ONK Agency Ltd. - The First and The Largest Copyright Agency in Turkey

In addition to book and drama rights, ONK Agency also provides copyright-related services in a number of other areas as well, even though not in an extended scope. For example, the works of Agency associated Turkish authors are numerously placed by ONK with Turkey's TV and radio stations to be produced as single or serialized productions. ONK also carries activities in connection with the lyrics written by the authors who are represented by the Agency, their CD and cassette productions being first in line and the use of these materials by TV and radio stations and in other likewise areas.

ONK Agency Ltd. also hadles serial and periodicals rights (features, comic strips, photographs, etc.) with Turkish newspapers and magazines and in this capacity Agency acts as a representative for many foreign firms.

Turhan Selçuk, the internationally renown Turkish cartoonist is an artist who is represented by ONK Agency world wide. Again, dramatic composers like Yalçın Tura, Timur Selçuk, Cem İdiz and Joel Simon, who compose music for movies, plays are represented by ONK Agency.

In the Agency’s portfolio are more than 20 highly qualified translators each specialized in fields such as literary novels, essays, plays, etc., translating works into Turkish from the mainly used languages of the world.

Although the rules and practices concerning copyright applications have been fairly established in the case of book and drama rights, certain other rights, such as with serialization and press-publication placements, unfortunately the royalties most of the time are open to negotiaton.

ONK Agency in general requests 10% of the production budget as a royalty when it comes to TV- drama and serial rights but this is not not a set rule and the percentage figure is open to negotiation by all means.

The taxation rate over such gains can be as high as 25%, however, it is frequently possible (if a bilateral agreement exist between the counties to prevent double taxation) to reduce this to 10%.

The countries with which such agreements presently exist are Albania, Algeria, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Rumania, South Korea, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, U.A.E, U.S.A, United Kingdom and Uzbekistan.