This summer, my family and I traveled to Istanbul, a city where East and West meet not just geographically, but narratively. Between ferry rides across the Bosphorus, endless cups of çay, and strolls through neighborhoods rich with history, I found myself thinking often about the layered storytelling traditions that pulse through this remarkable city.
Istanbul is a place where stories live in the stones—in Byzantine mosaics, Ottoman palaces, and the voices that fill crowded cafés. But it’s also a capital of serialized storytelling: from 19th-century feuilletons in Ottoman newspapers to radio dramas during the early republican period, and now to globally popular television series streamed on every continent. The city is not only a stage for these stories, but a character in them.
Turkey today is one of the world’s leading exporters of television dramas—surpassed only by the United States. Turkish diziler (TV series), with their lush visuals, sweeping plots, and high emotional stakes, have captivated audiences across Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and beyond. Shows like Diriliş: Ertuğrul, Fatmagül’ün Suçu Ne?, and Magnificent Century have reshaped the global media landscape and given voice to a distinct blend of cultural pride, modern identity, and emotional storytelling.
And yet, this phenomenon didn’t emerge overnight. It’s built on a long tradition of serialized narrative forms—Ottoman-era serialized novels, early 20th-century radio plays, and decades of domestic television that laid the foundation for today’s streaming epics. Much like in Mexico, these forms have functioned not only as entertainment, but as powerful tools of cultural negotiation: reflecting and shaping ideas about gender, family, faith, nationalism, and modernity.
My friend and fellow scholar Ali Kulez captures this lineage beautifully in a recent blog reflection on Ahmet Midhat Efendi’s Esrar-ı Cinayat (The Mystery of Murders, 1883), a pioneering Ottoman detective novel serialized in the newspaper Tercüman-ı Hakikat, about which he had written in detail some years ago.
Ali’s reflections reminded me how intimately seriality is linked to the rhythms of public life—how authors and audiences shape one another across cafés, classrooms, and even casual ferry rides. As in Mexico, Istanbul’s serialized stories are at once highly personal and profoundly political, shaping national imaginaries even as they entertain.
As I walked through Istanbul’s bookstores and peered into TV screens glowing in shop windows, I saw these stories everywhere. And I couldn’t help but think about the transnational echoes. Just as I trace the legacy of serialized forms in Serial Mexico, here too was a world shaped by narrative rhythm—of cliffhangers and character arcs, of serialized longing and collective identification. These are the patterns through which societies rehearse their desires and reimagine their futures.
Our family visit was filled with joy, discovery, and deep conversation. And for me, it was also a time to reflect on the shared emotional architectures of serial storytelling—how they allow us to hold space for history and change, memory and imagination. In Istanbul, as in Mexico City, serialized stories are not just told. They are lived, shared, exported, and remembered—across borders, languages, and generations.
