Creative Commons Turkey Team via Instagram

We are so pleased to announce that the official translation of CC 4.0 Licenses into Turkish are now available so Turkish speaking communities can use them in their own language.

Public consultation for the translation took place in March 2017 and was coordinated by the Creative Commons Turkey team. Before and after the consultation, intense work has been put into the process including discussions, meetings, cross checking terminologies, proofreading, fine-tuning. Linguists, lawyers, librarians, IT experts and researchers have been involved in the work.

A few people should be named here to thank for special efforts to make this happen. CC Turkey Public Lead Ilkay Holt, Technical Lead Orcun Madran, Legal Partner Serhat Koc (LL.M IT), Legal Partner Selva Kaynak (LL.M IP) lead this work. We would also like to thank to Sirin Tekinay who initiated CC Turkey movement in Turkey and Gultekin Gurdal, Director of IZTECH Library for their great contribution in finalizing the review process.

Creative Commons 4.0 licenses in Turkish is an entry point to a shared, free, and open society in Turkish. Around the world, people are encouraged to produce, share what they produce, reuse, adopt standards and encourage reuse, and open up innovation.

But even more important than using the tools of Creative Commons, adopting open licenses requires a philosophy. “Openness” must be contained every step of the way, from the concept of openness to how we create works, where we keep them, how we allow them to be used, and how we should use the works created by others. In all of these steps, openness, transparency, and openness to sharing and an attitude that supports the re-use of our work is important.

With Creative Commons, we embrace the “some rights reserved” approach to copyright instead of “all rights reserved,” This approach requires copyright reform, in which the conventional-traditional-stereotyped copyright laws leave its place in a structure that will strengthen the creativity of society.

This is an integral part of the cultural, literary, scientific and artistic field we are trying to define through Creative Commons and open license movements and is why the legal texts of Creative Commons licenses are now crucial in Turkish.

This is a milestone achievement for Turkey in the adoption of open licenses, which is an invaluable component of an open society. This will help significantly to improve open policies and share legally. We now invite Turkish commoners to use the CC licenses in Turkish and start sharing.