Eylem Yanardagoglu, Kadir Has University, Turkey In the last decade one of the most rapidly developing areas of the Turkish media industry has been TV series production. Highly diversified in their themes and target audiences, until the beginning of 2000s, these series remained as locally produced and consumed products. They varied from big productions of literary adaptations to small budget sit-coms, but all somehow managed to glue their viewers to the TV screens. In the last decade series became more professional, industrialised and transnational. So far, around 70 different Turkish titles TV series have been broadcast to audiences in 39 countries. For instance, in the Arab speaking countries, they comprise approximately 60 % of the shares in foreign programme broadcasts. Some experts have characterized this as neo-Ottoman cool, referring to Turkey’s growing “soft power” role in successfully combining Islam with democracy. However, survey data from 16 Arab countries, previous audience studies, and our in-depth interviews with Istanbul-based producers and distributors refute this. This paper is based on research that underscores the region’s glocal flexibility and the market articulations overarching Turkey’s soft power ambitions. It explores the factors that made TV series such a major attraction for transnational viewers by re-evaluating the public diplomacy debates and considering the shifting global dynamics of production as well as distribution with in-depth interviews conducted with distributors and producers based in Istanbul.