Transmedia a la Turk

Turkish TV series attract millions of viewers not only in Turkey but also in the Arab and Balkan countries and became a social and commercial phenomenon in recent years. This international success made some of the Turkish producers to think more on marketing strategies and to adopt a transmedial approach to develop their franchises. In addition to TV shows, they produced films, videogames, published books and also fake newspapers as a by-product of actual newspapers in an ARGish style and had huge numbers of fans on the Internet. Along with a number of other shows, the action oriented Valley of The Wolves (VOTW) is a distinct franchise which follows the story of an undercover Turkish agent. Unlike some other popular shows, VOTW’s puzzling script was partly based on recent affairs in the region and Turkish foreign politics, which caused a unique relation between fiction and reality; almost a reverse ARG (alternate reality game) structure. The fan base follows both the news and the series and its spin-offs as part of the same ‘reality’. Besides fan based online communities, they also gather in real world and organize actual funeral prayers for deceased characters; share similar clothing, ways of speech and a code of honor. Both the community and the producers seem to have instead of an ARGish ‘This is not a game’ approach, an alternate ‘This is not a TV Show’ approach. This paper will try to explain current transmedial strategies and ARG-like structures used by Turkish TV shows which help them to reach regional success. We will focus on the unique example of VOTW which brings together fiction and recent events in an unusual and politically questionable way and create a unique fan base.