Crowds flock to Istanbul’s Museum of Innocence before Netflix adaptation drops

ISTANBUL – On a cobbled street in Cukurcuma, a district on Istanbul’s European side known for its antiques shops, the story penned by Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk in his best-selling 2008 novel The Museum Of Innocence has been brought to life.

Inside a red-painted house, visitors are confronted by a wall of 4,213 cigarette butts, many of them lipstick-stained, others angrily stubbed out, all obsessively kept by the book’s protagonist, Kemal Basmaci.

Just days before the Feb 13 premiere of Museum Of Innocence, a serialised Netflix adaptation of the novel, hundreds of curious visitors have come to the museum, squeezing past one another on the narrow wooden stairs up to Basmaci’s attic room.

At the entrance, Mr Umit, who runs the museum and declined to give his surname, said there had been about 500 visitors a day since Netflix began running trailers for the nine-part Turkish series, compared with 200 on a normal day.

“And that will likely double after it comes out,” he predicted.

Set in the 1970s, the show features a young man named Kemal (Selahattin Pasali) from a wealthy Istanbul family who is devastated by the end of his relationship with Fusun (Eylul Kandemir), a distant cousin from a working-class background.

The break-up sends him on an obsessive mission to collect anything that is hers. Hence, the wall of cigarette butts mounted on pins, each painstakingly labelled by circumstance, collected over an eight-year period starting from 1976.

There are hundreds more items on display, from bits of jewellery to items of clothing to bottles of Meltem soda, which was popular in the 1970s – a collection of mundane mementoes passionately collected to fill the void left by Fusun’s absence.

They are laid out in 83 display cases, the same number of chapters in the book.

Nobel literature prize-winner Pamuk, who opened the museum in 2012, has admitted to being a similarly compulsive collector.

‘Truth in it’

The novel emerged when he began writing about the objects he had saved, everything from family keepsakes to trinkets picked up at the bazaars, which gradually brought his characters to life.

The museum showcases objects that make up the story, but the story also developed as he acquired new objects, the museum’s website says. And the whole novel opens a unique window onto a decade of Istanbul history.

Ms Songul Tekin, 28, a visitor who loved the book, said she is convinced some of it really happened and came to the museum to “see it in real life”.

“It’s told in real depth. There has to be some truth in it because otherwise you would never have so many objects and so much detail,” she added.

She arrived with a friend and her copy of the novel – a gesture which lets visitors enter for free, thanks to a ticket on page 485 of the Turkish version of the book.

Also visiting was Mr Aydin Deniz Yuce, a psychologist in his 30s who is a fan of Pamuk’s works.

Although The Museum Of Innocence was not his favourite, he said he was keen to see the Netflix series and is convinced the “handsomeness” of lead actor Pasali will be perfect for creating a credible Kemal.

Turkish series, global popularity

With the novel translated into more than 60 languages, the museum has drawn international interest, with visitors from China, Hungary, Italy, Japan and Russia turning up over the space of a few hours.

Poring over the display cabinets, Ms Zeng Hu and Ms Zeng Linan, sisters from Hubei province in central China, said they were now intrigued to read the book and watch the series, although Netflix is not available in China.

At a screening on Feb 12, Pamuk said he was happy with the adaptation by Istanbul-based production company Ay Yapim after a disastrous attempt several years ago.

“Since I was so dissatisfied and unhappy with my first try with Hollywood, I decided I wouldn’t allow anyone to make a film of my books without seeing the complete script first,” the 73-year-old writer said.

That meant working closely with a scriptwriter for 18 months before any money changed hands. It gave him “tight control” over the script.

“Once every two months, we would meet, like students doing homework. I would go over the scriptwriter’s texts, criticise it, improve it, suggest other things,” Pamuk said. “It worked magically.”

Hugely popular, Turkish television dramas and series, known as “dizi”, are now available in 170 countries. Global demand for them rose by 184 per cent between 2020 and 2023, figures from Parrot Analytics show.

In 2024, Turkey was the world’s third-largest exporter of television series, after the United States and Britain. AFP