Mehmet Bozdağ

Biography:

After receiving a degree in history, Bozdag said he came up with the idea of a drama on how the Ottoman Empire was established, earned its success throughout the world and became an important Islamic state.

"With these steps, we came up with a story of five seasons, and it will continue as Kurulus: Osman," he said.

Bozdag said today, the Islamic world misses the spirit of the religion, its purity, humanity and justice, which is why everyone is longing for the period.

The series, when first featured, took first place in the rankings in Turkey and Bozdag emphasized that after it was released abroad, many people converted to Islam.

For a year, the team of the drama had worked to bring the project to the screen and the actors trained for over nine months for their characters, according to Bozdag.

"When we started this project, we were not able to find trained horses that ran at the same time, tents were not produced and what people ate during the 13th century was a dilemma. When writing the story, I was 30 years old, the company was new and nobody believed in the project. After I wrote down the story, we invited a painter from Mongolia, and he depicted the story, and so the actors saw the project and had faith in it," Bozdag said.

Bozdag stressed that there were gaps in historic data about the time, and in these cases, they came up with ideas using their imagination.

"While imagining, we never forgot about the reality of the period and the spirit of Islam. All of the historical dramas around the world do the same thing. We are not the first ones to come up with this method," he said. AA