If you know anything about Turkey, you’ve surely heard of the country’s famous soap opera, "Magnificent Century,"  which portrays the life and times of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566). The show, despite its controversial nature, is so popular that even the Chinese have set their eyes on it. It was confirmed in June 2013 that “Magnificent Century” will soon be broadcast on China’s CCTV, Italy’s Babel and Lithuania’s LNK. These new outlets mean the show’s audience will span across 48 territories, reaching more than 200 million viewers.

The soap opera is based on the life of Suleiman the Magnificent, the longest-reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire. During his reign, between 1520 and 1566, the empire reached the height of its power. Yet, the problems with the show, labeled by The New York Times, as “a sort of Ottoman-era ‘Sex and the City,’” arose from the focus on Suleiman’s joie de vivre and harem heartaches, instead of emphasizing his battlefield successes.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticized the show’s representations of Suleiman as more of a sensualist than a lawmaker who “spent 30 years on horseback, not in the palace, not what you see in that series.” The New York Times depicted this criticism as being set amidst “a growing culture war between the governing party, which has Islamic roots, and the country’s more secular purveyors of culture in film and television.” Though this statement is not untrue, it seems prudent to relativize the blame on Erdogan’s Islamic roots here, and acknowledge that historical representations on screen have caused cultural wars in many non-Muslim countries as well. Hollywood, in particular, has been the Mecca of spurring this sort of feisty debate.

Despite these issues, the show has found mass audiences among Turkey's neighbors — even as many question its historical accuracy. In Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the show has been broadcast since last year. As summarized in Klara Volarić’s July 2013 article in Toplumsal Tarih, “Reactions to 'Magnificent Century,'” the show’s producers have found a magic formula. Even the strongest of nationalisms, such as those in the Balkans, could do nothing to crush the commercial success of the hit series. Love it or hate it, audiences are hooked on the story.