Introduction There have been some exciting developments in Turkish competition law recently, not least of which was the Turkish Competition Board’s (“Board”) first-ever judgment on non-compliance with commitments. To recap, the Board approved the merger between Luxottica Group S.p.A. and Essilor International S.A. back in 2018, subject to behavioural and structural commitments. To review the…

Part I: Prohibitive Provisions This blog post is the first in a series of two blog posts. The objective of this series is to provide a brief overview of the Draft Amendment of the Turkish Competition Act (“Draft Law”, “Turkish DMA”, “Draft” or “Law”). The first blog post focuses on the substantive provisions whereas the…

Introduction The reasoned decisions regarding the two separate investigations conducted independently by the Turkish Competition Authority (“TCA”) against suppliers operating in the fast-moving consumer goods (“FMCG”) market were published on the official website of the TCA in May 2024. Both decisions set significant precedents regarding “resale price maintenance”, which the TCA has particularly focused on…

Introduction In recent years, the Turkish Competition Authority (“TCA”) has markedly intensified its scrutiny of undertakings operating in the cosmetics sector with greater frequency, predominantly based on allegations of resale price maintenance and the restriction of online sales in this industry. In most of these investigations, the relevant undertakings have admitted the violation and applied…

Introduction There has always been a thin line between legitimate market research and potentially anticompetitive information exchanges. Caselaw on such matters is of a particular importance. On 01 January 2023, a preliminary inquiry into several undertakings active in the light and medium class and heavy commercial vehicles market[1] was initiated to determine whether these undertakings…

Introduction On 23 August 2023, the Turkish Competition Authority (“TCA”) announced that it had fined Sahibinden Bilgi Teknolojileri Pazarlama ve Ticaret A.Ş. (“Sahibinden”) for abuse of dominance and required the undertaking to implement certain remedies. The TCA decided  (“Sahibinden Decision”) that Sahibinden had infringed Article 6 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition…

The Turkish Competition Authority (“TCA”) had a busy agenda in 2023 both in terms of enforcement and policy actions. Let us elaborate on some of them here. For your convenience, we have classified those in the following sections: (i) antitrust, focusing on violation in the digital markets, no-poaching agreements, resale price maintenance (ii) legislative developments…

With its decision issued on 30 March 2023 (Storytel Decision), the Turkish Competition Authority (TCA) evaluated Storytel Turkey Yayıncılık Hizmetleri A.Ş.’s (Storytel) claim that some documents obtained during on-site inspections were covered by attorney-client privilege. This post presents a comparative analysis of the TCA’s approach regarding attorney-client privilege presented in the Storytel decision and the…

Introduction In line with the global trend, the Turkish Competition Authority (TCA) has recently displayed a remarkable level of interest in addressing competition concerns in digital markets. Maybe being one of the months where the output of the TCA has peeked its highest, in April 2023 the TCA announced (i) the publication of the Preliminary…