THE LABOR PROCESS OF TELEVISION DRAMA WRITERS IN TURKEY

This study focuses on television dramas which is a dominant form of production in television sector in Turkey and discusses the Turkish television drama writers' labor process. There has been an ongoing debate about whether creativity is possible on television, and if so, who can be accepted as the main actor of this creative process. In order to contribute to this discussion properly, it is important to carefully examine the capitalist cultural production and the working practices of cultural workers, instead of easily rejecting creativity in the production of television, or conversely praising the creative people. The working practices of television drama writers are quite convenient for conducting such an investigation. This study is based on the field research conducted between 2011-2014. The fieldwork of this study is based on participant observation research in the writing workshops located in ？stanbul and Ankara, the interviews with 18 professional writers using a semi-structured in-depth interview technique. In addition, the study examines the recently published how-to books written by screenwriters and as well as various news, interviews, reports etc. about screenwriters obtained from the press and internet sources. The introduction part of the study presents a general overview of the creative industries and creative labor discussion and also reviews the characteristic features of Turkish television drama production sector. In the following sections, the problems of precarity and autonomy of television drama writers have been discussed and the ways in which television writers establish relationships with their own texts and audiences have been examined