Turkey became a signatory to the Bern Convention in 1952 and a copyright law protecting the rights of works in the country was enacted by the parliament. But while that was a good start, it was unfortunately not the end to the matter and it was to take rather a long time before the law was effectively applied and enforced. The reason was that publishers in the country had become "hooked" on the unauthorized publication of material under copyright while theaters went right on mounting unauthorized performances of plays. A particularly unfavorable loophole existed in the form of a special clause that was added to the convention by its signatories allowing works to be freely translated into Turkish if ten years had passed since their initial publication. This was interpreted in Turkey as meaning that the works could be freely published and the natural consequence of this was that foreign works in Turkey enjoyed copyright protection only for a ten-year period. This loophole in the copyright law was not finally plugged until 1995. Under the rules put into effect then, a work is entitled to copyright protection as long as its author (writer, composer, artist, etc) is alive and for a period of seventy years after the author's death.

This change, which was made to bring Turkey's laws into line with European norms, also proved to be inadequate for there were still many shortcomings in the law. The matter was taken up again in 2001 and this time a number of extraordinary changes and additions were introduced. These are summarized below.

• To add muscle to enforcement, the Turkish copyright law was changed to make heavy fines and even prison sentences regarding the penalties for violations of the rules stipulated in TRIPS (Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights).
• Banderoles (in effect, tax stamps) were made a requirement for any material (printed, audio, visual) that was used in a public place. Furthermore, the right to convey to the public material by means of devices useful for disseminating "markings, sounds, or images" was reserved exclusively to the owner of the work.
• A provision in the law that allowed state-owned broadcasters to make use of material without the owner's permission or without paying him anything was repealed. Public broadcasters are now subject to the same permission and payment rules as are other broadcasters etc. The right to compose music for a work under copyright without the owner's permission was also revoked.
• Blank video cassettes, audio cassettes, computer diskettes, CDs, DVDs and similar recording media are now required to have identifying marks and serial numbers.
• The institution of neighboring rights was introduced. A number of additions were made to bring various parts of the law into line with the international system and with the Council of Europe directives. Penalties were also increased for the same reason. In order to bring the law in line with TRIPS, changes were made to prevent infringements of the rights of those who had associated rights and the penalties for these violations were also increased.
• Finally, a obsolete debate over who the copyright owner was in the case of cinematic works was resolved. Under the old rule, it was the producer; under the new rule, the owners are the director, the composer of the original music score, the scenarist, and the scriptwriter.

While these and other changes in the Turkish copyright law are important, arguably the most significant step forward was the introduction of a system of specialized courts empowered to hear and resolve cases involving disputes over intellectual and industrial property rights. Before this change in the law, such suits were brought and heard in ordinary commercial courts or in criminal courts of the first instance.