Turkish Labour Markets are Headed for a New Era of Competition Law Enforcement

Our latest article “Turkish Labour Markets are Headed for a New Era of Competition Law Enforcement” by Togan Turan, Gülçin Dere, Deniz Benli and Sabiha Ulusoy is published on Lexology.

The Turkish Competition Authority (the “TCA”) announced on 20 April 2021 that the Turkish Competition Board (the “Board”) has initiated a full-fledged investigation against 32 undertakings, which are mainly active in digital markets, to determine whether they have violated article 4 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition (the “Law No. 4054”) by way of alleged anti-competitive agreements in the labour market1 . The announcement explains that direct or indirect anti-competitive agreements between undertakings that are competing as employers in the labour market may restrict worker mobility and deprive workers of better wages and working conditions.

This marks the first extensive enforcement action by the TCA focused exclusively on alleged anticompetitive conduct in labour markets. The TCA has previously considered anti-competitive conduct in the labour market in conjunction with other types of infringement in traditional product and services markets. For instance, on 10 November 2020, the TCA had announced the initiation of a full-fledged investigation against 8 private hospitals in order to determine whether they were in violation of article 4 of the Law No. 4054 by preventing the transfer of personnel between hospitals through gentlemen’s agreements, and mutually determining the fees charged to freelance doctors for the use of the hospitals operating rooms. 2 On 10 February 2021, 21 more hospitals were included to the investigation, which is still ongoing.

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