The Turkish Drama Awards celebrate one of the most beloved forces in modern television: the Turkish drama, the dizi that fans across dozens of countries fell for and never let go of. Part of the annual iFANN Drama Awards, this campaign honors the industry behind the stories, the performances, and the fandoms that turned a national craft into a global obsession.
This is an industry award, not a nationality contest. It celebrates Turkish drama as a body of work with worldwide reach, and it hands the decision to the fans who made it a phenomenon everywhere from Buenos Aires to Beirut to Karachi. Three honors sit under this page: Best Turkish Drama for the series, Best Turkish Actor, and Best Turkish Actress.
What the award honors
The Turkish Drama Awards recognize the finest work coming out of the dizi industry across a full year of storytelling. It spans the sweeping romances, the family sagas, the historical epics, and the modern dramas that keep fans glued to the screen episode after long episode.
There are three distinct honors here. Best Turkish Drama celebrates the series itself, the ensemble effort and the world it built. Best Turkish Actor and Best Turkish Actress celebrate the performers who carried those stories and gave fans a reason to keep coming back.
An industry with global fans
Turkish drama long ago outgrew Turkey. Dizi are exported to well over a hundred countries and dubbed into dozens of languages, with devoted audiences across Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, the Balkans, South Asia, and far beyond. In many of these places a Turkish series is not a niche import, it is appointment viewing that families gather around every night.
That global reach is exactly why this award belongs on iFANN. An industry loved on this many continents deserves a stage where its worldwide fandom, not only its home audience, gets to decide who wins. Celebrating work that travels the world and moves people everywhere is the whole point of what we do here.
Chosen by fans worldwide
Winners are not chosen by Turkish viewers alone. They are chosen by the international fan base that made Turkish drama a global success, the people watching dubbed and subtitled episodes in Santiago, Cairo, Sarajevo, Lahore, and everywhere in between.
Every fan on iFANN can nominate and vote, wherever they live. If a series or a performer meant something to you and your corner of the world, your voice counts here just as much as anyone's, and that is how the winners are meant to be found.
Our selection philosophy
The process begins with fans submitting the people and works they believe deserve recognition. iFANN's internal editorial team reviews every nomination for category fit, eligibility, identity, duplication, and abuse. Accepted nominees join the public ballot. After public voting closes, the iFANN International Editorial Board independently ranks the five finalists.
Winners are decided by the published combined score: fan votes contribute 60 percent, and the International Editorial Board's independent ranking of the five finalists contributes 40 percent.
Why it runs once a year
The Turkish Drama Awards are part of the annual iFANN Drama Awards, a themed campaign that runs once a year rather than every month. Because a great dizi season unfolds over many months, the voting window is a long one: it opens in September and runs through December, giving the worldwide fan base time to rally behind their favorites.
There is no monthly version of this award. It is deliberately annual, a single yearly moment to crown the best of Turkish drama. Winners are celebrated and promoted across the iFANN social platform, featured on the iFANN Pop Show, and each receives a physical engraved iFANN trophy along with a permanent place in the awards archive.
Best Turkish Drama
Best Turkish Drama honors the finest scripted dizi of the year, the sweeping series that turned Turkish television into a global force. These are shows built on a scale unlike anywhere else, with feature-length episodes that let family sagas, historical epics and slow-burning romances breathe across a full season. From the palaces of Ottoman-era spectacle to the apartments and boardrooms of contemporary Istanbul, the category rewards the series that gripped audiences at home and across the dozens of countries where dizi now air in prime time.
Nominations are open to every genre, network and streaming platform. Whether a ratings juggernaut watched by millions each week or a bold production that pushed the form somewhere new, this is where fans put forward the Turkish drama that defined their year.
Best Turkish Actor
Best Turkish Actor celebrates the leading men who carry the dizi, performers whose presence has to hold an audience across dozens of hours of television. Turkish drama asks a great deal of its stars, from the commanding gravity of a period hero to the wounded charm of a modern romantic lead, and the actors who succeed become household names far beyond Turkey.
This category recognizes the male performance that stood out most across the year, in a lead or a defining supporting role. Fans nominate the actors whose work stayed with them, reflecting an industry that moves easily between historical epic, crime thriller and heartfelt romance.
Best Turkish Actress
Best Turkish Actress honors the women at the emotional center of Turkish drama. Turkish series are often built around their heroines, and the finest actresses anchor the romance, the family conflict and the historical sweep that audiences around the world tune in for, holding a character steady across a long and demanding season.
The award recognizes the standout female performance of the year, open to leading and supporting roles alike. Fans put forward the actresses whose work moved them, from established stars to the breakout names redrawing what Turkish television can be.