish soap operas’ appeal among Greek audiences is owed to the cultural proximity between the two countries, this proximity does not cancel out the political disagreements between these neighbouring populations, nor does the Greek population’s taste for Turkish soap operas translate into support for the Turkish government. More specifically, my study confirms the role of several factors as third-party mediators in the reception of these serial fictions, such as the public’s predisposition, current diplomatic relations between two countries, the audience’s worldview, and collective, family and/or personal memory.