English lesson: The growing popularity of Turkish television (2024)

Turkish dramas are taking over the world

Lesson summary

Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English with stories about current events and trending topics.

Every lesson—as we call the episodes—every lesson has two parts. The first part is about something interesting going on in the world. And in the second part, I show you how to use a common English expression.

Today, we’re talking about Turkish television, specifically the popularity of the dramas called “dizi.” And in the second half of the lesson, I’ll show you how to say that you’re “open to” something.

This is lesson number 667, so that means all the content—transcripts, quizzes, exercises—is available at PlainEnglish.com/667. That is thanks to JR, our producer.

I think we’re ready to get going. Let’s do this.

The growing popularity of Turkish television

Sehrazat is a talented architect with a beautiful young family. But when her husband dies in a car crash, she’s left to care for their son, Kaan, alone. Tragedy strikes when Kaan is diagnosed with leukemia. He needs a bone marrow transplant that costs $150,000. Sehrazat’s father-in-law refuses to give her the money and her banks won’t lend it to her.

Then, her boss makes a cruel offer: spend the night with him, and he’ll pay for her son’s transplant. Desperate, she takes him up on the offer. They soon fall in love, but it’s not an easy path to happiness. Divorce, murder, miscarriage, poisoned tea, illegitimate children, and broken engagements all play out over 179 episodes of this Turkish television series.

“1001 Nights” is just one example of a trend sweeping the world: Turkish dramas are going international.

When you think of long-running dramas, you might think of steamy Latin American telenovelas or cheesy American soap operas. But Turkey is now one of the world’s biggest exporters of scripted dramas. In fact, it exports more television than any country except Britain and the United States.

Turkey is a big producer of television. Its population of 84 million enjoys a European-style freedom, but retains the traditional values of the Muslim world. So television shows set in Turkey can reflect the aspirations of many people around the world, without causing offense to conservative values.

The overwhelming majority of Turks are Muslim, so for many people, Turkish dramas are the only place they see Muslims cast in every type of role, including heroes. Contrast that with Western shows, which often depict Muslims as immigrants, taxi drivers, or criminals.

The production quality of Turkish shows is also very high: they feature stunning landscapes, detailed costumes, beautiful actors, and authentic dialogue.

For years, Turkish dramas, or “dizi,” as they’re called, have been popular in the Middle East. Local broadcasters make sure to order subtitles in different dialects of Arabic and other regional languages so that everyone across the region can enjoy them.

But in recent years, dizi have become popular outside the Middle East. Demand for Turkish shows grew 184 percent between 2020 and 2023, according to one estimate. Audiences in Europe, Latin America, Russia, China, and elsewhere have been gobbling up the stories.

It all started with “Magnificent Century,” a historical series based on the life of an Ottoman sultan. This was the first drama to be exported widely. An estimated 500 million people around the world have seen it. But that’s just one example. In total, over 100 Turkish dramas have been exported to about 150 countries.

Turkey is reaping the benefits . Tourism from the Arab world has increased. Certain countries in eastern Europe and central Asia have had a complicated historical relationship with Turkey. But the dramas are a way for audiences in Bulgaria, Greece, Syria, and other countries to form a new impression of Turkey. A lot of viewers say that the dramas helped open their eyes about modern Turkey, and that they’re now open to vacationing in Turkey now that they’ve seen more of it on screen.

Perhaps the most surprising region to embrace dizi is Latin America. The station that brought “1001 Nights” to Chile, for example, broke viewing records in that country. Chile still orders a lot of dizi, as do Mexico, Ecuador, and Argentina.

At first glance , it may seem strange that Turkish dramas would be so popular in a region saturated with its own steamy telenovelas. But look closer and you’ll see there are similarities and differences.

Start with the similarities. Dizi are long—often over 100 episodes that can run two or three hours each. They’re shown once a week in Turkey. But producers cut them up into shorter, daily episodes for Latin America, since audiences there are used to that format, and they don’t mind the time commitment.

Dizi feature family values that are similar in both regions: big families and characters that openly express their emotions—with all the resulting melodrama.

But the difference is that Turkish dramas are much more conservative than Latin American telenovelas. The dizi don’t show sex scenes as often, and they don’t glorify drug lords and gun violence.

This appeals to Latin Americans, especially older ones, who want to see conservative values on television, and who are tired of the blood, sex, and violence of locally-produced shows.

For the producers of dizi, it’s an easy call to dub them in Spanish, since with just one language, they can show the programs in Spain, most of Latin America, and on Spanish-language television in the United States. A few years ago, “The Ambassador’s Daughter” reached over 9 million viewers per month on Univision, the biggest Spanish-language channel in the U.S.

The shows are dubbed and subtitled in other languages, too, though audiences in countries with smaller populations, like Greece, Poland, and Japan, may have to wait longer for them. Local broadcasters love buying dizi because a single show can give them 200 hours of commercial broadcast time. Other international shows, like Korean dramas , offer much less.

Some viewers even try to learn a little Turkish so they can enjoy new shows before they’re dubbed into their own language.

Jeff’s take

And Turkish is not an easy language to learn!

The only place the dizi haven’t conquered so far is the English-speaking world. It’s harder to break into the English-speaking world, since audiences aren’t used to subtitled or dubbed content. So far, there hasn’t been a breakout Turkish drama comparable to “Money Heist” from Spain or “Squid Games” from South Korea.

I have not yet seen one, but I will look for them. “1001 Nights” looks interesting. But the time commitment! 179 episodes is a lot and I am not the kind of person who only watches part of a series. If I start, I want to finish.

Anyway, we have a lot of listeners in Turkey, so if you have specific recommendations of “dizi” that I should watch, make sure to let me know.