Abstract
Scarcity is the defining characteristic of television's history in Turkey due to the late arrival of a multi-channel structure, and the experience of television in Turkey is shaped by the extensive involvement of the government and the high level of social control over broadcasting. The dissatisfaction during the pre-streaming era among the audiences in Turkey started to intensify by early 2010s because of the formulaic and similar stories with no diversity, strict regulation and censorship, and the tediousness of long, slow-paced series and extended ad breaks. The arrival of streaming services in 2016–17 was initially disruptive of the strictly regulated market due to the lack of necessary laws for regulating online streaming. Streaming continues to be a significant alternative for producers/creators and audiences in Turkey, with increased political and cultural diversity in local stories and the emergence of diverse genres and formats with different aesthetic tendencies.
Keywords
Such platforms do not suit this nation, this country. We ask our parliament to ban and control such social media channels completely. Do you understand why it matters that we are against social media such as YouTube, Twitter, Netflix and such? To eliminate indecencies.
If you shut down Netflix before I finish the last season of Dark, I will be really offended, Mr
@RTErdogan #DontTouchMySocialMedia.
In 2020, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey, made a statement including Netflix as ‘social media’ alongside platforms such as Twitter and YouTube, and accused it of indecency, calling for it to be controlled and banned. One of the main figures in the opposition forces, politician Meral Akşener responded to him on Twitter, saying that she would be ‘offended’ if he shut down Netflix before she finished the last season of the popular Netflix original Dark. This case illustrates Netflix's ideological and political position in Turkey in the current political context, which has included regulation by Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTSC) and de facto censorship (and self-censorship) since 2019 (Koçer, 2020). This allowed the RTSC to regulate and monitor Netflix and other streaming services and platforms such as YouTube, causing a backlash on social media with hashtags such as #DontTouchMyNetflix (Ildir and Celik Rappas, 2021).
Conflating Netflix with social media and all other ‘tech’ has become less common in the West, but in Turkey it has afforded the service ‘outsider’ status that makes it ideologically significant within the country, sometimes imagined as a platform with a political and oppositional function contrary to the hegemonic conservative ideology of the government in power. In Turkey, users and audiences generally conceive of Netflix as an alternative to broadcast television (as illustrated by the #DontTouchMyNetflix campaign), which is mostly led, regulated, and controlled by the state. This frame is crucial to understanding Turkey's changing video cultures in relation to streaming and national/global media flows.
Turkey is one of the world's top exporters of television series (Bhutto, 2019) and a country with a robust television culture, which makes it a region that stands at the intersection of global and local flows in internet television and video cultures (Vitrinel, 2018). Television in Turkey has been defined by structural and political constraints and scarcity in content, except for the brief period of diversity in the late 1990s and early 2000s enabled by cable and satellite television that resulted in standardization of content in Turkish broadcast television.
Streaming services arrived in Turkey relatively late, and their adoption by a mainstream audience segment is comparatively recent. The streaming era in Turkey started with Netflix's entry into the Turkish market in 2016, followed by subscriber-funded BluTV and ad-supported Puhu TV. There was a notable increase in the use and adoption of streaming services in the following years, both global (MUBI, Amazon Prime, Disney+, YouTube) and local (Gain, Exxen). 1 Three main structural conditions explain this late adoption. Foremost, the existing television industry has been very influential and did not seek to grow their businesses by launching streaming services and instead maintained industrial norms that ensured their centrality (Bağcı, 2022). Until Netflix introduced ‘a legal option’ for accessing content and stories, only a limited number of Turkish television channels offered on-demand access (such as D-Smart, Tivibu, Kablo TV, Turkcell TV+) (Duman, 2019). Pay-TV was also not a prevalent option due to both economic and cultural factors. Bağcı (2022) argues that ‘paying’ to watch television content is conventionally associated with premium sports or movie channels in Turkey, rather than any other type of broadcast content. His research indicates that the notion of ‘paying’ for television content only became prevalent with the introduction of streaming services in Turkey, especially during the pandemic era.
The second condition slowing adoption in Turkey is the underdeveloped digital infrastructure required for streaming. While internet usage is very common in Turkey (reaching 45% of the whole population in 2012 and growing to 74% [62.7 million people] in 2020), 2 high-speed internet was only available in certain regions, generally big cities such as İstanbul, Ankara, and İzmir until the early 2010s. Average internet speeds (28.89 Mbps for fixed broadband and 34.79 Mbps for mobile download) are still substantially lower than the global average (96.43 Mbps for fixed broadband and 47.20 Mbps for mobile download) according to the latest Speedtest Global Index data. Low-speed internet posed a problem in the audience's adoption of digital streaming services until technologies such as high-quality video encoding technology were introduced by services such as Netflix.
The third condition slowing adoption is the extensive involvement of the government and the high level of social control over broadcasting (Algan and Kaptan, 2020; Koçer, 2020; Özsoy, 2011). Turkey's RTSC was established in 1994 to regulate radio and television broadcasting. It is a powerful state institution known for its controversial decisions, mostly in the form of arbitrary censorship or broadcasting bans (Akın et al., 2018). In addition, to its political censorship, mostly on Kurdish-language content, the RTSC has strictly enforced prohibitions on sexuality, nudity, alcohol, drugs, and strong language. Especially after the 2016 coup d’état attempt, many programmes and series were banned on the grounds that they contradicted the authoritarian state ideology or the sensibilities of the conservative audience, including on issues such as religion, family, and nationality. These policies created a very harsh and oppressive environment for the producers and limited the range of stories to an extremely narrow offering most likely not to evoke controversy.
Producers developed strategies to deal with these restrictions because the financial and political support of the state was vital in the export of series. Those solutions often came at the expense of what viewers wanted – which could be managed in an environment in which there was no other viewer choice. For example, to appease the RTSC producers opted for more conventional stories constrained within traditional family values and focused on non-political themes such as melodramatic love stories that avoided any representation of sexuality outside the ‘norm’. The mainstream audience in Turkey seemed satisfied with the content encouraged by these policies, but a significant part of the local audience was dissatisfied with and critical of the increasing number of historical epics, histrionic soap operas, and ‘summertime series’ based on Cinderella stories with comedy and romance elements (Ildir and Celik Rappas, 2021, 2022). This segment of the audience was mostly highly educated, technologically literate, and middle class, and they were among the earliest adopters of streaming, initially from illegal streaming sites or through torrenting before streaming services were legally available. The market pressure toward exportable content, the change in ratings, and state control combined to motivate this audience segment to seek alternatives.
Despite these factors slowing adoption, high levels of industry experience in production allowed local production companies a relatively smooth transition to the streaming era. Turkey has a well-established television culture that mostly depends on exporting low-budget television series that deliver significant revenue. The exports are mostly melodramatic stories filled with convoluted intrigue and nationalist period pieces glorifying the history of Turkey that have a serial structure, and each episode typically takes almost 3 hours, including the long commercial breaks. Most of these series are regulated by the RTSC, which is an ideological apparatus of the government.
As a consequence of the structural and political constraints in Turkish broadcast television, before streaming, Turkish viewers faced both scarcity and a lack of diversity, and broadcasting was mainly dominated by the state-owned TRT until the 1990s. Television in Turkey witnessed a radical standardization in format and aesthetics in the 2010s and content grew increasingly conservative due to pressure by the increasingly authoritarian government. The arrival of streaming services in 2016–17 consequently disrupted the strictly regulated market, at least initially, due to the lack of laws regulating online streaming. Streaming continues to be a significant alternative for both the producers/creators and audiences in Turkey even though the quick adoption and popularization of streaming services, especially Netflix, has caught the attention of the authorities (Yorenc, 2020) and encouraged services to lean toward more mainstream content recently.
The article begins with a detailed overview of the pre-streaming environment of Turkey. This context is crucial because to a great extent it shapes the country's particular adoption of streaming and explains developments that are quite different from many Western markets. This streaming pre-history is structured by three conditions and two developments. The first condition is the high television viewing numbers and revenues, and broadcasters’ lack of interest in investing in foreign or streaming content; the second condition is the insufficient technological infrastructure; and the last is the intensified state control/regulation and political pressure. These three conditions structure how Turkish television has evolved in response to internet-distributed video. Two other developments also defined the pre-streaming market and are significant in understanding the adoption of streaming: the transnationalization tied to prioritizing drama exports and the change in the rating system in the domestic market in 2011. Cumulatively these conditions and developments initially led to significant piracy once the internet became available in Turkey. That was largely replaced by widespread use of YouTube, although YouTube surprisingly became an important source for accessing Turkish television. The article concludes with a close look at Netflix Turkey's original series relative to series norms in Turkey, and illustrates how a global streaming service that is not constrained by the broadcast television norms contributes to political and cultural diversity in local stories.
Turkish television before the digital era
Understanding the emerging streaming dynamics in Turkey requires an appreciation of the industrial, sociocultural, economic, and political conditions that support Turkey's television culture. Neoliberal economic policies were implemented after the 1980 coup, and Turkey adopted an export-oriented economy; Şenses, an economic scholar, argues these policies ‘have penetrated almost all aspects of economic and social life during the past thirty or more years, and represent by far the most important transformation of economic policy in Turkey’ (2012: 12). Even though this neoliberal model is generally considered to be one that ‘failed to fulfill its promises’ (Şenses, 2012: 12), it positively affected areas such as information and communication technologies, including television. Following industrial and technological developments supported by neoliberal economic policies, television became a significant part of daily life in Turkey due to the increase of the home-based cultural life, the arrival of colour television, and the crisis of the domestic film industry.
From 1980, television has been central to Turkish culture and the country has featured high levels of viewing despite quite limited choice until very recently. The average time spent watching television per day has been decreasing since 2006, but it still averaged over 3.5 hours (214 min) per day in 2018. 3 The substantial viewing levels encouraged the advertising industry to rely on television and has made the television industry one of the most important economic resources of Turkey. The spending on television advertising in Turkey increased constantly from 2010 to 2021, despite decreased viewing, with television ranking second behind digital media in advertising spending in 2021. 4 Television continues to gather large audiences and has a strong influence on public opinion in Turkey (Kurban and Sozeri, 2011: 14), which leads to its continued value in the eyes of advertisers. In addition, ad revenue in the broadcast sector is highly significant for the Turkish economy. Despite the arrival of VOD (video on demand) technology, streaming services, and internet television, the stability of broadcast television and the robust viewing culture around it has not been significantly disrupted (Bağcı, 2022). Streaming has been more complementary to broadcast television in Turkey than a disruptor or rival.
Ongoing scarcity
The scarcity that defines history of television in Turkey stems from political/ideological constraints and the late arrival of multi-channel structure. Until 1986, there was a state monopoly and only one channel, TRT (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation) that is mainly a publicly funded channel also supported by ad revenue. 5 TRT launched new free-to-air broadcast channels such as TRT 2, TRT 3, and TRT GAP in the late 1980s, but this multiplicity did not bring diversity in perspective because the content was still produced from the government point of view (Algan and Kaptan, 2020). These channels offered additional educational or entertainment programmes and content in Kurdish or Arabic but were very limited in perspective, and the state-sponsored TRT tightly controlled their content. Furthermore, TRT 1 broadcast for 17 hours per day, but other channels only operated from 5 to 9 hours (Ogan, 1992). This significant lack of choice led to patterns of adoption and priorities quite distinctive from other markets, especially Western countries that dominate our understanding of streaming adoption.
The multi-channel era arrived relatively later than Western countries, due to the effects of the 1980 coup d’état and the policies of the Ozal government. The new neoliberal economic policies implemented after the end of military rule in 1980 had drastic effects on television and resulted in changes to broadcasting policies and implications for television content (Algan and Kaptan, 2020: 5). The new government under the rule of Motherland Party (ANAP) supported private entrepreneurship and the entrance of big corporations (such as Doğan Holding) into the media sector (Kurban and Sozeri, 2011). Even though private broadcasting was deemed unconstitutional in Turkey, the industry strategically (and illegally) used satellite technology to challenge the state monopoly and started to provide diverse content in the 1990s. Magic Box Inc. launched its first channel, Star TV, which was available on satellite dish or cable systems in 1990 but was adopted by few. TRT started to be concerned about Star TV as an illegal channel only after the Magic Box purchased the exclusive distribution rights for 1990–91 soccer games. After the launch of other illegal domestic channels such as Teleon, HBB TV, and Kanal 6, the government gave broadcasting permission to private radio and television stations in July 1993 (Algan and Kaptan, 2020), which marks the transition to multi-channel broadcasting. If Turkey can be said to have a multi-channel transition in terms of Lotz's (2014) account of television in US, it came almost 10 years later than in Western countries.
As the market options increased in the late 1990s, the state monopoly over broadcasting ended and limited privatization through domestic conglomerates and was allowed through deregulation. These adjustments enabled development of what quickly became a lucrative production sector. Although the changes are quite significant from the perspective of industry, this stage does not bring significant change for viewers, rather more of the limited fare already available. The RTSC's control over the content was very effective in limiting the range and diversity of the stories, despite the addition of private channels and more genres. 6 Notably, viewers experienced a multi-channel model for the first time as channels owned by conglomerates and companies that were relatively independent from the state ideology became available alongside the state-owned TRT's sub-channels.
From 1994 until the wide availability and adoption of streaming in 2016, two developments shaped the Turkish television sector: transnationalization tied to prioritizing exporting drama and the transition from the Nielsen rating system to Transaction Network Services (TNS) in the domestic market. These two developments have significant implications for what content/stories were created, and in setting the conditions and norms of viewing and reception into which streaming services arrived.
Turkish drama exports
As one of the largest television programme exporters, the Turkish industry has been a key node in transnational flows since the late 2000s (Bhutto, 2019). While the implications of Turkish storytelling travelling abroad are important, for the purposes here, the consequences of the global trade on the domestic market take priority. Turkish exports structured operation of the sector by the 2010s. Following the establishment of the private channels in the 1990s, the early 2000s witnessed the burgeoning of local production, with a significant increase in the advertising market that, in turn, increased the available funds in the sector. Many theatre and film professionals transferred to television, film companies started producing for television, and new production companies emerged. These developments increased the competition and production quality, and also increased the series’ success in foreign markets (Yeşil, 2015). The exports brought annual revenue of US$350 million in 2016, making the country one of the largest exporters of scripted television content (Vivarelli, 2017). The prioritizing of the sector began with the unprecedented success of the series, Gümüş (Noor), in the Arab market in 2008, and continued with series such as A Thousand Nights (2006–9) and Magnificent Century (2011–13). These series were exported initially to the Middle East and Balkans and became very popular. Turkish series gradually extended their export range to include Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Asia.
Significant increases in export revenue since the 2010s have enlarged the importance of the sector in the Turkish economy and the export market has come to shape what is made for the Turkish domestic market (Yeşil, 2015). These series depict Turkey and İstanbul as very affluent, idealised, and polished in a manner that attracts tourists to Turkey. The Turkish audience was bombarded with series that range from period dramas that represent the Ottoman court (Magnificent Century) to melodramas that portray rich boy-poor girl romance (Love for Rent) (Ildir and Celik Rappas, 2021). The series construct a highly nationalistic version of Turkey's history, one in which the military figures strongly. For local viewers, this representation presents a paradox, it provides a positive vision of Turkey but one that is no longer accurate. It represents a history, life, and culture of the country that is far from the political, economic, and cultural realities of 21st-century Turkey, and this vision satisfies the mainstream audience that is closer to the conservative and nationalist ideology of the government. The Turkish exports thus function as a form of soft power and cultural expansion that simultaneously reassures those resistant to cultural change that could threaten existing power structures. As an example, Orakçı (2021) analyses reactions and counter-reactions of viewers to the historical epic, Diriliş: Ertuğrul. It is a Turkish historical fiction series produced for TRT set in the 13th century and based on the life of the son of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire. While the series drew a considerable number of viewers, Orakçı's research on audience reactions on social media illustrates that viewers criticized how the series concealed or manipulated the ongoing realities of Turkey.
Producing successful exports became a more reliable route to success than the unstable environment of the domestic market, another factor influential in transnationalizing Turkish series. Domestic performance became less vital with most revenue coming from foreign markets. Even though increased competition in the local market improved quality, it created a very precarious environment, with many constraints on stories. A key reason the arrival of streaming was so significant was the reset of competitive dynamics to reprioritize the domestic Turkish market that was not interested in the export dramas.
Counting Turkish attention
Despite the limited liberalization offered by private channels, the state continues significant regulation of television. Media scholar Bulut (2016) argues that the government-mandated changes to the ratings system in 2012 is one of the most visible instances of this involvement. The government’s introduction of a new rating system in 2012 profoundly altered broadcasters’ priorities and seeded dissatisfaction among some audiences that the streamers would capitalize on. Before 2012, Nielsen measured viewers and attributed ratings using a system that led the industry to prioritize viewers located in capital cities with high education levels and cultural capital (Bulut, 2016). In this system, the ‘A&B’ group was considered most attractive to advertisers, an audience strongly composed of those who were secular, earned upper middle-class incomes, and known for ‘Western taste’ (Atay as quoted in Özçetin, 2016). The new rating system provided by TNS instead categorizes audiences according to their income level, and expanded to include regions with populations of less than 2000 people. These new regions tended to be more rural and composed of electoral districts dominated by Justice and Development Party supporters and the Muslim bourgeoisie, both more conservative than the A&B city dwellers. The change in the ratings system profoundly adjusted ‘who’ counted and the content strategies most viable for attracting the largest audience.
The new ratings system increased competition and destabilized the media landscape. Channels struggled to reach the attract sufficient advertising after the inclusion of the new regions. Producers and channels were not familiar with the taste and preferences of these viewers and the new A&B group was now judged solely by their income level. The new priority audience was less predictable or coherent in taste because its members do not share common cultural capital, the target became rural audiences as well as urban audiences. Producers found it extremely difficult to make series that appeal to this bifurcated audience that had conflicting taste, so many shows began to be cancelled in the middle of their first season. Only a few series with big stars and high production values survived under these market conditions.
The transition to the TNS rating system disrupted the production dynamics and radically changed storytelling practices and the audience experience. Producers had to respond to channels’ new priority, focusing on more conservative audiences, thus new programmes increasingly emphasized tradition and family values. The uncertainty of the domestic sector encouraged many producers to shift to developing content for global markets.
An immediate response of channels managing cancellation of many shows was to extend the duration of the very few series that attracted an audience from 90 minutes to 135 or 145 minutes to increase their ad revenue. However, requirements of 20 minutes of content for every 7 minutes of advertising meant that almost every episode of a series broadcast during prime time became 2.5 to 3 hours so as to include enough advertisements to balance costs. This bloated narrative and pacing and required directors to invent low-cost stylistic devices to increase screen time without spending too much labour, time, and money. The most famous device was to feature characters taking extremely long looks at each other accompanied by dramatic music in the background action scenes that are extended in slow motion and repeated.
Gradually more reasonable techniques emerged: mainstream narratives of Turkish television now feature extensive plot twists that delay resolution. Producers also came to rely on stories with conservative storylines, generic elements, melodramatic structures, and famous stars, changes that also benefited series in finding a sizeable global audience. Yeşil (2015) suggests that producers tried to keep the stories and characters as global as possible by diminishing their local characteristics and increasing the generic elements, especially through reliance on melodramas and historical dramas with Cinderella storylines.
These thematic and stylistic story transformations radically changed the viewer experience locally and created the conditions for the rapid adoption of streaming services after 2017. Local viewers had grown weary of television dramas due to their long duration and excessive ad breaks. Notably, when Turkish drama airs in other countries a three-hour episode is generally divided into two or three separate and short episodes that provide a better viewing experience. This practice illustrates the artificial norms Turkish drama had adopted to earn the ad revenue required, despite the negative consequences for the viewing experience of the Turkish audience. The pacing and duration problems also combined with censorship and reliance on formulaic storylines and characters to create an unsatisfying experience for members of the Turkish audience who were mostly highly educated and middle class. Until streaming, viewers had little choice but to accept these slow stories.
The context in which streaming arrived in Turkey was consequently shaped by two developments that were quite unusual among other markets. As noted in the introduction, Turkey's lack of internet infrastructure, broadcaster lack of interest, and state control helped slow the arrival of internet distribution. But once the technological capacity was in place, the factors driving dissatisfaction among a minority spurred swift change.
Turkey's adoption of video streaming
By the late 2010s, expanded infrastructure and bandwidth supported the technological conditions for a more convenient viewing experience through internet-distributed video than linear television. Early adopters viewed series, films, and many other types of content through YouTube, illegal streaming/torrenting, and peer-to-peer sharing. In addition to strict regulation of content and minimal diversity in stories, many other factors, such as the high price of tickets in multiplexes and the limited number of films released in theatres also led viewers to legal and illegal internet viewing (Bozdag, 2016). According to MUSO (a technology company providing anti-piracy), there have been 11.9 billion visits to piracy websites across music, TV and film, publishing, and software in Turkey, leading the country to rank fifth in the world (MUSO, 2017). Even before Netflix and other VOD services arrived, an audience segment was already following foreign content through piracy (Dziadul, 2017).
The attraction of these services was both access to content otherwise unavailable and to an on-demand experience. Viewers used websites such as YouTube and Dailymotion to watch many different types of content: linear television content made available by Turkish broadcasters as well as foreign content, especially American series, mostly available through unauthorized sharing.
YouTube and piracy allowed Turkish viewers their first taste of on-demand access, with its time- and space-shifting opportunities, and introduced them to individualized consumption of television content before the streamers formally arrived. Pirated content was generally consumed via computers and increased access to diverse content from different regions and cultures. YouTube, on the other hand, made the audience more familiar with a mobile experience of content on different devices. The high proportion of young people in Turkey who accepts the innovations faster than the older generations, and the arrival of Turkish-language support in 2012 are also among the main reasons for YouTube's popularity in Turkey (Isman and Guzelsoy, 2019: 77).
As the number of viewers migrating to internet viewing increased, producers and television channels uploaded their content on YouTube in an attempt to circumvent the commercial and regulatory limits of broadcasting (Kuyucu, 2019). In his analysis of the official YouTube channel streaming The Magnificent Century – a world-famous Turkish historical drama – Yolcu observes the national, but also global, popularity of the channel which streams in 12 languages. He explains how YouTube became a significant hub for the circulation of broadcast content in Turkey and throughout the world, noting that many Turkish dramas produced for broadcast have an official channel on YouTube (2011: 130).
Watching Turkish channels’ drama on YouTube is also more convenient in terms of technological convenience since it allows the viewers to skip the unnecessary or extended parts within the series or watch them at a faster speed. Moreover, YouTube ads are much shorter and less frequent than the ones on broadcast television, and can be avoided entirely with YouTube Premium. This practice of watching ‘Turkish television’ on YouTube became so widespread that a single episode of a popular series was being watched by hundreds of thousands of people – even by millions – once later adopters arrived (Yolcu, 2011). Viewers’ YouTube experience prepared them for the technological convenience then introduced by streaming services.
For many Turkish viewers, YouTube became a way to access broadcast television content so that it functioned as on-demand broadcast television in Turkey, as well as a source of many different types of content that might be associated with its use elsewhere. In addition to contemporary Turkish programming, many viewers also use YouTube to watch older local series and ‘binge-watch’ them. YouTube is among very few streaming services where viewers can access many old Turkish series and films (especially classics from the industry's golden years between the 1950s and the 1970s, also known as the ‘Yeşilçam era’). Some of these films, especially the popular productions, are regularly screened on linear television, but YouTube has a very extensive catalogue. One of the reasons for this wide range is that both the production companies and users who have rare copies of old Turkish films upload these films to YouTube. There was limited production of DVDs or videocassettes of these films in the past, and they are not currently available for general sale in the market, making YouTube the only access point.
YouTube also compensates for many functions of broadcast television that cannot be fulfilled due to political pressure and strict regulation. For example, YouTube is a rare source of independent news and news commentary (Bulut and Bulut, 2023; Zinderen, 2021). Since broadcast television is dominated by channels that are owned by conglomerates with tight relationships to government, citizens rarely have access to perspectives critical of government ideology and policies. Recent laws have been introduced to regulate YouTube and social media in general, but the necessary regulatory tools are not yet in place.
While YouTube enabled Turkish viewers to have a better experience of local content, authorized access to global (mostly American) content that would provide a meaningful alternative remained unavailable until 2016. Linear channels, including TRT, had aired some popular American content since the 1990s, and cable channels such as CNBC-E provided access to more niche and recent series such as The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but relatively few titles were available. Those that were originated mostly from US and UK in the 2000s, but were limited to those mostly likely to draw a broad audience rather than the more edgy series that developed in those markets in response to fragmentation. Torrenting made more diverse foreign content available by the late 2000s; however, this adoption was not mainstream due to the insufficient internet infrastructure. Torrent users quickly adopted streaming services after 2016, when Netflix and other local and global services entered the Turkish market. 7 Ildir and Celik Rappas' (2021) research indicates that one of the reasons streaming audiences in Turkey prefer SVOD (streaming video on demand) services is their dissatisfaction with the pirated content. By 2023, the initially limited streaming audience in Turkey had expanded to a more general audience because streaming services offered a convenient and satisfying viewing experience defined by shorter episodes and a lack of long ad breaks. Bağcı's research on streaming audiences in Turkey also found that young audiences prefer streaming services because they are less regulated than broadcast television (2022: 260).
Currently, Turkish streaming video culture is dominated by viewers’ use of YouTube and Netflix but, as in many markets, viewers continue to use broadcast services as well. The persistence of the broadcast television viewing numbers shows that there is a complementary relationship between broadcast and streaming, however, the sectors still respond to each other. Broadcast remains especially valued for news, sports, daytime shows such as wedding and cooking shows, and game shows. The viewership of the dramas designed for export also continues, as high rating levels indicate. The market for dramas has fractured, with some audiences choosing the traditionally themed exports and others the new options offered by domestic and global streamers (Bağcı, 2022).
Netflix arrived in Turkey much later than YouTube and mainly functions as a distribution channel for foreign content, including films, series, and stand-up shows. 8 It makes available scripted content from a wide range of countries and regions that is not available even from pirated sources. Except for rare cases and niche television channels, the typical Turkish viewer did not have direct access to foreign content, including US content, before Netflix's launch in Turkey: broadcast television channels have not invested in licensing foreign content, and cable television channels’ licensing has been limited to the most popular American series, instead of a larger range of foreign content. Even today, users who follow foreign content from other OTT services (over the top, i.e. over the internet) or on broadcast television have to wait for the shows to arrive due to geographic restrictions and the windowed distribution system, while Netflix offers viewers the opportunity to experience new content simultaneously with the rest of the world. This affordance, combined with Netflix's strong and ambitious localization campaigns in Turkey, encouraged quick adoption of the service. The estimated number of subscribers increased from 117,000 in 2017 to 606,000 in 2020, 9 approximately 10% of the country's broadband households. 10
Viewers in Turkey watch more foreign content than in the pre-streaming era because a more diverse range of titles are legally available on streaming services (Bağcı, 2022). The attraction of these series is due to their narrative and thematic diversity, which is unavailable on Turkish broadcast television (Ildır, 2023). The lack of ad breaks, shorter episodes, and global content are the most critical factors in the preference for Netflix over broadcasters for drama, however, broadcasters remain crucial for other forms of content (Ildir and Celik Rappas, 2021). The breadth of the library and availability of content that is different from what is accessible on Turkish television are also crucial to its value proposition to viewers.
The launch of Netflix Turkey has affected the video culture in Turkey significantly. The first adopters of the service were among the audience segment already following global content through illegal streaming, including Netflix's acquired and bespoke content (Vitrinel and Ildir, 2021). Early original series from Netflix and domestic services were strongly distinctive from established Turkish norms. However, as the service expanded over the years, its audience became more diverse and mainstream, which may have affected the content of local originals; Netflix also collaborated with many production companies that made export dramas for linear television channels. By 2023, these collaborations evidenced a certain affinity between Netflix's local originals and linear television series designed for global export in terms of their production qualities and aesthetics. Even though there are significant differences from linear television in terms of genre, duration, and content, Netflix originals rely on big stars more likely to appeal to the global audience, and the orientalist approach typical in Turkish exports is common (Vitrinel, 2018).
Following Netflix, two local streaming services launched in 2017: BluTV, a SVOD service that continues to stream acquired and bespoke content, and PuhuTV, an AVOD (advertising video on demand) service that experimented with bespoke content in its initial years but turned into a catch-up service, streaming the content of channels owned by Doğuş Group (such as Star TV and NTV) in 2017. BluTV and PuhuTV commissioned series in stark contrast to the norms of broadcast television. Innocent (2017), Fi (2017–18), and Persona (2018) consisted of approximately 8–13 episodes, and each episode was 45 to 60 minutes. This change was significant and liberating for both the producers and the viewers (Sahin, 2018). Even though Netflix's first Turkish content came after these series, these local services mainly adopted the production model of Netflix in other countries. All three series were designed as mini-series, a format that does not exist in linear television in Turkey. Their production was completed before their release, and all episodes were either released at once or in three parts. It was also significant in terms of the writing process and general structure of the stories, as they were designed as a whole, rather than a flexible narrative that changes according to the rating performance of the series (also see Kang in this issue). The narrative structure of the first three series, Innocent, Fi, and Persona, was highly distinct from linear television series (Baran, 2017) in presenting different – even risky – topics (such as violence against women and traumas resulting from compulsory military service in Turkey) that were characteristic of crime/thriller genres common in global trade but not from Turkey (Ildir and Celik Rappas, 2021). The streaming services thus expanded the generic range of domestic Turkish production. These genres were suitable for the mini-series format, with a clear beginning and end. Moreover, these genres also had a narrative structure that local audiences were familiar with, especially from American productions, but not often seen in Turkish broadcast television.
Examining the original content commissioned by Netflix Turkey is crucial in understanding how a global streaming service that is not constrained by the broadcast television norms contributes to political and cultural diversity in local stories. Netflix's first two Turkish originals – The Protector and The Gift – came after BluTV's and PuhuTV's first originals. These were high-budget genre shows (fantasy) with popular stars. Both series had fantasy elements, which is uncommon in Turkish broadcast television. Even though these series were not critical successes and did not satisfy many users with their orientalist approach to ‘locality’, they were watched locally and globally (Ildir and Celik Rappas, 2021). Their high production quality, star visibility, and tourist-friendly view of Turkey suggest a priority of appealing to subscribers outside of Turkey. In the following years, Netflix Turkey commissioned more genre shows: psychological thrillers (Fatma; Who Were We Running From?), horror/fantasy (Şahmaran), science fiction (Midnight at the Pera Palace; Yaratılan), and dystopian drama (Hot Skull). These shows, which were generally mini-series, deviated from Turkish linear TV in terms of the emphasis on uncommon genre elements and more contained narratives. Even though Turkish linear television series also use thriller elements on occasion, they are generally constructed as melodramas or comedies with similar mise-en-scène elements. The Netflix series consequently appeared visually distinct in their use of genre iconography, special effects, and, most importantly, their source material, as they were adaptations of novels by popular or acclaimed writers in Turkey.
Ethos and The Club are among the most popular and controversial Netflix Turkey originals, and they opened up important political and cultural discussions on different media channels (Çevik and Aydın Kılıç, 2023; Marcus, 2022; Taxidis, 2021). There was significant hype around both series on social media, and professionals from many different areas, including politics, shared their thoughts in addition to significant viewer feedback. These series were distinct from broadcast television norms in their generic format and duration, but also in their pursuit of a distinct political and aesthetic voice. Ethos tells the story of a group of characters with different sociocultural backgrounds and mainly allegorizes the polarized cultural climate of Turkey through encounters between characters with different values. While its main narrative structure is based on the clash between conservative/Islamist and secular segments of society, it also features minorities and under-represented groups such as Kurdish and LGBTQ+ communities.
Ironically, how these characters and societal conflicts are represented polarized the audience but opened up many important cultural discussions in Turkey. In its portrayal of the most urgent political issues through an allegorical narrative of therapy, healing, and reconciliation, Ethos functioned as a symbol of the significant representational gap in television. Netflix Turkish Originals Chief Pelin Diştaş described producing Ethos as taking ‘a risk’ (personal communication, 2022). Notably, this ‘risk’ was not only political but also aesthetic. Ethos has a less conventional visual language based on long takes and a slower rhythm; it is more similar to late examples of arthouse cinema in Turkey.
The Club was another popular series by Netflix Turkey that created significant cultural discussion and controversy due to its portrayal of one of Turkey's most traumatic historical events: the 1955 Istanbul Pogrom. Also known as the ‘September events’, the Istanbul Pogrom was a series of government
Not all Netflix originals have been well received or boundary pushing. The 2022 Netflix Turkey original, Şahmaran elicited dissatisfaction for relying on orientalist and exoticizing tendencies as in some of the earlier genre series such as The Gift and The Protector; it also relies on big stars and overt sexuality that cannot be found in broadcast television and exported series due to censorship. Şahmaran became very popular globally in its first week among viewers preferring more conventional fare, but was criticized (and even teased) on Turkish social media that blamed Netflix for using its ‘freedom’ from regulation only in terms of explicit (but heterosexual) sexual content or due to the poor quality of writing and the narrative structure. 11 Notably, the on-demand capability allows streamers to develop different titles for different audience segments, a capability that helps overcome the conditions that created dissatisfaction in the Turkish market after the revised ratings system.
Despite notable cases of difference, many Netflix originals also reproduce conventions of Turkish broadcast television series and the series that are designed for export as well, as in the example of Şahmaran. However, Ethos and The Club do something distinct from broadcast television and Netflix's other local originals. They illustrated how streaming services could offer alternative viewer experiences and showed the creative and political space that streaming services might offer producers and storytellers in a country where that had been narrowly prescribed. The industry had long defended the same formulaic stories featured in Turkish broadcast television by claiming it was ‘because the audience wants it that way’ as justification, but streaming services tested that claim by offering an alternative. The popularity of the Ethos and The Club proved that some viewers do not necessarily desire ‘that way’. The increasing choice for viewers, both within a service like Netflix and across different streaming and broadcast services, fragments viewing and supports developing stories for different preferences. This changed industrial context has enabled producers to take risks with storytelling – especially in terms of different formats, stories, and cultures in global content – as the business model of streaming reconfigured value away from broadcast norms. The difference between the cases of Şahmaran, Ethos, and The Club is due to the variety of content Netflix requires given the breadth of its subscriber base. These titles are aimed at quite different audiences, which is a strategic capability of VOD that is unavailable to broadcasters.
Conclusion
Political and cultural diversity in local stories increased in the streaming era, and diverse genres and formats with different aesthetic tendencies emerged. The dissatisfaction among the audiences in Turkey during the pre-streaming era started to intensify by the early 2010s because of the formulaic and similar stories with no identity diversity, strict regulation and censorship, and the tediousness of long, slowly paced series with extended ad breaks. Internet technologies, robustly available from the late 2010s, countered dissatisfaction and frustration among viewers and provided access to a much greater array of content. Streaming technologies also offered a more convenient experience of broadcast content, as seen in the Turkish use of YouTube as a broadcast re-distributor.
But the dissatisfaction was not with form alone, it was also a desire for variation from the formulaic stories with the same melodramatic aesthetic. Even though a significant segment of the audience, both in the domestic and foreign markets, may appreciate such stories, their pervasiveness in Turkey left pockets of viewers seeking alternatives that were widely available in other countries. The generational shift also has been very important in changing the content preferences of Turkish audiences and expanding the desire for different stories. Older audiences have a particular nostalgic bond with content on broadcast television, but younger generations do not have any memory of the pre-streaming era.
Netflix entered the almost non-existent streaming market of Turkey in 2016, which was suffering from an urgent need for new stories. The prioritization placed on producing Turkish series that would sell abroad diminished particularly Turkish features in the productions – as described in other articles in this volume parallels can be found in Spain (Castro and Casajosa Virino, 2023), South Korea (Kang, 2023), and India (Tiwary, 2023). The Turkish market had become particularly calcified due to its reliance on revenue from exports. However, domestic audiences did not uniformly find titles aimed at foreign viewers compelling, creating a demand for different content than that prioritized by broadcasters, a risk that global streaming services also face. As a disruptor to the status quo in Turkey, Netflix functioned as an industrial haven for both producers and viewers who had all been bound by the particularly suffocating constraints of Turkish broadcast television. Whether Netflix successfully satisfies Turkish viewers’ desire for distinctive local content is unclear since the service is still experimenting with different genres, stars, production companies, and showrunners. However, two notable examples, Ethos and The Club, successfully challenged industry norms and assumptions about audience expectations.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
Author biography
Aslı Ildır is a postdoc fellow in Kadir Has University. She holds a co-PhD degree in the Film and Visual Culture programme at the University of Antwerp and the Design, Technology, and Society programme at Koç University. She holds a Master’s degree in Film and Television Programmes from Bahçeşehir University and a Bachelor’s degree in Arts in Political Science and International Relations from Boğaziçi University. Her doctoral research explores the discourse of choice and control associated with video-on-demand platforms and the changing modes of film and TV viewership.