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On 11 June 2008, Law no. 2954 regulating the principles and procedures regarding the duties, authorities and responsibilities of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), which was founded in 1964 to conduct public broadcasting, was amended. The most notable amendment made was enabling the TRT to broadcast in languages and dialects other than Turkish. Previously, by a 2002 amendment to article 4 of the Law no. 3984 on the Establishment of Radio and Television Enterprises and their Broadcasts, both public and private radio and television had already been permitted to conduct broadcasting...

In Turkey, there are four collecting societies in the field of audio-visual works. These are SESAM (Turkish Film Authors’ Collecting Society), SINEBIR (Film Authors’ Collecting Society), SETEM (Film and Television Works Authors´ Collecting Society) and BSB (Documentary Filmmakers’ Society). The members of these collecting societies are authors of films, who are defined in the Turkish Law of Intellectual Artistic Works as the director, scriptwriter, dialogue writer, composer of original music and animator. Before 1995, the law designated the producers as the authors of films. Currently producers...

On 22 April 2008, the European Court of Human Rights found a breach of freedom of expression in the case of Yalçin Küçük (nr. 3) v. Turkey. Küçük, a university professor and a writer, who was prosecuted on account of various speeches he gave and articles he wrote concerning the Kurdish question. In 1999, the Ankara State Security Court found him guilty of inciting hatred and hostility, of emitting separatist propaganda and of belonging to an armed group (art. 312 § 2 and art. 168 § 2 of the Criminal Code and art. 8 of the Antiterrorism Act nr. 3713). He was also convicted of assisting an armed...

Article 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code was amended by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Turkish Parliament), on 30 April 2008, by the law no. 5759. The law has been approved by the President, and entered into force upon its publication in the Official Gazette on 8 May 2008. This controversial article is famous for its application against Orhan Pamuk, Turkish Nobel Laureate in Literature, Hrant Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian descent who was murdered in 2007, and many other journalists and writers. Article 301, before it was amended, required imprisonment from six months to three years...

In a recent judgement, the Istanbul 4th Industrial Property Rights Court (dated 9 July 2007, E. 2006/113, K. 2007/152, unpublished) has decided that producers of films should benefit from the longer protection period as extended by amendment of the Turkish Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works (LIA) of 1995, regardless of whether or not the protection period set in the old law had already expired. The LIA has already been amended several times. An important change was effected in 1995, when the authorship of cinematographic works was altered in an attempt to harmonise Turkish law with EC law....