The airport is expected to boost Turkey’s economy by 5%, further cementing Istanbul’s – and Turkey’s – place as a hub in the global economy. The construction of the project has obviously been an enhancement to the city’s economy, providing vital economic boosts in a period of broad commercial belt-tightening and economic strain. But at the same time, this economic boom has been shadowed by dark clouds around the conditions of labour on the airport’s construction.

In an age when a Turkish leader is once trying to reshape the national consciousness, Dirilis: Ertugrul offers an effective tool to stoke nationalist sentiment through a highly curated historical lens. The irony is that while the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, used Western exports such as the wireless and Latin alphabet to coax Turkey away from the Ottoman Empire, Erdogan appears determined to use soap operas to thrust Turkey back towards it.