Amid harsh domestic competition, Turkish television producers are hunting the world for original and appealing content to remake dramas in Turkey, including from places like South Korea and Japan. Some remade dramas have gained worldwide popularity and generated significant additional revenue for their original producers.

“Bahar,” this year’s top performer on Turkish channels, was marketed internationally as “Blooming Lady.” It is based on South Korea’s “Doctor Cha,” which was screened there last year and is also available globally on Netflix. The first 16-episode season of “Bahar” was a massive hit, topping Turkish ratings in all episodes but the first.

After wrapping up the first season, “Bahar” enjoyed unprecedented success with selling broadcast right of the Turkish remake to some 50 countries including in Egypt, Greece, Russia, the U.S. and Spain, according to Fatih Aksoy, vice president of the Turkish TV production company MF Yapim, which specializes in local adaptations of foreign dramas.

Aksoy expects only further success as the show moves into a second season, and hopes it will match the export success of “Anne,” made from Japanese TV drama “Mother” and “Kadin,” based on the Japanese drama “Woman,” which reached over 100 countries.

Turkish dramas tend to be screened in two-hour weekly episodes that must be cut into two or three parts to fit with foreign screening practices. Turkish scriptwriters constantly introduce new characters and plot twists to pad the storyline and provide opportunities to develop characters and their relationships. Ibrahim Saritas, assistant professor at Ankara Haci Bayram Veli University, faculty of communication and other industry executives say these features make Turkish dramas addictive, and help viewers bond with the characters.

According to IMDb and others, more than 40 South Korean dramas have been remade in Turkey in the past decade, and Aksoy estimates that only around 20 acquired content rights properly so far in Turkey. There have been some ten Japanese remakes since 2016.

“The similarity in family and societal values with South Korea brings success in adaptions,” said Izzet Pinto, CEO of Global Agency, an exporter of Turkish dramas.

“South Korean dramas focus on inter-family, rich-poor class clashes, the emotions of characters, and highlight romanticism rather than sexual content — like in Turkish dramas,” he said.

Pinto cites successful remakes his company distributes. “Paramparca” from the South Korean original “Autumn in my Heart” and “Dolunay” from “My Secret Romance” were both exported to over 50 countries.

A top Japanese export was the 11-episode TV drama “Mother” from Nippon Television Network (NTV). The one-hour original aired in 2010, and was then stretched to 33 two-hour episodes. It became a smash hit in Turkey in 2017, and has been sold to more than 100 countries.

Aksoy laughs at how it took him six months to convince NTV. “Why do you want to have export rights to a remake drama from Japan?” one executive asked him. The remake ended up bringing tens of times as much to the Japanese content owners, compared to just selling remake rights to the Turkish market, he said.

“Kadin,” an NTV production of 11-episodes broadcast in 2013, went on to 84 two-hour episodes in a saga that ran from 2017 to 2020.

In Turkey, six nationwide TV channels air drama at prime time almost every day. Families enjoy watching together, making for cutthroat competition to attract broad viewer interest. Aksoy said that if digital streaming platforms are taken into account, approximately 100 dramas are made in Turkey every year. Around 10% are hits that generate major revenues for production companies and TV stations with the rights to export.

According to Xavier Rambert, an international research manager at Glance-Mediametrie, a French TV data company, during the September 2022 and August 2023 season, Turkey was the third largest exporter of scripted drama series in the world after the U.S. and U.K. Some 133 Turkish series were acquired by foreign countries.

Turkish dramas are watched in more than 170 countries by some 750 million viewers. Global demand for Turkish content rose 184% between 2020 and 2023, outstripping the 73% increase South Korean dramas saw during the same period, according to Parrot Analytics, an entertainment industry data firm.

Aksoy, who also heads the entertainment and cultural services committee of Turkey’s Services Exporters Association, expects drama export revenues to top $1 billion this year. Pinto thinks the billion-dollar mark will be reached in 2026.

Following major successes, the Japanese public and private sectors have worked together to sell more content to Turkey. After a business-matching event in 2018 organized by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications that brought Japanese TV stations and producers together in Istanbul with their Turkish peers, the Japan External Trade Organization held an online content matchmaking event in January. It is also gearing up for a Japanese content pitch in Istanbul in September.

Turkish producers are now remaking the most successful remakes by using foreign actors and venues to appeal to new target markets. Aksoy is shooting “Mother” in Saudi Arabia together with a local production company and Arab actors.”Woman” is being reshot with Arab actors in Istanbul, which is doubling for Lebanon’s Beirut. The new versions will be aired all over the Arab-speaking world, and the original Japanese content owners will receive handsome licensing fees for “remakes of remakes.”