Financial Times this week released an article billed " High inflation punctures Turkey’s TV soap bubble". In it, author John Paul Rathbone argues that Turkish dizi production faces " an unusual plot twist: high inflation", even though this is not something new to the country where inflation started soaring back in 2022 and slowed down last year and at the beginning of 2026, as evidenced by FT's graph.

“We currently face even higher production costs than in Spain,” said Özcan Altunkaya, a member of the media committee at Istanbul’s Chamber of Commerce. “That affects international sales. After a while, TV exports will begin to decline.”

Izzet Pinto, founder and chief executive of Global Agency, said “shows now have to be superhits to survive. The result is a smaller ecosystem.”

The sector’s squeeze is a parable of Turkey’s economy, where an inflationary hangover from ultra-low interest rates has hurt competitiveness across industries from textiles and car manufacturing to white goods such as fridges, John Paul Rathbone writes.

“Turkish television is the most incredible, efficient and beautiful machine,” said one European media executive who stopped operating there after hourly production costs tripled to more than $240.000. “The rise in costs means that the secret sauce of Turkish TV production is under threat.”

"Assume eight successful series a year, said the European media executive, and that could mean “close to a thousand hours a year of programming sold overseas at $100,000 an hour”, he calculated. “It was a dream.”

Today, however, Turkey’s high inflation has slashed the value of ad revenues, which now barely cover half of an episode’s production costs. That has led to a thinner pipeline of shows, less risk-taking and fewer chances of a hit. “It’s a vicious circle,” said Burhan Gün, an industry consultant. “When output is high, you can experiment with new talent and new scripts. But when a series cannot cover its costs, everyone opts for safe formats.”

It has also made advance foreign sales essential for any show to go ahead. Yet high production costs make it harder for dizi to compete against increasing drama production overseas, including in the Middle East, north Africa and Latin America.

Alternatively, consolidation of the five private channels that broadcast dizi would concentrate advertising revenues and support domestic production. But that was highly unlikely, analysts said, given the politicization of mass-media ownership in Turkey.