“They don't care what we watch”: On ratings and culture‐making in the dizi industry

This article challenges Western‐centric assumptions in existing media theories that assume a relatively democratic society by exploring the media worlds of dizis, Turkey's globally famous, serialized television melodramas. It examines dizi makers' frustrations with a recently revised rating system at a time when Turkey's conservative and authoritarian‐leaning ruling AKP elite increasingly intervene in the country's cultural field. The article argues that in Turkey's highly polarized, authoritarian context, ratings become a crucial site of culture‐making, through which Turkish culture, the value of cultural products like dizis, and the place of their creators in Turkey's cultural hegemony get renegotiated. Exploring the resentments of today's dizi makers reveals that contemporary Turkish power contestations cannot be reduced to either the secular/religious binary or to class dynamics alone, as often deployed to explain the current polarization between Erdoğan's supporters and his dissidents. The article also demonstrates the need for more rigorous theorizing about how states—as repressive actors in authoritarian contexts—affect the worlds of media creators and their works.