The support of the funding program introduced by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2005, remains to be the only national support mechanism for local productions. Some of the data on this support over the five years is as follows:

Number of Films Received Support from Turkish Ministry

of Culture and Tourism General Directorate of Intellectual

Property and Cinema

The Average Amount of Support Given by Turkish Ministry

of Culture and Tourism General Directorate of Intellectual

Property and Cinema

In 2010, of the 65 new Turkish films released 10 of them had received support from Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s production and post-production supports. This table gathers the data on these supported films.

Besides supporting national productions, in order to increase international productions in Turkey and subsidize co-productions, Turkish government introduced a tax incentive scheme to attract foreign productions in 2009. This

scheme allows companies with bases abroad to rebate the VAT’s of their costs occurred in Turkey. On average VAT Tax in Turkey is 18%. At the moment there is no case which benefitted from this new incentive.

Turkey does not have a law on cinema and there are many legislative holes regarding the intellectual property rights in audiovisual productions. Turkish film industry has been organizing as Turkish Cinema Council (Türkiye Sinema Konseyi) to form a civil body to make demands for further institutional and legislative support mechanisms. At the moment the council’s top priority is to make their draft law to found a Turkish Cinema Institution part of the parliament’s legislative agenda.

The support of Minsitry of Culture and Tourism to films released in 2010

Internationally acclaimed emerging young directors and producers from Turkey have formed New Cinema Movement in 2010. This movement aims to intensify co-operation, solidarity and communication between young

filmmakers for alternative production and distribution models in Turkey. The guilds and the trade union for audiovisual sector in Turkey are not as powerful as their counterparts in Europe and U.S. These institutions have been organizing and mobilizing in the last few years to become stronger organizations.

Distribution:

In distribution free market conditions apply for distribution and no subsidies or incentives are involved. As of 2010 there are 19 Distribution Companies in Turkey. 17 of them are domestic companies. UIP and WB have their Istanbul offices since 1992. Fox Films are distributed by the local company, Tiglon. More than 70 % of the market are shared among 4 distributors: Özen Film, UIP, WB, Tiglon. Besides TV and DVD sales as a new source of

revenue for distributors and producers, IP TV & VOD exist since 2009.

European Co-Productions:

Turkey has been a member of Eurimages since March 1990. With Eurimages the annual average has been 4 majority co-productions and 2 minority co-productions. Out of 69 Turkish films released in 2009 only Süt (Milk, Semih Kaplanoğlu), Pandora’s Box (Pandora’nın Kutusu, Yeşim Ustaoğlu) and 11’e 10 Kala (10 to 11, Pelin Esmer) had European co-producers. Majority Coproductions are usually with Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany, and France. No regular public support exists for minority coproductions. Minority co-productions are

usually financial co-productions with Balkan countries.

TV:

Since the deregulation of the monopoly of the public broadcasting in 1990 TV productions and ad films industry have been important sites for building the technological and human capital for Turkish Cinema. Although TV networks do not commission TV films, there is a big market for TV series. Recently Turkish TV series have started to access Middle Eastern, North African and Balkan markets.

Enis Köstepen

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