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Practical, sourced articles on Decision No. 10962, the 0% IT tax regime and how studios actually get money back.
Essential reading
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Türkiye's IT and gaming export incentives: the complete guide
What Türkiye pays software and game companies for selling abroad, who qualifies, what the money covers, and what a claim takes. Written by the people who file them.
Türkiye's games industry
How Istanbul ended up making the world's puzzle games
In 2010 Türkiye had almost no games industry. By 2020 an American publisher had spent over two billion dollars buying three studios in one city. The short version of how that happened.
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Why game studios and SaaS companies are setting up in Türkiye
The three things that make Türkiye unusual for a software company: 0% tax on exported IT revenue, 50 to 70% cash back on growth spend, and a two-week company setup. Who it fits, who it doesn't.
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Should your studio set up in Türkiye at all? What the programme is, what it pays, and how it compares to the alternatives.
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Can you stack Türkiye's incentives, or do you have to choose?
Cash support and tax relief sit in different systems and can run together. Inside the tax system you pick one regime, and inside the cash system each expense counts once.
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Every Turkish incentive a foreign software company can use
The export incentive, teknopark, R&D centre status, TÜBİTAK and KOSGEB, what each pays, who qualifies and how they stack.
Start here
Türkiye's IT and gaming export incentives: the complete guide
What Türkiye pays software and game companies for selling abroad, who qualifies, what the money covers, and what a claim takes. Written by the people who file them.
Money back on marketing and UA
How advertising, store commissions, hosting and promotion turn into cash reimbursements, and how to structure spend so it qualifies.
Money back on marketing and UA
What the Branding Programme pays that the standard one does not
Cap by cap against the Standard Programme: advertising doubles to 100 million TL a year, store commissions to 40 million, twice as many products, and five items lose their caps entirely.
Money back on marketing and UA
How much does Türkiye actually pay back? Three studios, three answers
What the export incentive returns for an indie team, a growing studio and a portfolio company, with the caps applied and the arithmetic shown.
Money back on marketing and UA
Hosting and cloud bills: AWS, Google Cloud and Azure under Article 16
Server and cloud costs for serving your product abroad are reimbursed at 50%, capped at 5 million TL a year. The one rule that halves the claim, and what evidence the invoices need.
How claiming works
Deadlines, documents, DYS, what reviewers look for, and the habits that keep every claim clean.
How claiming works
What happens to your incentives if the business fails
Closing a Turkish company does not oblige you to repay support. A defective claim does, and that debt can be collected from the people who ran the company.
How claiming works
Nobody is scoring your application against anyone else's
Decision 10962 is a rule, not a grant competition. There is no panel, no ranking and no acceptance rate. What decides the outcome is whether your documents match the conditions.
How claiming works
How to choose someone to run your incentive claims
You give an advisor authority inside a government system, and the liability for what they file stays with your company. Here is what to establish before you sign.
The 0% IT tax regime
Corporate tax on exported software and services, VAT, and how the tax side stacks with reimbursements.
The 0% IT tax regime
Does Turkish inflation cancel out the incentives?
You earn dollars, you spend dollars on ads and cloud, and the reimbursement is fixed to the exchange rate on the day you paid. Where the lira actually touches your numbers, and where it does not.
The 0% IT tax regime
What happens when someone buys your studio
Turkish studios get acquired. Two rules decide whether the sale is clean: the incentives survive a share sale but not a sale of the game itself, and share certificates decide whether the gain is taxed.
The 0% IT tax regime
Every tax a foreign-owned Turkish software company actually pays
Corporate tax, VAT, dividend withholding, payroll and the export exemption, in one place, with what each one actually costs a software company.
Legislation and updates
What changed, when, and what it means for you. Every post cites the article of the Decision or circular.
Legislation and updates
Will Türkiye's export incentive programme last?
A fair question before you set up a company on the strength of it. What the record shows, what protects claims you have already made, and what actually happens when the rules are rewritten.
Legislation and updates
Decision 10962 vs 5447: what changed for IT companies in 2026
Turkey replaced its IT export incentive decree in February 2026. Here is what moved for software companies and game studios: caps, rates, target countries, the branding tracks and the transition rules.
For your kind of company
The same programme seen from mobile studios, PC and console studios, SaaS companies and AI companies, and from different home countries.
For your kind of company
Claiming when your team is spread across several countries
A distributed team does not disqualify you. The Decision supports staff in Türkiye and staff in overseas offices, but the 0% tax deduction asks where the service is provided from.
For your kind of company
B2B software in Türkiye: incentives built for enterprise sales
A B2B company claims a different set of items from a game studio: sales staff, certifications, analyst subscriptions, events and agent commissions. What each pays, with a worked example for a $4M ARR company.
For your kind of company
Türkiye's IT export incentives for mobile game studios
UA spend, store commissions, hosting and live-ops staff are the items that matter for a mobile studio. What each pays, with a worked example for a $3M/yr studio.
Türkiye's games industry
The studios that were built here and what happened to them. Who bought whom, what they were worth, and why so much of it came out of one country.
Türkiye's games industry
Raising capital in Türkiye: the funds, the programmes and what they have backed
Who actually writes cheques here, which accelerators matter, and what the biggest outcomes looked like. Plus the part founders overlook: the incentives are capital that costs no equity.
Türkiye's games industry
How Istanbul ended up making the world's puzzle games
In 2010 Türkiye had almost no games industry. By 2020 an American publisher had spent over two billion dollars buying three studios in one city. The short version of how that happened.
Türkiye's games industry
Why one American publisher bought three Istanbul studios
Gram Games in 2018, Peak in 2020, Rollic later the same year. Zynga spent well over two billion dollars in one city in under three years. What it was actually buying.
Living and working here
What it is actually like to run a company and a life from Türkiye: what things cost, where the tech industry sits, teknoparks, offices and the practical side of moving.
Living and working here
Work permits for the team you bring with you
The founder's residence permit is the easy part. Employing foreign staff runs into a five to one local hiring ratio, a capital test and salary floors set as multiples of the minimum wage.
Living and working here
What a developer costs you as an employer in Türkiye
Gross salary is not the number. Employer contributions add 23.75%, they stop at a ceiling of 297,270 TL a month, and severance accrues from the first year of service.
Living and working here
Istanbul or Ankara: where to base the company
Ankara is cheaper, calmer and holds the country's oldest technopark and its defence industry. Istanbul has the games studios, the investors and the flights. What each one is actually better at.
Studio stories
Profiles of studios building and shipping mobile games, how they got there, and what Türkiye's export incentives would mean for a business of that shape.
Studio stories
How Playground Productions brought Backyard Sports back
Lindsay Barnett tracked down the rights to a dead 1990s game franchise, relaunched six titles, and has a new Backyard Baseball and an animated special.
Studio stories
How Latitude turned AI Dungeon into a platform
AI Dungeon launched in 2019 and passed 8 million downloads. In April 2026 Latitude opened Voyage, a platform for building AI-run RPGs.
Studio stories
How ActFirst Games went from a Thunderful exit to a new RPG
Kristian Andersson sold Early Morning Studio to Thunderful for SEK 80 million in 2021. In 2024 he started again in Stockholm with a new RPG.
Looking for a specific support item or country?
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