Reasons for the Popularity of Turkish Soap Operas in Albania

Abstract

Many new media technologies seem to have played a certain role in introducing different cultures, traditions and lifestyles. Although of the oldest, television and its programs remain among the most vastly used. While a documentary is a television program that presents a country with little or no fiction, the case is not the same when it comes to soap operas. The action, fiction and their characters make people watch more eagerly. Once they enter a country there follows a flow difficult to stop, with some of them even garnering the highest rating ever received by a television program. Whether they have been produced to achieve this aim or to make immense profits is not the main concern of this article. This study aims to explore reasons for the popularity of Turkish soap operas (Albanian case), which have since 2008 become popular not only in the Middle East but also in most Balkan countries. The objectives of this study were achieved through review of articles in newspapers and magazines, and an analysis of a survey conducted in Tirana, the capital city of Albania. Regarding the fact that they are subtitled and not dubbed in the case country, this research also aimed to explore whether watching soap operas helps to learn/improve a language(when the viewer already knows some Turkish), or arouses viewers’ interest towards it(when the viewer doesn’t know any Turkish at all).