Fugitive: what is the secret of the success of the Turkish soap opera?

Turkish soap operas continue to conquer the small screen. Beyond the streaming, the pandemic and reality, the Turkish productions that Telefe puts on the screen, in all its grid, seem unstoppable. One of them, fugitivein full early eveningis found daily between the most viewed programs on open television.

Six months after his first Argentine, the Turkish streak that came to replace the great success of Doctor Miracle in third place among all programs and specials broadcast in July, as measured by Kantar Ibope Media.

And apparently that’s how it will stay on this stretch towards the end, in late August, from this Monday the telenovela was the second most watched of the day, with 11.9 pointsbehind The Argentine voice.

There is no doubt that Turkish productions have been able to circumvent the genre of melodrama, since, at any time and at various latitudes, they prevail in the preferences of the public. What are the keys to this fictional phenomenon?

The purest tone of the telenovela taken on by Turkish productions is, in large part, what guarantees their success around the world, and Argentina is no exception.

These productions that do not stop growing are taking the place of national fiction, which is generally lacking on TV. And, above all, they rekindle the fire of the kind that triumphed in Latin America between 1960 and 1990, and which Turkey has been able to appropriate, especially in the last decadeadding her costume designer tone.

In the mold of the soap opera

In fugitiveas in the other fictions that have already passed through the Telefe screen in addition to those that currently occupy the evening slot (Hercai, our eternal love, to dream of you Y Zuleyha), the story is very classic: an impossible love, class division, a thousand obstaclesoften tragic, until the long-awaited happy ending is reached.

Furthermore, far from the current women’s emancipation, in general, the protagonists suffer some kind of mistreatment or are directly victims of gender-based violence. Almost all of these productions reach the markets of the Middle East, where many times over the situation of women is far below ideal standards.

Nefes, the character played by actress Irem Helvacıoğlu in fugitive, is the symbol of the woman victim of gender violence, taken to the extreme. Her story begins when she is sold by a human trafficking network and becomes a slave to one of the bad guys of history, Vedat.

The character of Vedat, who for years literally tortured Nefes physically and psychologically and with whom he had a son, is already dead. However, He is replaced by another villain, because that role is a key part of any soap opera.

not all of them are bad

Tahir, the male protagonist, together with his brothers – heroes of the plot -, even with some slightly male traits (a reflection of a very traditional culture), they partly justify men in their good treatment of women.

In fugitive There was no lack of explicitly violent scenes of situations of abuse, sexual assault, beatings, verbal and psychological abuse which, instead, are based on a true story.

The small sign superimposed on the screen with the legend “If you are a victim of gender-based violence, contact 144“, appears with an unusual frequency in this fictiondue to the continuous situations of abuse experienced by the protagonists.

Less than a month from the end Nefes and Tahir are finally living their love story, and has become a point of reference for many women, victims of gender violence, which helps personally. In addition to raising Yigit, the son she had during her captivity and whom Tahir adopted as her own, they are expecting a daughter together.

The story, which was originally called Sen Anlat Karadeniz (Tell the Black Sea), he had four seasons in Turkey between 2018 and 2019, with the same success as in other countries, as well as consecrating the actress Irem Helvacıoğlu as a heroine.

Unlike recent Argentine fiction (very few on open television, such as the first of us, which was conveniently installed), Turkish cans knew how to target an audience who, for his age group or his taste for melodrama, chooses these stories that seem to have remained.