Yay-Bir Yönetim Kurulu Üyemiz Emrah Özpirincçinin Frankfurt`ta Yabancı Yayıncılara Verdiği Brifing
October 12th, 2007 - 12:48 pm by Andrew
Piracy and the government’s monopoly in educational publishing were identified as two key challenges to the Turkish publishing industry in a breakfast briefing this morning. Next year’s Frankfurt Book Fair Guest of Honour was put under the microscope by the managing director of Oxford University Press in Turkey.
Emrah Ozpirincci began with some horrifying statistics: almost 40 per cent of the Turkish publishing market is lost to piracy. ‘It is the biggest problem, and it almost kills the book publishing industry in Turkey,’ he said. And while the Intellectual Property Law in Turkey has recently been amended in an attempt to improve the situation, the crooks continue to run free. ‘We have had zero successful prosecutions over the past 5 or 6 years,’ said Ozpirincci.
Piracy is a particularly big problem in the public sector. The Turkish government, which produces its own coursework material, currently bans the use of supplementary teaching materials in schools. As a result, teachers are turning to photocopying to access additional texts. This is a serious issue, not just for Turkish publishers, but also for international publishers wanting to invest in the Turkish market. ‘What can we do to help fight piracy in Turkey?’ one audience member wanted to know. The outlook from Ozpirincci was bleak. ‘I don’t know. I’ve learned to live with this fact.’
The government monopoly of publishing, particularly in the educational sector, was also highlighted. Again the statistics were telling. In the 1980s the Turkish government’s publishing programme accounted for 75 per cent of the publishing industry, and although this has decreased over the past few decades, it is still a serious problem. As Ozpirincci put it: ‘The state acts as the leading rival of the publishing industry.’ But it is not only the publishers that are being affected. An estimated 4,000 bookshops have closed down in recent years as a result of the free distribution of textbooks by the Turkish government.
With so many challenges to discuss, there was little time for a response from the Turkish government representative at the briefing. Ahmet Ari, general director of Libraries and Publications of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, agreed that there was a need for change. ‘We very much support the self-organisation of the private sector in publishing,’ he said, pointing out that the government’s share in the publishing market has decreased by 20 per cent over the past few years.
Ari added that he hoped to ‘organise more such meetings’ in the future. As next year’s Guest of Honour, I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities.
