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University of Exeter Press - Miriam Berg

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153 pages

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The extraordinary global success of Turkish drama serials is a significant development in contemporary popular culture. This book presents comparative audience data from three different regions to explore its ramifications across the Global South. We learn how this phenomenon has transformed Turkey—a Muslim-majority country—into the world’s second-largest producer of scripted television serials, enticing audiences from all over the world.

The book takes an audience-centred approach, investigating the reasons for the allure of Turkish dramas to Arab, Latin American, and Israeli audiences. In tandem, it explores Turkey's changing foreign policy, economic, and trade relationships since the turn of the millennium, which have coincided with the enormous success of the country's television output. It also analyses the role and importance of Turkish dramas as a soft-power tool by scrutinizing how they have influenced viewers' perceptions of Turkey, its people, and its culture.

This volume will appeal to those working in various disciplines—from media and communication, international relations, public diplomacy, sociology, and Middle Eastern studies. The material will also be of great relevance to upper-level undergraduates, postgraduate students, academics, scholars and researchers.

Introduction

1. The Turkish Television Industry: From National to Transnational

2. Turkish Drama Serials in the Arab World

3. Fluctuating Turkish–Arab Relations and the Soft Power of Drama Serials

4. The Importance of Socio-Cultural Factors in the Appeal of Turkish Serials among Arab Viewers

5. Why Turkish Dramas Resonate with Arab Women: An Analysis of the Responses of Women Viewers in Qatar

6. Turkish Drama Serials in Chile

7. Turkish Drama Serials in Israel

Summary and Conclusion

Notes

References

Index

Sujets

Genres

Media Studies

Social Science

Popular Culture

Sociologie, société et politique

Turquía

Película fotográfica

General officer

Cultural studies

Television

Anthropology

General

Turkey

Drama

Film

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Publié par	University of Exeter Press
Date de parution	13 juin 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781804130438
Langue	English

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Extrait

Turkish Drama Serials
TURKISH DRAMA SERIALS
The Importance and Influence of a Globally Popular TV Phenomenon
Miriam Berg
First published in 2023 by
University of Exeter Press
Reed Hall, Streatham Drive
Exeter EX4 4QR, UK
www.exeterpress.co.uk
Copyright Miriam Berg 2023
The right of Miriam Berg to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by her in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format, for non-commercial purposes only. If others remix, adapt, or build upon the material, they may not distribute the modified material.
https://doi.org/10.47788/AGLL1722
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ISBN 9781804130421 Hardback
ISBN 9781804130438 ePub
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Contents
Introduction
1 The Turkish Television Industry: From National to Transnational
2 Turkish Drama Serials in the Arab World
3 Fluctuating Turkish-Arab Relations and the Soft Power of Drama Serials
4 The Importance of Socio-Cultural Factors in the Appeal of Turkish Serials among Arab Viewers
5 Why Turkish Dramas Resonate with Arab Women: An Analysis of the Responses of Women Viewers in Qatar
6 Turkish Drama Serials in Chile
7 Turkish Drama Serials in Israel
Summary and Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
Introduction
In little more than a decade, Turkish serials have grown from being simply a popular television format in T rkiye, to solidifying their place within international popular culture, having won the hearts of audiences across the globe. 1 This book explores a significant development in television that started with Turkish dramas taking Arab screens by storm, and later expanding across the globe.
The sudden popularity of Turkish drama serials, particularly within the Arab world, saw T rkiye becoming the second-largest producer of scripted television serials worldwide, 2 and in 2016 the world s fifth-largest TV-programme exporter. 3 Their popularity has dramatically increased, moving from the Global South to countries in the south of the Global North, with Spain and Italy becoming the latest in a long list of nations that have been captivated by their unique allure. 4 As the international success of Turkish serials is a relatively new phenomenon, research examining the reasons for their appeal, or the nature of the viewing experience, is still an evolving area, 5 raising new questions centring on the audiences viewing experience and the key factors contributing to the serials wider success. At this point it is relevant to acknowledge that the popularity of Turkish television dramas is simply one example of how content produced in and for one nation has transcended national and cultural borders. The phenomenon of travelling television content is nothing new, having been scrutinized by various scholars in the past. 6 But it is the first time that drama serials from a Muslim-majority country have managed to attract audiences from across the globe. This poses a significant question: what is it about Turkish serials that enables them to resonate with audiences outside their geo-cultural and geo-linguistic region?
This book takes an audience-centric approach by examining rich audience data from Qatar, Chile, and Israel to answer this question. It attempts to find out what it is about Turkish dramas that appeals to Arab, Chilean, and Israeli audiences alike. Also, how can they at times even surpass national, regional, and Western productions in terms of popularity?
The book also analyses the role and importance of Turkish dramas as a soft-power tool by scrutinizing how they have impacted viewers perceptions of T rkiye, its people, and its culture. I adopt a multi-theoretical perspective, including concepts such as cultural proximity, uses and gratifications, lifeworld, and soft power, to analyse this evolving phenomenon.
Throughout the book I argue that the successful penetration of Turkish drama serials into the Arab television markets, and their enthusiastic reception, represents a pivotal moment for them, as they transition from being successful nationally, and within their geo-linguistic region, to becoming popular across international markets. What started in September 2008 as an experiment by the Saudi Arabian-owned satellite network, 7 MBC (the Middle East Broadcasting Center), with the broadcasting of its first dubbed Turkish drama serial Noor ( G m s , 2005-07, T rkiye: Kanal D) during the month of Ramadan, not only generated unforeseeable viewership figures, 8 but also quickly catapulted Turkish dramas into becoming a region-wide sensation. Their sudden and enormous success sparked international news coverage and global attention, 9 which unquestionably triggered other countries interest in testing Turkish dramas in their own markets. The vast demand for Turkish serials over the past decade, particularly from countries across the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA), has positioned the Arab world as an important export market, 10 and contributed to the further expansion of the serial-production sector in T rkiye, transforming it into a highly profitable industry. Consequently, this book pays particular attention to the popularity and appeal of Turkish dramas to Arab audiences, which has been critical in their transition from domestically popular formats to internationally recognized serials.
In order to provide readers with a complete picture, the book is organized so as to give readers some background information and context regarding the Turkish television industry, both past and present. The book also offers a sense of the historical and current relationships between T rkiye, the Arab world, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and Israel. It explores the role of T rkiye s economic enhancements and multidirectional foreign policy in paving the way for Turkish drama serials to enter foreign television markets. It also examines the essential factors in the Arab, Chilean, and Israeli television markets that make them favourable to Turkish drama serials, before providing the reader with the audience findings in each country.
In line with the core argument, the book first examines the reach and reception of Turkish dramas across the Arab world: a key moment that has allowed Turkish television dramas to become an internationally successful format. The book utilizes the diverse audience of the Gulf State of Qatar as a case study. It examines Turkish dramas significance as a soft-power tool, audience viewing motivations, and the socio-cultural factors that facilitated the attraction and appeal of Turkish drama serials for Arab audiences.
As its second case study, the book examines Chilean audiences. Chile was the first country in the LAC region to broadcast dubbed Turkish serials. What the Chilean station Mega started in 2014 as an experiment transformed into a region-wide trend. As with the Arab world, the successful entry of Turkish dramas onto Chilean television represents a landmark that propelled them into an entirely new market, ultimately reaching millions of television viewers across the region. At present, Chile still incorporates the largest percentage of Turkish content within the LAC region into its television programming; 11 and the unexpected popularity of Turkish drama serials has also contributed to Chile becoming the distribution hub for the region, and the Spanish translation hub for Turkish serials. 12
In the third and final case study, this book examines Israeli audiences. The rationale for selecting Israeli viewers is that Turkish dramas did not arrive on Israeli television when diplomatic and trade relations flourished (as in the MENA or LAC regions) but, in contrast, when diplomatic ties between the two former allies had reached a historic low. Through audience responses, this book provides an insight into why Turkish television serials reach and reception transcended the diplomatic crisis that saw T rkiye and Israel transition from being long-time allies to becoming rival actors, with opposing political and security positions. One needs to recognize that, despite Israel being part of the developed world, in reality a significant proportion of Israeli Jews migrated from, or were raised by parents who were born in, countries that were either part of the Ottoman Empire, or countries from the Global South. This makes Israeli viewers highly fascinating, while offering the reader a broader understanding of an evolving and underexplored area.
This book has benefited from my ability as an author to study first-hand the socio-cultural factors behind the popularity of Turkish serials in the Arab world, initially while working for a Qatar-based media network in 2008, and later as an academic and PhD student residing in the country. I also had the opportunity to interview various industry professionals in T rkiye, as far back as 2010, in order to understand how the p