Dizi Diplomacy: How Türkiye Turned Entertainment into Soft Power

Numan Mousa | Middle East Fellow

Image sourced from Pexels

My mother has been glued to Turkish dramas for years. I never understood it until one evening I sat down and did not get up. Three episodes later, she was explaining Ottoman palace politics as if I had missed everything. The week after, we were browsing Turkish brands, debating the food, and booking a trip to Istanbul.

This is not just about television. Turkish shows (known as “dizi”) reach audiences across nearly 170 countries, with a stronghold in the Middle East, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Behind that reach is a deliberate, state-backed strategy that has turned entertainment into one of the most effective Turkish soft power tools of the twenty-first century.

The Pilot Episode

In the mid-2000s, Turkish producers struck deals with the MBC Group, the Arab world’s largest broadcaster, to air Turkish entertainment across the Middle East. Dizis became a cultural phenomenon, with shows such as “Diriliş: Ertuğrul” gathering more than 1.5 billion views worldwide on YouTube alone, reshaping the perception of Türkiye.

The success of dizis has helped turn Türkiye’s entertainment industry into a multibillion-dollar export sector. The industry has allowed Türkiye to project the country as a Middle Eastern power with shared history, cultural depth, and relatability across regions. Türkiye even expanded their state-owned broadcaster “TRT” to operate in 41 languages, with TRT Arabic and Farsi becoming major regional outlets.

Dizi's influence has been tangible. During the 2017 Türkiye-Saudi tensions, Saudi authorities suspended Turkish dramas and music, citing their cultural impact. These restrictions were later lifted as ties improved, followed by heavy Saudi investment in Turkish dizi production and renewed cultural exchange. This shows what dizis have become: a lever of influence powerful enough that a rival state felt compelled to ban them, then later join in.

The New Brand Image

Perhaps the clearest expression of Turkish soft power has been the global success of its television dramas. Turkish dizis project images of Türkiye’s culture to audiences far beyond its borders, helping to cultivate familiarity with the country. Their influence extends beyond entertainment: some viewers have been inspired to visit filming locations and cultural landmarks featured on screen, while the shows themselves serve as informal ambassadors of Turkish culture and lifestyle. 

This is hardly a uniquely Turkish phenomenon. States with powerful entertainment industries, such as the United States through Hollywood, have long leveraged cultural exports to project values, lifestyles, and national narratives internationally. The global reach of Turkish dramas suggests that Türkiye is increasingly deploying a similar form of cultural influence, generating soft-power resources that complement more traditional tools of foreign policy and international engagement.

Nowhere is this clearer than Somalia. Turkish dizis are the most watched foreign content in the country. By the time TİKA arrived with US$7.5 billion in development assistance, Türkiye was not an unknown donor, It was already familiar. Türkiye then went further, establishing a military base in Mogadishu in 2017, embedding itself not just culturally and economically, but strategically. Somalia is the clearest example of how the layers work: cultural exposure first, then financial assistance, and finally military presence.

The Diplomatic Shot

Dizis contribute to this environment by projecting narratives in which Türkiye appears as historically significant, culturally influential, and often a principled regional actor. Historical and political dramas such as Resurrection: Ertuğrul and Foundation: Osman, and earlier Magnificent Century, have popularised Ottoman-era narratives that emphasise statecraft, legitimacy, and regional leadership. While these are fictionalised portrayals, they help embed particular understandings of Turkish history and political identity in global audiences.

This cultural visibility does not determine foreign policy attitudes, but it can shape the background conditions in which diplomacy is received. Turkish positions on regional crises are therefore communicated into an environment where Türkiye is already culturally familiar to many viewers across the Middle East and beyond. In this sense, dizis function less as direct political instruments than as long-term contributors to national visibility and narrative presence.

Critics of Türkiye’s regional policies rightly point to tensions with neighbouring states, democratic backsliding, and contested interventions in Syria and Libya. However, cultural influence does not operate through immediate political alignment. Its effect is more gradual: sustaining recognition, relevance, and engagement even when official diplomatic relations are strained. In that respect, Turkish dramas complement rather than replace formal diplomacy by reinforcing Türkiye’s presence in the regional imagination.

What Türkiye proves

Türkiye is not a superpower. Its economy is volatile, its democracy is strained, its regional relationships are complex. But none of that is the point. The point is that a country can project influence far beyond its weight if its tools reinforce each other, and Türkiye’s do. Dizis have built the familiarity which has opened the door for trade, tourism, and aid. And by the time diplomacy needed goodwill to work with, the groundwork had already been laid, episode by episode, living room by living room, across the region and beyond.

Numan Mousa is a multidisciplinary analyst working at the intersection of human rights, diplomacy, and technology governance. He holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from UNSW and the University of Sydney, where he also served as Vice President (Externals) of the University Diplomats’ Society. Numan has applied his policy research and cyber governance expertise across the public and private sectors, including roles with the Australian Institute of International Affairs, as well as advisory positions with global firms such as Deloitte and EY in the Middle East and Indonesia. He is also an alumnus of the Global Student Fellowship, where he conducted human-rights-focused policy research in Southeast Asia.

Having been raised in Jordan, Numan brings strong regional literacy and grounded lived experience across the Middle East, shaping his understanding of governance, security, and human-impact challenges. He is committed to elevating regional perspectives in global policy discussions, promoting integrity, empathy, and contextual insight, while supporting stronger Australia-Middle East diplomatic engagement.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Young Australians in International Affairs. AI tools were used by this author for grammar checks and idea refinement, but all content is original, and no plagiarism has been used in the preparation of this article.