Turkey’s Counterfeit Goods Market: BBC Türkçe Report

This BBC News Türkçe report shows that the counterfeit goods market is no longer limited to bags and clothing. Moreover, Turkey’s share of it keeps growing. Below we summarise the key points of the report and what they mean for product disposal. The video is in Turkish.

What does the report cover?

According to the report, counterfeit goods made up 3.3% of world trade in 2023. That is roughly 1.2 trillion euros. Counterfeits seized at European Union borders come from three main origins: China, Hong Kong and Turkey. Turkey held third place for many years. However, in the 2023 report it overtook Hong Kong and moved up to second. In addition, its share stayed below 5% until 2018. By 2022, it reached about a quarter of the total value of seized goods.

The report also stresses how far counterfeiting has spread. Car parts, detergent, toothpaste, cosmetics, medicines, pesticides and building materials are now all on the counterfeiter’s list. As the expert interviewed in the report puts it, the goal of counterfeiting is profit, not health or quality. In Turkey, trademark infringement is a crime under the Industrial Property Law of 2017. As the report notes, it carries a prison sentence of one to three years.

Where the counterfeit goods market gets its supply: uncontrolled disposal

A counterfeiter needs parts of the genuine product: the box, the label, the bottle, even the expired product itself. For this reason, every batch that escapes proper disposal becomes a ready source for the counterfeit goods market. For example, anyone with an empty box or bottle can fill it with a different product. They can then sell it as the original.

In our field work, the risks gather at five points. These are careless “cost-free” in-house disposal, warehouses and bonded areas, transport, the disposal facility and hospitals. In particular, a truck door “sealed” with an ordinary plastic cable tie lets goods disappear on the road.

What should brands do?

To keep your products out of the counterfeit goods market, four steps make the difference:

• Right after the count, wrap the pallet in stretch film and close it with a dedicated security tape.
• Seal the vehicle with a branded, serial-numbered seal that reveals any tampering, not with an ordinary cable tie.
• Check that the facility holds a licence from the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change. Stay on site during disposal and take photos and video.
• Have the packaging and labels destroyed together with the product, because an empty box is a risk too.

Scrap has applied these controls at every stage for years. It also opens each process to its client on an online tracking portal. Our aim is simple: your product and its packaging should never find their way back into the counterfeit goods market. For more detail, see our articles on the security of the official disposal process and on protecting brand value during disposal.

Source: BBC News Türkçe, “‘Çakma’ ürünler: Türkiye’de taklit ürün sektörü nasıl büyüdü?” (Counterfeit goods: how did Turkey’s counterfeit industry grow?), 17 October 2024. We embed the video from the publisher’s YouTube channel. All rights belong to BBC News Türkçe. Watch the original video on YouTube.