One of the things I left behind most willingly when I moved abroad was my TV. My husband from my short and ill fated marriage had insisted on buying a wide screen monstrosity and spent most of his time lying on the floor in the lounge glued to the screen. Eventually he moved into this room, abandoning the marital bed, saying he had to sleep on the floor because of his bad back. I think he was just more in love with the TV than with me. After I threw him out I didn’t even go into the lounge for months, it reeked too much of him and of how stupid I’d been in marrying him.

Finally I entered and in a day cleaned and swept and moved furniture around until I reclaimed the space and made it mine but for another few months I never used the room for more than an hour at a time. Everytime I went in there the hulking machine dominated everything I tried to do, it became the albatross round my neck and like the ancient mariner nothing I did could shift it’s appalling presence. It was even too physically heavy for me to bear and I was unable to move it without help. When the day of moving came I sold it to my neighbour Michael for £50 and he and another hefty Nigerian friend hefted it out of the house. When the TV went so did the last trace of my least successful life episode.

From having spent plenty of time in Turkey before I decided to live there and from the tortuous episodes where my Dad would call me into the living room to watch some gem on the satellite channels I didn’t have a high opinion of Turkish television. Perhaps my view had been set when as a child we watched the bad taste fests broadcast by ‘news’ programmes of road accident victims lying bleeding out on road sides while the camermen kept the film rolling. It seemed to me that in a country facing great social change, with an immensely intersting history, a unique political and geographical importance the majority of TV programmes consisted of people singing, dancing, playing appalling practical jokes on each other or exposing the ‘private’ details of the love lives of the rich and famous. As a selective and snobby viewer of Channel 4 and BBC2 there seemed little that was likely to appeal to me.

When I arrived in the first house I rented there was already a TV there, an old box with a remote control that collapsed into fifty pieces when I picked it up. The reception was only good on three channels, ATV (OK), Kanal D (or Kanal-Dizi as I renamed it for the never ending stream of soaps) and TRT3 (obscure sports and lots of basketball). Other than the my weekly hour of Kurtar Vadisi (Valley of Wolves) I rarely turned the TV on and was almost invariably disappointed when I did. When I moved into my second place my boyfriend was visiting regularly and I used to enjoy the long evenings cooking together and chatting about the events of the day. Obviously with a man around though the box-less bliss was unlikely to last and sure enough he appeared one night with a ‘gift’ for me.

A fair amount of negotiating took place and I won the discussion as to where the TV should go (in the 2nd bedroom) but I lost the war as to the impact that a TV would have on us as a couple. I predicted that it would be a wedge between us and it was, he would retreat to watch it in the other room and I would listen to the radio alone on the other side. Sezgin would ask me to go and watch with him and as I watched the brainless programming it would make me despair of him and of Turkey in general. The only reason I had for watching was as a social study.

I’m still not keen but I have come to appreciate a few more shows than I did at the beginning but interestingly with my most recent move the balance of power has changed in TV land. Sezgin and I moved in together a few months ago and at his request we signed up for Digiturk. I couldn’t bring myself to agree to the full film and sports package but we did get one or two English language channels on the basic package and now I’m hooked. Some of my favourite programmes are on, Buffy, CSİ and the X-Files and I’m learning to love Cold Case and My Name is Earl. Interestingly Sezgin’s reaction to what I consider well scripted, tightly plotted dramas (with Turkish subtitles) is to turn his back and go to sleep. It appears that the apalling quality of Turkish TV may well just be my unfounded opinion and that the disinterest I have shown in appreciating its unique foreigness is just as easily reciprocated. I may have to learn to look at the TV with a new and less bigoted eye.