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Watch out. We have been invaded once again by the Turks, only this time they targeted our TV screens and not our country. For the past decade, precisely since 2007, when Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ aka Mohanad and his blond hair knocked our doors with his hit TV series “Nur”, things have never been quite the same.

The TV series industry is a dog eat dog one. The Turkish series had been running rings around our own national TV series and our folks had no objection.

But there must be a reason for them to be going great guns against all backlash, and to escape being a ‘moga w 3adet’:

1.Hot actors and actresses

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While our screens -the big ones and the small ones- have been monopolized lately by the presence of cheap criminals-look-alike stars we barely heard of, how can we then resist the bewitching Turkish stars? And you know what? We’re sick of seeing wrongdoers or burglars; sue us!

2.We secretly enjoy all the melodrama

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Whether we like to admit it or not, we Egyptians love melodrama and have a tendency to be overemotional. We would complain about the exaggerated length of Turkish series and the unjustified number of episodes but we secretly enjoy it. No matter how many time we see both the hero and the heroine of the series get sent to jail, fall in a coma, die for a number of episodes then make a surprise comeback a few episodes later or don’t, we still keep following the events eagerly.

3. Their culture is almost identical to ours 

People lean towards watching what they can identity with. Since both Egypt and Turkey have been ruled by the Ottomans for almost four centuries, surely they had imprinted us with a considersable part of their identity leaving lots of traces like some words that we can’t relate to our language such as “Tamam” ,“Afandem”, “Oda” “Abla” and many more. The similarities between the two cultures go to a great extent attracting the Egyptian audience to those series.

4.The absence of our national TV series 

As long as it’s not Ramadan, our national TV seems unable to fill the rest of the year with good quality Egyptian series. Therefore, it airs various series of different nationalities in order to yaklo 3ish (Turkish/ Indian/Korean…They must be really desperate). The Turkish series always win the day.

5.Their sensational music

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The Turkish and Egyptian music have a kind of homogeneity that is close enough to catch our ears. However, the Turkish music still has its own originality and manages to draw us in with their sweet melodies.

Few last words to our TV series industry: honey, you need to step up to the plate. For your information, we do watch TV the whole year round; it’s not something we only do in Ramadan. Take the leaf from the Turkish book and blow our minds; you can easily outdo them.