Turkish police seized 7.75 million counterfeit music CDs and movies, and also 1.6 million pirate versions of bestseller books over the past three years.

According to statistics of Turkish Culture Ministry, police and ministry officials launched more than 9,500 operations against bootleg rings in the country.

More than 10,000 people were arrested in these operations on suspicion of possessing and producing for sale of counterfeit trademarked items.

Statistics showed that there was a decline in production of knock-off CDs since 2007. 2.22 million illegal copies were confiscated in 2007, while it fell to 1.5 million the next year and to 890,000 so far in 2009.

The rest of the bootleg items, around 3.6 million copies, were DVDs in the last three years.

However, illegal production of pirate versions of books were rising, statistics revealed. Nearly half of bootleg books, 840,000 copies, were seized so far in 2009 when compared to 2008 and 2007.

AA