Developments after 1980

The adoption of a liberal trade regime, and the support for an export-oriented industrialization model which was set up after 1980, were the main factors which motivated the Turkish industry to new product development. Parallel developments such as the opening of the Turkish domestic market to foreign competition, the Customs Union agreement with the EU, and the new legislation concerning the protection of Intellectual Property Rights in 1995 have also been instrumental in motivating the Turkish industry to develop new products both for the domestic and export markets. In this process, in addition to their in-house design activities, almost all large companies started to work with external designers. In the case of small and medium sized companies, only external designers had been the preferred source of design expertise to fulfill these companies’ needs for new products.

Due to these developments, graduates from Turkish design schools, who faced difficulties in finding employment in industry before, started to find employment fitting to their area of expertise. Some of these graduates also started to set up design consultancy companies and to give external services to industry.