A brief look at Turkish television series by Savaş Arslan

A brief look at
Turkish television series

Action and romance

Set in Manisa in 1520, Muhteşem Yüzyıl (Magnificent Century) opens with a band of horse riders led by a young Suleiman the Magnificent, who receives the news of his father’s death. While this opening scene promises a historical action-adventure inspired by the real life of the sultan, after the opening credits, the story shifts to a young Alexandra, who later marries the Sultan and adopts the name Hürrem Sultan. This television series embodies the classic archetype of romantic adventure, functioning as a melodrama or soap opera that unfolds within the palace. It primarily focuses on familial and romantic relationships while also addressing the Empire's administrative matters in a secondary capacity. Midway through the first episode, the Sultan meets with Hürrem, who was brought to the palace as an odalisque. This shift from one possible storyline to another indicates the current Turkish dizi industry, which is essentially divided into two generic layouts, as will be discussed below.

While the first genre type is predominantly based on male hero-centered stories intended more for a male audience, the latter is a more female-centered storyline focusing on relationships. For example, when Muhteşem Yüzyıl was at the height of its popularity, the statements made by then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the dizi also found an echo abroad. In a Voice of America news report, the Prime Minister’s criticism of the dizi was covered since it shows Suleiman the Magnificent mostly spending his time at home, dealing with family intrigues (Jones 2012). Following this, first, the public Turkish Radio and Television channels and then other private channels started producing more action-adventure-type series about the lives and especially the conquests of different Ottoman sultans. In these, the home does not occupy a central place as a setting; even the family remains secondary. As mentioned above, the story revolves around the classical male hero embarking on a journey for a purpose and is rewarded at the end of their quest.

This separation will be central to my argument in this article. However, before discussing this generic confusion in detail, I will first briefly overview Turkish television history. After that, I will explore the history of Turkish television series and how the Turkish dizi can be understood as both a local and, increasingly, a global phenomenon.

Heralded as the top export good in a promotional magazine, Episode, published for the Mipcom Cannes 2023, the Turkish television series is reported to be broadcast in 150 countries and watched by 800 million viewers, generating one billion USD in export income for the country. (Doğan 2023, 2) Furthermore, the article notes that

“25 percent of all fiction productions imported by all countries are of Turkish origin” and watched predominantly by “educated women over the age of 30.”

“They say they like the pace of narration, the music, the production quality, mysterious endings, strong dramatic crescendos, and the impossible love based on ethical reasons.” (Doğan, 5)

While such data may be contested, it still shows that Turkish television series or the dizi have a global appeal reminiscent of perhaps that of the soap operas and telenovelas in the earlier decades. While the introduction of television technology, the dissemination of television sets, and the development of televisual programming seem to be comparatively later than in Western countries, the contemporary success of Turkish television series also had its backdrop in the history of television.

Incomplete television history

However, despite there are many academic studies on contemporary Turkish television series and the textual analysis of specific series, it is quite challenging to find a comprehensive study on "Turkish Television History" that deals with historical processes and transformations. In this sense, alongside Sevilay Çelenk's work, which is cited in many academic studies, there is also Ömer Serim's book. However, such works mostly recount the turning points of television regulations, the introduction of new television channels, and famous television personalities.

Furthermore, some earlier accounts of television in Turkey present an elitist look down on televisual content, especially by disparaging the local content. For instance, Erol Mutlu viewed the dizi negatively in 1999, arguing that the local productions are mediocre at best, even worse than mediocre, and they rely solely on star actors and narratives, and as such far away from the level of Hollywood series such as The Fugitive (Roy Huggins, 1963-1967) or Dallas (David Jacobs, 1978-1991). (51-52)Alternatively, after highlighting how Turkish domestic programs are doing comparatively better in the local market than their European counterparts, Sevilay Çelenk highlights that in 1998, four out of ten of the most-watched television programs were “domestic TV fiction programs”. (2001, 181) On the other hand, for Öztürkmen, dizi, a Turkish television genre developed from the 1990s on,

“is a weekly TV show, with a duration of around two hours; it is usually shot in real locations and adopts a visual narrative style, where stories interweaving romance, action, and family life are delivered with an emotive and natural slowness.” (2023, 24)

For her, the new generation shorter drama format produced for digital platforms is different from the dizi’s “natural slowness,” its slow-motion action.

Arzu Öztürkmen’s monograph is also an extensive study of the Turkish television series. While the first two are overviews of television history, Öztürkmen offers two lines of inquiry. For her, while the creative workers construct the genre through an interdiscursive process, dizi may also be viewed as more than its textual content, through the articulation of everyday life events and developments into the scripts, thus creating an intermediality. (2022, 111) The dizi genre’s unique storytelling and emotional depth offer multiple avenues of inquiry, and while there are multiple articles on the topics, the genre’s history remains comparatively understudied.

Broadly speaking, the turning points in Turkish television history are mostly discussed through milestones such as the establishment of TRT in 1964, the start of its broadcast in 1968, and the start of private television broadcasts after 1989. Alternatively, another look at television history entails what different channels offer, the opportunities brought by new technologies, and the content produced. This latter line of thinking may put the history of Turkish television in line with the broader developments in the television and broadcast sectors elsewhere. For instance, parallels may be drawn with British or U.S. television histories. John Ellis divided British television history into three broad periods (scarcity, availability, and abundance of content), and in U.S. television history, Steve Behrens’ three periods are later detailed by Rogers, Epstein, and Reeves as TVI, TVII, and TVIII.

Three eras

In line with such studies, Turkish television history may also be divided into three broad eras as done by Arslan and Tetik. (2021) The first era, that of "scarcity" (even though the first local broadcast was initiated by Istanbul Technical University in 1952), began in 1968 with the first broadcasts of TRT and lasted until 1989 when the first private channel began satellite broadcasting from abroad. In this initial era, limited content was broadcast terrestrially to national viewers on only one or, in later periods, two television channels. The entrance of television sets into family homes in the mid-1970s created a sense of unity and shared content consumption for the generations growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, in 1986, when TRT introduced a second channel, this new national channel may be viewed as the first thematic channel, increasing the amount and variety of content produced alongside the transition to color broadcasting in 1984.

In this era, televisual content may be seen as aiming to produce what David Thorburn calls “consensus narratives.” As Öztürkmen notes with reference to Özden Çankaya, the initial technological infrastructure of TRT was predominantly German technology, but when producing content, TRT looked toward BBC. (40) When one looks at the earliest TRT television series produced in the 1970s and 1980s, the series not only reproduced the official ideology but also aimed at serving as consensus narratives that focused on family audiences and reproduced moral values and social structures. Yet, these and later early TRT series, now remembered with a hint of nostalgia, are indeed what may be termed as quality productions respecting social values.

The second era in Turkish television history was initiated after the foundation of the first private television channels in 1989, which started satellite broadcasts in 1990. While TRT started the influx of imported television series in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, the increase in the number of private satellite networks introduced all sorts of content from different Western countries, and these channels also locally produced similar content afterwards. This period of “availability” lasted until 2000 and allowed the diversification of television channels and the multiplication of content (including but not limited to talk or music shows, game shows, daytime content, children’s content, and explicit late-night content).

During this period, satellite channels were legalized, and the majority transitioned to terrestrial broadcasting; a rating system was established; and with the diversity of broadcasts, the younger, more educated urban population started consuming more content from thematic channels. Of course, while these new channels initially relied on broadcasting old popular Turkish movies, once they were legalized and made more profits, they also started demanding local content, especially television series. These early series are the first examples of the contemporary Turkish dizi, which had become the defining trait of Turkish television in the third era.

Despite coming to or having just arrived at a close in the last couple of years, it is possible to talk of a third era in Turkish television history since 2000. This third era started with the spread of digital technologies and multi-platforms, especially pay-to-view satellite broadcasting, as well as the integration of the local industry into the global televisual sector. As the first subscription-based satellite television service providing national, international, and its own thematic channels, the foundation of Digiturk in 2000 allowed further diversification and internationalization of the content and its “abundance.” Apart from the rise of the dizi as a defining trait, this era also entails the popularity of TV formats, both global and locally produced versions, or novel local formats.

However, the contemporary influx of global streaming platforms, the introduction of local platforms, as well as Web and mobile televisual content are all changing what one makes of television nowadays. Currently, there are multiple platforms offering all-comprehensive content or some thematic platforms. While the global platforms such as Netflix and HBO Max produce local content, there are also multiple local platforms such as Gain, Exxen, Tod, Puhu TV, Ssport+, and Tabii. However, the series produced for these platforms are predominantly mini-series and comparatively shorter than the dizi.

Furthermore, multiple local formats and other types of content (documentaries, children’s programs, talk shows, and news) are being produced by creating an abundance of content. However, recent developments with regard to televisual and cinematic production, especially in terms of post-cinema, immersive and interactive technologies, social media content, and other mobile content, present novel avenues of production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption. Furthermore, the introduction of artificial intelligence at different levels and aspects of televisual content production is a further and significant development, triggering a breakthrough. Thus, if revised, this third era of abundance has come to a closure, paving the way for the influx of newer technologies leading to further digitalization and AI-integrated content production, the production of vertical and short-form series, as well as a democratization of content production through social media and other alternative networks.

The three broad eras of Turkish television history noted above cover the overlapping aspects and dimensions of technology, televisual regulations, and content diversification, as well as sociopolitical history and developments in the media and cultural sectors in the last few decades. However, a look at the history of Turkish television series may offer an alternative outlook, one that focuses on the content itself rather than the technological, social, and quantitative aspects of televisual production. Yet some of the milestones of television series production also fit into these three broad eras, but perhaps with a short delay following the turning points of these eras.

In other words, the structural changes manifested in series production and content with a delay of five to ten years. For example, Kaynanalar (Mothers-in-Law), the first full-fledged domestic series produced by TRT, and the year 1974, when TRT began regular seven-day broadcasting, mark a beginning. Similarly, with the start of private channels in 1989, series came to the fore, and the Star television network’s initiatives in this area began in 1991 with series like Ana (written by Kandemir Konduk), Şen Dullar (Merry Widows, dir. Ayşe Funda Aras, written by Necef Uğurlu), and Portatif Hüseyin (The Portable Hüseyin, dir. Gül Erbil and Ümit Volkan, written by Murat Kürüz). The majority of these early series were comedies. When it comes to drama, literary sources were mainly relied upon. Thus, TRT developed multiple adaptations from novels that were essentially known as "quality" series, especially in the 1980s and the early 1990s. Among these were mini-series adaptations from works such as Orhan Kemal's Hanımın Çiftliği (Lady’s Farm, 1990), Ömer Seyfettin's Perili Köşk (Haunted Mansion, 1990), Halikarnas Balıkçısı's Deniz Gurbetçileri (Sea Expatriates, 1991), and Peyami Safa's Fatih-Harbiye (1992).

The influx of private channels in the early 1990s and their legalization as private national and terrestrial networks in 1994 gave a push to the start of the local television series industry in the mid-1990s. When TRT was still the dominant television network, approximately 20 series, including mini-series, were produced annually during the late 1980s and up to 1992. This figure surpassed 40 annually from 1993 onwards and continued at this pace until the late 1990s. Although most series produced between 1991 and 1995 were made for private channels, there is still a significant difference in genre compared to today. Among these were predominantly comedies, as well as a sizeable number of dramas revolving around neighborhoods and families. Despite being low in numbers, there were also crime, hospital, arabesque, or religious-themed series. However, almost all these series featured filmmakers (directors, writers, and actors) trained and practicing filmmaking in the Yeşilçam era (the popular Turkish film industry from the late 1940s to the early 1990s). Apart from these series, which essentially reproduced Yeşilçam tropes, there were a handful of series directed and sometimes written by Osman Sınav, who began directing series in 1987, but these were not long-running (spanning multiple seasons) series.

Yet in this era of “availability" between 1989 and 2000, the earliest prototypes of contemporary Turkish dizi were produced and informed the blueprints and genres of the yet-to-come popularity of the dizi. In this regard, two television series may be seen as the sources for the two later dominant genres of Turkish dizi: action-adventure and romance-adventure. As John G. Cawelti notes,

“the central fantasy of adventure is that of the hero–individual or group–overcoming obstacles and dangers and accomplishing some important and moral mission”. (1976, 39)

In addition, he places “the crucial defining characteristic of romance” as “the development of a love relationship” and its “moral fantasy” as the triumph of love. (1976, 41) To these two essential moral fantasies, Cawelti adds that of mystery, melodrama, and alien beings or states. The moral fantasy in mysteries addresses a reliable solution, and horror seeks to know the unknowable. On the other hand, for him, melodrama suggests violence and sensationalism, as well as a

“drama of intensified effects…to increase its emotional power and intensify its hold on the audience.”

Interestingly enough, with “the moral fantasy of showing forth the essential ‘rightness’ of the world order,” Cawelti notes how, indeed, detective stories and romance evolved from the early nineteenth-century melodramatic forms. (1976, 45) In this regard, while there may be a range of moral fantasies, the dizi may be seen as relying on two basic protocols: a single hero overcoming obstacles and restoring order; and oftentimes a heroine and a hero building a love relationship and securing the rightfulness of love and the family order against all odds. To put it differently, while the action-adventure emphasizes the hero’s struggle with a focus on survival, competition, and display of skill (physical in action or intellectual in mysteries and detective fiction), the romance-adventure is a journey or a quest toward a transcendent and idealistic goal – of love – which conquers all and secures the familial order.

In this new period of television series, it may be possible to observe two initial and defining series, one of which is an action-adventure and the other a romance-adventure, while both rely heavily on melodramatic tropes. The first proper romance-adventure in this sense is Kara Melek (Dark Angel), which aired on Star TV between 1997 and 2000. In today's terms, this series is based on melodrama, with female characters at the center and often responsible for multiple narrative triggers throughout the series. It stands out as the first example where the creative team, including the director (Uğur Erkır and Türkan Derya) and writer (Nuran Devres and Kubilay Zerener), and the lead female actors did not have a significant Yeşilçam background, and women were influential in the narrative creative team. While it is not common in the Turkish dizi to give the creative showrunner credit to the writers or concept developers of the series, these early writers were responsible for creating and running the stories, and they have been predominantly women, especially in these genres. The second series, which offered an alternative narrative protocol and generic practice, was Deli Yürek (Wild Heart, dir. Osman Sınav and Metin Günay, 1998-2002). The director, writer, and lead actors in this series were predominantly men. The narrative core of the series was rooted in masculine culture and heralded today's crime and mafia series (and perhaps even their later versions as historical action series).

Of course, there were other successful series spanning multiple seasons during this period. Among them are

Bizimkiler (Our People, dir. Yalçın Yelence, written by Fuat Örer, 1989-2002),
Gerçek Kesit (True Dimension, dir. Erbay Gül, 1993-2006),
Çılgın Bediş (Crazy Bediş, dir. Turgut Yasalar et al., 1996-2001),
Baba Evi (Father’s House, based on Orhan Kemal, 1997-2001),
Üvey Baba (Stepfather, dir. Tunca Yönder, 1998-2003),
Ruhsar (written by Gani Müjde and Fatih Solmaz, 1998-2001),
Ayrılsak da Beraberiz (Together Even Apart, dir. Sibel Kocataş et al., 1999-2004), and
Yılan Hikâyesi (Endless Story, dir. Yüksel Aksu and Nihat Durak, 1999-2002).

However, these series do not reflect the above prototype, partially except for Üvey Baba, but rather reflect some other genres such as comedy, family drama, and crime. Though these genres are still prevalent today (mainly except family dramas), they are not at the core of contemporary series production.

In a rather early discussion of the dizi and by calling the Turkish television series or the dizi “domestic TV fictions,” Çelenk specifies three models: family comedies set in a lower- or middle-class neighborhood; upper-class dramas portraying struggles over power, money or love affairs; and crime or action series displaying stars, politicians or businesspeople in corruption or mafia relations. She also adds a subgroup of shows featuring a famous singer in the lead role. (2001, 182) As it will be argued below, while the family dramedies set in neighborhoods lost their appeal with the rise of dizi, Çelenk’s other two categories fall under the two main generic blueprints discussed below: the romance-adventures and the action-adventures, both also informed by a melodramatic modality. On the other hand, Arzu Öztürkmen argues that dizi may be viewed as “a metagenre, embedding elements from different genres in the fields of theater, literature, cinema, video, advertising, fashion, humor, and music.” (2022, 116) However, Öztürkmen also notes that unlike the film studies’ use of melodrama or docudrama as a metagenre, her usage highlights the interrelations among creative forms. Later in the book, though, she elicits dizi as a genre,

“a media text, which lies at the intersection of production processes, broadcasting marketplaces, and audiences.” (129)

In her view, dizi are beyond texts, polysemic, and go beyond the original scripts:

“As dizis are written, produced, and broadcast simultaneously, the writing of a script is closely affected by the producers and network directors’ continual comments and by the responses coming from the social and printed media after the broadcast of each episode.” (2022, 133)

In this sense, Öztürkmen underlines how this practice is “operates in an interactive-performative way,” before once again highlighting dizi “as a distinctive television genre.” (2022, 135) In this sense, Öztürkmen highlights the entire process of the realization of a dizi, which, in classical film studies vocabulary, would translate into the production, distribution, exhibition, and reception of a dizi. Then, is dizi a single genre that is all-inclusive and completely comprehensive?

Melodrama’s possiblities

While this sense of dizi is appealing, would it be sufficient to term dizi as a standalone genre? Or should one attempt to understand what sorts of bifurcations exist in narratives of different series? Should one not look at the actual storylines and the narrative of a particular series to understand how they present their content and how a story unfolds? While dizi is a comprehensive term for all television series produced in the Turkish market, similar to film genres, there are also dizi genres—dramas, actions, comedies, police procedurals, period pieces, etc. In this other sense of understanding dizi, it may be helpful to reiterate what distinguishes the above-mentioned two mainframes from other series genres and how these two started to dominate the dizi sector in general. To illustrate this argument, one may focus on the series' narratives and how they reproduce multiple unchanging elements in terms of characters, plot, time-space, and main conflict. Do these stories reflect often-repeated storytelling conventions, including the journey of a hero, or do they depart from them? Are the motivations of characters, the cause-and-effect relationships between the actions and rewards, and the idea of a journey valid in these cases?

Obviously, every story is a journey, an adventure, but this is sometimes built around a single character and sometimes around multiple characters. While the journey and consequences of a single character's actions are usually manifested in action-based narratives, the construction of a romantic relationship or friendship bond between the two main characters and the attempts to eliminate threats to this bond may usually be seen in romance-based narratives. Similar perhaps to the story of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, who sets out on a journey to immortality and counter antagonisms and eliminates multiple threats throughout the journey, the action-based genre often features a male hero who counters the antagonists.

On the other hand, similar perhaps to tragic love story archetypes of Orpheus descending into the underworld in pursuit of Eurydice or Kays, who is driven mad by his love for Layla, the second romance-based genre often features a male and a female protagonist in the opening of the story and they stand against multiple obstacles to protect their bond of love. Yet the televisual adoption of these tragic love stories is not tragic and often reproduces multiple melodramatic elements with a happy ending. In the case of comedies, the dominant genre in contemporary mainstream Turkish cinema frequently features a male-hero-driven plotline, while a two-main character plotline (with a female and male hero) may often be found in romantic comedies.

The two late-1990s series Kara Melek and Deli Yürek may illustrate these two core narrative prototypes in different ways. Kara Melek, as its name suggests, is a romance: it appears to be the story of a woman who is both an "angel" and "dark," but it is actually a melodrama based on the sanctity of family unity and the pure goodness of the “real” angel Şule (Ece Uslu). Kara Melek Yasemin (Sanem Çelik/Berrin Politi), who resembles a typical Yeşilçam femme fatale, is the character at the center of intrigue in the series. The conflict between Yasemin and Şule defines the plot and also suggests a melodramatic clash between pure good and pure evil. Expectedly, at the end of the series, the good wins, and the innocence of the traditional and moral universe established by the series persists.

The melodramatic modality unites these two seemingly separate genres in Turkish television series. As Linda Williams puts it, beyond being a genre, melodrama has a trans-generic existence; it is a modality that is never devoid of pain and action. (1998) In this sense, melodrama is an ever-changing modality, too; it renews by constantly repeating itself. This modality offers sensation, excitement, constant motivation, plenty of pain and action in the battle between good and evil, emotionally charged dramatic conflicts, visually strong mise-en-scène, and messages with a dominant moral and conservative tone (Arslan, 2005, p. 106).

Television series provide a suitable field for this broad generic form because, although they may seem repetitive, each new episode nurtures new problems or intrigues. According to Williams, melodrama is the dominance of innocence, and in this calm and peaceful world, the victim-heroes are virtuous (Williams, 2014, p. 65). The evil characters threaten the bond of love and led the main characters to suffering. Watching melodrama is, in a way, sharing the pain of these victims, crying with them, and wanting the best for them—that is, wanting them to transform into heroes. But first, there must be suffering; first, there must be intrigues, and all sorts of troubles must befall the victim-hero—the exchange of pain and action must continue. The audience must share the pain of missed encounters, those who cannot be found while waiting to be rescued, those who cannot escape when they try, and those who cannot marry when they wish. Then, all the evil must be defeated, the victims must become heroes, and innocence must triumph because, on the moral plane, the innocent are always right; they wait with prophetic patience and eventually reach the promised paradise.

As Lynne Joyrich puts it, television is the home to melodrama, to an authentic and homely realistic world construction. Television draws us in, as a whole, in a shared bond of consumption and viewership. On the other hand, they contain features such as emotional effects created by music from cinematic melodrama, rhythm, exaggerated comings and goings, slowly progressing plots, dramatic explosions and collision moments, sudden changes in material conditions, and dramatic intensity created by visual metaphors based on repetition (Joyrich, 1988, p. 130-131). On the other hand, as a narrative structure that emerged in the modern era, it has been argued by Peter Brooks that melodrama fills the moral void that emerged in secularizing societies and helps to construct an escapade from the realities of the same life by producing a fantasy of pure innocence, free from the evils and crimes of life (1976). Melodrama relies on a mythical world where the burdens of real life are externalized beyond the real world where the weight of life should be carried.

However, as Agustín Zarzosa highlights, it is also essential not to fall under the influence of melodrama when discussing its own history. (2013) This unfairly treated, lowly genre does not need to be "saved" by academics who elevate it to a serious field of study. Even though melodrama visualizes a community's pain, sorrow, or grief and redistributes it, it also convinces us that suffering results from moral and social thought. According to Zarzosa, melodrama's real purpose is the redistribution of the visualization of pain, and it hides its own working system to present its true purpose as moral ideas (2013). Melodrama, which operates at the boundaries of material reality where material exchange and objects have exchange value, becomes synonymous with the amalgamation of a community and its values. Thus, following Zarzosa, melodrama's integration of sorrow results in both bodily sharing within the community and the redistribution of this totality's visibility within the community. Melodrama achieves this through emotionality, interpretation, exchange, excess, victimhood, and chance.

On the other hand, Michael Stewart criticizes Zarzosa's approach, finding the Deleuzian modal concept-based parts of it ahistorical, and points out that the pain-based melodrama Zarzosa speaks of also appears in Jane Campion's The Piano (1993), known as a woman's film, or Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (2005), known as a queer film (Stewart, 2014). Even Haneke's modernist melodramas, which push realism and emotionality to extremes, adding new meanings to excess, are relevant. On the other hand, regarding television series, Stewart notes that positioning melodrama within film studies and soap opera studies as separate leads to a misunderstanding, and Christine Gledhill's studies establish a parallel between the two through realism (Stewart, 2014). Similarly, Linda Williams notes that The Wire (David Simon, 2002-2008) is one of the most realistic and outlier series in U.S. television history, yet an old-fashioned melodrama with its "Dickensian" plotline. (2014) Thus, melodrama on television is not limited to soap operas or pure melodramatic.

The success of quality dizi

In the world of contemporary television, while melodrama is either home to television or its often-repeated generic form, the melodramatic has often been put against the realistic. The third era of Turkish television also catered for a separation between mainstream dizi and quality dizi. From the early 2000s to 2014, mainstream series filled two-thirds of the prime-time broadcasts of the top six national television channels. (Deloitte, 2014) While the prime-time slots on national television have been dominated by series, first thematic channels and later platforms expanded and claimed to offer local and global quality content.

Similarly, in the U.S., the broadcast "television series" started being free from television schedules, and with HBO, a discourse of "quality" emerged. (Thompson, 2007, xviii). In the national framework, this development became evident with the establishment of new digital platforms like Puhutv and BluTV in the late 2010s and Netflix's entry into local production. Earlier TRT productions were also viewed as quality productions by being respectable literary adaptations, with a sizeable production budget and visual quality, by addressing historical or cultural values, or by employing a creative team with auteuristic tendencies.

While there is a similar trend in the contemporary television market, quality television series were only a minimal part of the total content production. Instead, the mainstream is dominated by two predominantly melodramatic but distinct core genres: action-adventures and romance-adventures. The immense popularity of the series following the two core plot structures arrived at its initial peak in the early 2000s with Asmalı Konak (The Mansion with Vines, dir. Çağan Irmak, written by Mahinur Ergun and Meral Okay, 2002-2003). The series reached a 25.9 rating and a 78% share in its final episode, a point now impossible to repeat due to the diversification of viewing practices beyond television. Set in a coveted Turkish tourist spot, Cappadocia, the series is a typical romance-adventure, telling the melodramatic love story of a western-educated Istanbulite upper-middle-class woman and an upper-class but traditional Central Anatolian man. The series is set in a mansion and both the larger family and the local life create the obstacles.

Similarly, an adaptation of a classic novel and a remake of the series mentioned above, Aşk-ı Memnu (Forbidden Love, dir. Hilal Saral, written by Ece Yörenç and Melek Gençoğlu, 2008-2010) is most likely the second-highest watched finale in Turkish television history, with a 23.4 rating and 73.7% share. Interestingly, the reruns of this particular series have also been very popular, creating an interesting case of cult viewership. Once again, Aşk-ı Memnu, also set in a mansion by the Bosporus and telling the story of a love triangle that ends tragically, fits the romance-adventure archetype. Among the highest-rated television series are also two action-adventures: Kurtlar Vadisi (Valley of the Wolves, creator Osman Sınav, 2003-2016) and Diriliş Ertuğrul (Resurrection: Ertuğrul, creator Mehmet Bozdağ, 2014-2019). Extending to 300 episodes and marketed as “a mafia series,” Kurtlar Vadisi revolves around its male hero’s fight against mafia, deep state, and global threats and is a proper nationalist action-adventure.

Following their local success, the Turkish television series were first exported to countries with geographic proximity, which was later followed by a considerable global reach. Nowadays, the dizi is an economic and cultural product that is promoted, marketed, and sold as a proper national brand, associated with the soft power of Turkish culture and politics. Even though the first series export was TRT's Aşk-ı Memnu (The Forbidden Love, dir. Halit Refiğ) in 1980 and the earliest sale in the third era was Deli Yürek (Osman Sınav) in 2001, the contemporary precursors to the international sales began with Binbir Gece (1001 Nights, written by Yıldız/Ayfer Tunç et al., 2006-2009) and Gümüş (Noor, written by Eylem Canpolat and Sema Ergenekon, 2005-2007), both becoming popular in the Middle Eastern and Balkan countries. Despite their little success in Northern Europe and Northern America, today, the Turkish dizi has a relatively strong global reach, especially in regions where telenovelas once dominated. Furthermore, a remarkable number of the series are remade in other countries, including Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Romania, Poland, Ukraine, the USA, Russia, India, Mexico, Lebanon, Indonesia, Thailand, South Africa, among others.

In the contemporary world of televisual content production, the early signs of a fourth era have also been appearing. Alongside the distinction between mainstream series and "quality" productions for the rather new digital platforms, there are also new short-format and, at times, vertically viewed series broadcast on the Web and for mobile devices. This means that content production has begun to move beyond the oligopoly of cinema and series markets dominated by those with specific production budgets. This is influenced both by the low cost of new digital production practices and the fact that Generation Z's connection with television has begun to break down significantly.

This period can also be called the post-network era because production methods have diversified, and consumption patterns have spread to other screens like computers and mobile devices (Lotz, 2014, p. 16). Of course, in this new viewing environment, it is possible to access everything (even by using pirate solutions). Thus, there is also excess here, beyond content; the ways of producing and consuming content are also excessive.