The Explosion of Turkish Series: Dizi and Soft Power in Italy

The global success of Turkish television series is not just a story of entertainment, nor a mere industrial case study. It's a political discussion, in the most subtle and contemporary sense of the adjective. Serial fiction becomes the place where a country tells what it wants to be seen, while obscuring what it doesn't want to be discussed. To tell the rise of dizi only as a commercial triumph means accepting an incomplete reading. Their effectiveness does not lie in production quality or the ability to intercept transversal tastes, but in the function they perform as a normalization device. Turkish series do not explicitly deny the country's political problems; they render them irrelevant, shifting them out of focus. And it is this silent, daily, reiterated removal that makes them one of the most sophisticated and least declared instruments of soft power in the global audiovisual landscape.

The explosion of Turkish television series in international schedules is often told as a rags-to-riches success story: competitive productions, rapidly growing global demand, and Western broadcasters looking for reliable, low-risk content. The numbers help us clarify the scope of the phenomenon: over eighty new series are produced in Turkey each year, while between 2020 and 2023, global demand for Turkish fiction grew by over 180 percent. Today, dizi (short for televizyon dizileri) are distributed in more than 170 countries and reach an estimated audience of between 700 and 750 million viewers, with an export economic value ranging from 600 million to one billion dollars annually. This scale has no equivalent in countries of comparable GDP and places Ankara among the world's leading exporters of TV series, second only to the United States in terms of diffusion.

For over a decade, this success was explained almost exclusively through market dynamics: simple, low-cost subjects, aggressive distribution networks, strong initial demand in the Balkans and the Middle East, followed by increasingly consistent penetration in Latin America and Europe. In recent years, however, the picture has changed. The Turkish government has begun to formally recognize dizi as a strategic asset, introducing economic incentives linked to export and tourism. The Minister of Culture and Tourism has called fiction “one of the country's most influential tools,” emphasizing how the television industry is now an integral part of Ankara's international projection as a cutting-edge state. Exported series portray a modern, orderly Turkey, indeed marked by emotional conflicts, but almost never political ones.

Traditional values such as the heteroparental family, religiosity, and patriotism are normalized as foundational elements, while themes such as repression of dissent, freedom of the press, minority rights, or ethnic tensions remain systematically out of frame. This representation intertwines with a reality less visible to the international public: strong internal censorship. Domestically, dizi are subject to the control of the Supreme Council of Radio and Television (RTÜK), which imposes cuts and sanctions for content deemed immoral, including references to sexuality, alcohol consumption, or LGBTQ+ issues. The result is a production system that favors conservative narratives compatible with government ideology, discouraging critical or dissonant approaches. This is not propaganda, but rather another case of culture washing.

The choice to invest in television fiction is not accidental. Seriality offers a combination difficult to match by other communication tools: prolonged exposure that can last hundreds of hours per title, daily penetration that is not perceived as institutional, and communicative ambiguity that allows political imaginaries to be conveyed without appearing as advertising. For a state interested in strengthening its symbolic legitimacy abroad, fiction represents a highly effective form of influence. It is not surprising, therefore, that President Erdoğan has repeatedly indicated television series as a lever, both externally and internally.

Historical productions like Resurrection: Ertugrul have reinterpreted the Ottoman past in a nationalist and identity-based key, helping to reinforce a narrative consistent with the current government line and improving the country's image even in contexts traditionally critical of Ankara. Every complexity is stripped away in favor of an epic, orderly, and ideologically compatible narrative. This is a multi-level social strategy that Turkey has pursued for years: Ankara continues to regularly invest in major sporting events, international sponsorships, aggressive tourism promotion, and large infrastructure projects presented as symbols of greatness and openness. Advertising campaigns, often fueled by the popularity of locations seen in the series, have contributed to a significant increase in tourist flows (+10% year-on-year), strengthening the country's image as a safe and culturally fascinating destination, despite the progressive deterioration of democratic freedom indices recorded in recent years by international organizations.

While dizi portray a stable, morally cohesive, and harmonious nation, the country continues to rank in the lowest tiers of international indices on press freedom and democratic pluralism, with dozens of professionals detained or on trial for expression-related offenses. In a recent example, on September 11, Turkish authorities seized one of the last major media groups considered independent, transferring control of Can Holding (owner of broadcasters such as Habertürk, Show TV, and Bloomberg HT) to a state fund as part of an investigation into alleged corruption and financial crimes. The operation included arrest warrants for executives and the appointment of trustees for over a hundred companies linked to the group. Although there was no immediate suspension of broadcasts, the measure effectively brought these outlets under government influence, further reducing the space for media pluralism in the country.

In this context, Italy plays a far from marginal role. It is currently the second-largest European market for dizi after Spain, with staggering viewership: a single title like Terra Amara has surpassed 2.7 million viewers, while Canale 5's daytime programming consistently achieves shares around 19-20 percent thanks to Turkish series like Endless Love and Love is in the Air. Italian distribution remains formally commercial, with Mediaset executives confirming a strong partnership for the next two years. A fundamental role in any soft power process is played by 'who' disseminates, often more relevant than 'what' is disseminated. Netflix, Mediaset Infinity, and others do not acquire content for political purposes, but for catalog logic, audience, and economic sustainability. However, in their industrial operation, they become exponential multipliers of the message. A dual channel, that of generalist television and global on-demand distribution, allows for continuous and transnational circulation of the same imaginaries.

Culture washing works precisely through this mechanism of symbolic substitution: political conflict disappears from the center of the international public space, replaced by a cultural narrative perceived as neutral, accessible, and non-threatening. Sporting events, audiovisual productions, festivals, museums, and media initiatives are used to construct an image of conformity to contemporary morality. These devices do not erase critical issues but shift them to the margins of media attention, where they become background noise compared to the narrative power of the event or multimedia product. Through the daily repetition of seemingly apolitical images, stories, and values, a perception of normality is built that ultimately neutralizes the impact of public criticism. The crux, therefore, is not about the artistic value of the series or public taste, but about the systematic use of the industry as a tool for symbolic legitimation.

The dizi work precisely because they don't seem political. And that's exactly why they are.