In the last three years, Turkish soap operas in Spain have gone from being a curious phenomenon to a big bet on the prime time of the generalist networks.
Currently, Atresmedia and Mediaset compete on their different channels and platforms with various series from there.
This push has gradually become global in the last decade as well, with Turkey becoming one of the world's largest exporters of television fiction with millions of viewers watching its products.
A phenomenon that Netflix is not going to let go of, despite having had some run-in with the Turkish authorities (last summer it suspended the filming of a series after receiving from the Turkish Government the order to remove a gay character from the script), with the the recent opening of a production headquarters in Istanbul, which will expand in the second half of the year, and the launch of a dozen local projects to be broadcast around the world.
Turkey: The Unexpected Global Telenovela Factory
The director of original content for Netflix in Turkey, Pelin Distas, defines this new office as "a commitment to the local creative industry."
Netflix currently prepares there, where it has around 1.5 million subscribers, ten series of its own, with an eye to doubling the number of projects, and in different genres, beyond the popular soap operas (in Spain now
Women
and
Love is in the Air
).
One of those series will be
Hot Skull
, set in a post-apocalyptic Istanbul after a strange pandemic.
Or
The Club
, located in a nightclub in the Turkish city in the fifties of the last century.
The noir genre, with
Fatma
(a cleaning worker turned assassin) and science fiction, with the time travel story
Midnight at the Pera Palace
, will also have a place.
"Everything revolves around how we are shaping our grid around different genres, different fields and the scope of creative talent," explained Distas in an interview with
Variety
magazine
.
Apart from opening up to less explored genres in Turkey, one of the changes that the television industry in that country has to face with its series on Netflix is the adaptation of its formats to an international model: the chapters will have to be much shorter, There they can last up to two hours, and the seasons will have to be shorter (in Turkish general television they usually reach 35 episodes).
Something similar has happened in Spain in recent years with the establishment of digital platforms and their commitment to producing Spanish content.
The hour and a quarter of the episodes have gone to less than 60 minutes as there is no advertising or fight for the screen quota in between, something that also facilitates their sale abroad.
The Turkish expansion of Netflix will also apply outside the country.
“We will have Turkish actors performing in international projects, as well as behind-the-scenes workers.
There will be news of all this shortly, ”said Distas.