Cannes Lions is a source of inspiration and knowledge. But it holds another function, which is often overlooked. While we are getting ready to meet colleagues at the Palais, we tend to review the last 360-something days, whether for professional reasons or personal ones. And the last 360-something days haven’t been the best for the Turkish creative industry.

Turkey’s economy has been in free-fall for several years. In May 2024, the economy was in turmoil, with the annual inflation rate peaking at 75%. Fast forward one year inflation had eased, falling to around 38% in April 2025, according to Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK), but the strangling effects persisted.

The Turkish Lira continued to depreciate and the corresponding exchange rate with the US$ rose to TRY38.83 from TRY32.59 between June 2024 and May 2025. While the government increased the minimum wage by 30% in January and the central bank maintained the interest rates between 45 and 50%, prices continued to rise.

Moreover, another event took place: on March 19, 2025, Mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoğlu, the main opposition’s presidential candidate and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main political rival, was detained with over 100 of his colleagues. In turn, massive protests arose in Istanbul and spread to the whole country.

Then came the boycotts — started by students and supported by the opposition, against the brands and media outlets whose consumers and audience vastly differ from the institutions and the people that they support.

This economic and political turmoil happened simultaneously with the AI revolution, leading to marketing budgets being slashed. Brands turned to in-house productions to do more with less, some retreated from marketing efforts altogether. Bu even after this, Turkey’s creative industry showed its resilience and managed to rank 10th on WARC Effective 100, and 10th on WARC Media 100, in 2025.

Amid this climate, a section of Turkey’s creative industries offered a beam of light. The last couple of years have been quite fruitful for the Turkish television industry, which started to become popular in the very first years of the millennium and ranked continuously within the top-five countries in terms of series export for approximately the last 10 years. According to The Economist, the global demand for Turkish shows grew by 184% between 2020 and 2023, compared to 73% for Korean dramas, and earned circa $600m in 2022.

Today, Turkey is the third largest exporter of television, after US and the UK. It is possible to attribute this continuous success of Turkish dramas because the package resonates with a global audience.

Whether they are in a historic or a modern setting, they generally involve beautiful actors and actresses, hold a certain standard when it comes to aesthetics specifically through clothing and art direction, communicate a different set of values to its rivals and provide binge-watching opportunities with long episodes. Arab viewers are fond of Turkish series because they can relate to them culturally. Latin American and Spanish viewers follow them because they are used to watching telenovelas, which are quite close to Turkis ‘dizis’ when it comes to the expression of emotion. And the viewers that share a long history with the Ottoman Empire watch them to connect with their past.

Today, any conversation in relation to television productions or any kind of videographic content, must mention the role of platforms. While Turkish producers have been successful in creating dramas including Kara Para Aşk (Black Money Love), Yargı (Family Secrets) and Muhteşem Yüzyıl (Suleiman the Magnificient) that pull in global audiences, they lacked progress in other genres, such as comedy, putting Turkish productions at a disadvantage.

However, over the last couple of years, things have changed dramatically. First, the number of contact creators and content produced for social-media platforms has increased dramatically. This led to a significant increase in the number of spaces for comedy. Then, albeit in a much smaller number compared to these two, the number of longer comedic content published on social-media platforms, including Instagram and TikTok, and digital video platforms, such as YouTube and Vimeo, started to soar. Finally, experiments in longer comedic content were noticed by media companies, which either tried to get those shows for their platforms or hire the talent who created them.

Last year has been the year of comedy. Turkey’s TV and video content industry has reached a new level of diversity in terms of styles, stories and talent. Today, we can talk about a matured comedy scene that surpasses expectations and is full of creativity that feeds into social media, television and cinema.

In recent years, Cannes Lions has pioneered a return to humour in advertising, emphasising its importance for human connection. The global creative industry agrees that humour has to return to the scene, not only to create more enjoyable content but because of its impact on effectiveness. In Turkey, we’re already reaping the benefits of a vibrant comedy scene, but the question is whether these new shows will be able to carry this energy to the other markets.