What Is Design Centre (Tasarım Merkezi)?
A Tasarım Merkezi (design centre) is a status certified by Türkiye's Ministry of Industry and Technology under Law No. 5746, providing tax and social security reliefs for in-house design activity.
The design centre rests on the same law as the R&D centre and offers broadly the same package of reliefs. What differs is the nature of the work: instead of a search for technical novelty, the centre carries out original design work on a product's form, user experience, ergonomics or aesthetics.
The status is certified on application to the Ministry of Industry and Technology. The company must maintain a separate design unit, a defined organisational structure and at least the minimum number of full-time design personnel set by the Ministry; those conditions are updated periodically.
This route matters most in sectors where design is the competitive edge — textiles, furniture, white goods, automotive supply, packaging and machinery. Work in these companies often falls outside the classic definition of R&D yet can qualify for support as design activity.
As with R&D centres, the reliefs depend on discipline: each design project must be separately defined, personnel and expenditure tracked per project, and the results reported in the form the Ministry's monitoring process requires.