Public funding in the Turkish national film industry

Abstract

This thesis examines the economic and industrial effects of Turkey’s one and only national public film funding scheme, Law 5224, enacted in 2004 and put into practice in 2005 onwards. Adopting an economic film history approach, it analyses a 15-year period (2005–2019) to assess how the funding body’s objectives, expectations, and operational framework have influenced film production and the career trajectories of funded directors. Drawing on a compiled dataset created from publicly available sources, the study provides both macro-level statistical analysis and micro-level career-based evaluation of the funding scheme and its impact on directors’ career trajectories. The findings indicate that while Law 5224 has contributed to increased production levels in parallel with the industrial growth the Turkish film industry undergoes, the main objective of improving the film industry, and financial expectations from applicants show a misalignment between the public funding body and the private, oligopolist distribution industry. Thus, the structural limitations in Law 5224 hinder its capacity to foster a sustainable, balanced film industry. The research contributes to the underdeveloped literature on the Turkish film industry economics, offering a quantitative study of public funding’s industrial role and its interaction with private market dynamics.