Roles of Turkey's new digital platform TEBBY

Students Albert al-Turki and Farhan, a British of Pakistani origin, arrive in a European city to attend university and wish themselves a bustling life of fun. They begin to meet new colleagues, and suddenly a university official approaches them to tell them about the administration's decision to open a new mosque for them, because they are the first Muslim students to join the university.

The two students look at each other in amazement and try to make the official understand that they are not involved, because they are really far from religious, but he goes on to say that this is part of the university's policy of encouraging multiculturalism and welcoming students from all backgrounds. Albert and Farhan find themselves in trouble after the official gives them the keys to the new mosque, to be in charge of it in the Turkish series "Koyu Beyaz" by Turkish director Bülent Çeblin, produced in 2023.

The series is now airing on Turkey's new digital platform Tabii, meaning "of course" or "of course," which began airing in May 2023. It is the first original production by which this Turkish platform enters the market to compete with the world's famous television platforms such as "Netflix" (Netflix), "Apple TV Plus" (Apple TV+) and others.

It seems that the announcement and launch of the platform came for electoral purposes just before the elections, because access to and viewing it is still confined inside Turkey only and in Turkish, due to the incomplete technical and technical equipment

What is new about this series is that it presents the lives of Muslim students in Europe coming from different backgrounds and their interaction with each other and the Western society in which they live, in a funny comedy form. It targets young people in particular, especially those for whom religiosity does not mean much, to show Western society's view of non-religious Muslims. This is why the role of the Turkish student was played by the young star Atakan Hoshgurin, while the young Pakistani star Atabek Mohsen co-starred him.

The dialogue is divided between Turkish and English, and there is a written Turkish translation of the English dialogue, meaning that the series is not a traditional Turkish series set in Turkey, in which Turkish actors are represented exclusively, but can be described as a series of multiple identities or nationalities. It is expected that a full translation of the series will be published in several languages, because the "Teby" platform makes its materials available in 5 languages: Turkish, Arabic, English, Urdu and Spanish.

It seems that the announcement and launch of the platform came for electoral purposes just before the elections, because access to and viewing it is still confined inside Turkey only and in Turkish, due to the incomplete technical and technical equipment. Those who enter from another country can only register via email without being able to view the works. But many of the promotions and advertisements in Arabic can be seen on the platform's YouTube channel, which in a few weeks has more than two million followers subscribed. The channel has made available a YouTube page called "Tabii Watch" that provides a number of its series translated into several languages for free, and a number of others for a monthly subscription on YouTube.

Target Audience and Original Production

It is not difficult to predict the roles that the new Turkish platform will play, as the languages in which it launches target wide cultural and geographical circles stretching from the United States in the west to India in the east. Spanish is known to be the second language in the United States after English, and is also the language of Latin America, as well as Spain. There are tens of millions a year who speak Urdu distributed between India, Pakistan and Nepal, as well as immigrant minorities in the West, especially Britain. This is in addition to the Arabic language and its well-known audience.

There is not a large amount of production on the platform from which to judge the level and quality of production and its effectiveness in attracting viewers and achieving competition with Netflix and other platforms. But there are some indicators, including the series "Dark White", and also the series "Rumi" starring Turkish star Bulent Inal, who played the role of Sultan Abdul Hamid in the famous historical series.

Through these two models, it can be seen that the platform looks a lot beyond Turkey's borders, a view that may differ from the view of drama production during the past years, which revolved around pure historical drama, which embodies the interior and history of Turkish, ancient and modern. This drama embodied the stage of conflict with the other, and the West in particular, whether in the series "Ertugrul" or in the series "Sultan Abdul Hamid".

The new type of production focuses on bridges, dialogue with the other, social interaction and coexistence, such as the role of Muslims in Europe in the series "Dark White", which was keen to emphasize the issue of multiculturalism in Europe, without focusing on other problems such as Islamophobia. Rumi is about a character who is admired by both East and West, as well as a central figure in contemporary Turkish religiosity. Perhaps this is what is meant by the slogan "Stories that bring us together" launched by the platform with the announcement of its launch.

Talking to some Turkish producers, they told me that in the next phase they are targeting co-productions with other countries, and for Arab, Pakistani and other actors to appear on the new platform.

There are several things that are still mysterious that the platform has not yet revealed and no news has leaked about, which are crucial in directing the direction of the displayed works and their technical level, for example, the production style, so will the platform rely on subscriptions to production, like most competing platforms, or not?

Because the pre-subscription pattern allows the platform to be comfortable with cost-effective and high-quality production, the nature of the TRT government network, under which the platform belongs, is essentially a free service. You have noticed ads in the series "Dark White", is the ad dependence model temporary or permanent? It is also unclear yet whether the focus will be on Turkish production companies – as is the case in most of Turkey's current drama productions – or will it open the door to companies from different countries and nationalities?