Courtesy of Foreign Policy, a look at how Turkey’s TV drama “Ertugrul” reveals how neo-Ottoman fantasies are finding an enthusiastic audience in a country that struggles with Saudi and Western influence:

Today, Turkish dizi—television dramas—are second only to American ones in terms of global distribution. Turkish is now the most watched foreign language in the world, beating out French, Spanish, and Mandarin. Ertugrul, which began filming in 2014, first became popular on Netflix and has since been licensed to 72 countries.

Turkish dizi—television dramas—are second only to American ones in terms of global distribution.

When its finale aired on TRT, Turkey’s national public broadcast channel—serendipitously on the anniversary of the Ottoman capture of Constantinople and the fall of the Byzantine Empire—more people searched YouTube for Ertugrul than for the Game of Thrones character Jon Snow, whose own show had ended 10 days earlier. The series is set in 13th-century Anatolia as Ertugrul Ghazi, a warrior leading the Kayi tribe, battles Byzantines, Crusaders, and Mongols. It is a superbly shot, emotive drama that plays out all of Turkey’s—and the Muslim world’s—fantasies and anxieties.

Ertugrul, played by Engin Altan Duzyatan, inhabits a time in which the sons of the Muslim world have never been humiliated. It is some 600 years since the Prophet Mohammed received the word of God, and Islam’s dominion has expanded from Iberia to the Indus and promises to stretch across the Earth itself. Ertugrul is portrayed as an honorable man, deserving of the glory and respect people and strangers alike bestow on him; he is righteous, unafraid, and just, even as he is beset by spies and traitors. Series after series, Ertugrul confronts avatars of today’s global forces—the Mongols, or China; Byzantines, or the West; and the Knights Templar as a general stand-in for Christian powers.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has celebrated the show for “entering the nation’s heart” and is an enthusiastic supporter. Its producer, Kemal Tekden, is a member of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), and the show’s creator, Mehmet Bozdag, is, if not a member, an open admirer. “Eighty-six years of longing has come to an end,” he tweeted after Erdogan and his cabinet offered the first Muslim prayers at the Hagia Sophia after a court annulled the sixth-century Byzantine church’s status as a museum. Nelson Mandela’s grandson, a member of South Africa’s parliament, visited the set and posed for photos decked out in Ertugrul’s Kayi tribal kit as did Venezuela’s head of state, Nicolás Maduro. Maduro was so moved, Bozdag claimed, that he even considered converting to Islam after his visit.

Pakistan is not the first country to lose itself to Ertugrul hysteria—Urdu is the fourth language the show has been dubbed into, following Arabic, Spanish, and Russian—but its affinity has broader geopolitical implications. Pakistan and Turkey have long held each other in reverence and call each other “brother countries.” Turkey was one of the first countries to recognize Pakistan after its founding in 1947 and lobbied for its membership in the United Nations.

Even before Pakistan’s independence, Muslims of the British Raj banded together under the Khilafat Movement of 1919-1922 in support of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. The Khilafat—or Caliphate—was a symbol of global Muslim unity, and though the movement collapsed after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk deposed Mehmed VI, the last sultan, Indian Muslims sent financial aid to the empire on its last legs.

As Asia grapples with sectarian strife, religious extremism, and geopolitical shifts—from Saudi Arabia’s rivalry with Iran to Narendra Modi’s India, which is tilting away from its secular roots and toward Hindu majoritarianism, to the specter of a rising China—Pakistan has grown closer to Turkey, identifying with its particular brand of Islam-inspired modernity rather than the harsher alternative of Saudi Wahhabism.

Though bilateral relations have focused on political, military, and economic engagement, today Pakistan and Turkey are deepening their cultural connections. Ertugrul’s popularity in Pakistan isn’t spontaneous in the way other dizi have been—Muhtesem Yuzyil (“Magnificent Century,” known in Pakistan as Mera Sultan) and Ask-i Memnu (“Forbidden Love,” known as Ishq-e-Mamnoon) were also both huge hits. More than 55 million people watched Ishq-e-Mamnoon’s finale in Pakistan—about one-fourth of the country’s population. It was the first time in Pakistan’s history that a foreign show drew such high numbers.