Since its first establishment back in 1994, the Turkish Competition Authority (“TCA”) has been very active both on the enforcement and legislation side. It initiates multiple preliminary and full-fledged investigations covering various allegations every year, examines a significant number of mergers and acquisitions (approx. 300 cases in 2021), regularly conducts sector reports and closely follows global trends to keep its legislation and practice up-to-date. Indeed, Turkey’s competitionlaws are frequently being updated to address the needs of a changing economic environment and to harmonise Turkey’s competition legislation with that of the EU.

Recently, inspired by the leading competition agencies in the world, the TCA has been increasingly focusing on digital markets and tech companies, which results with reformative, novel and somewhat disputable steps taken by the TCA. In this regard, this Issue is intended to provide brief summaries to its recipients on recent developments, particularly on digitalization and other hot topics under Turkish competition law that we think could easily concern global and national companies operating in Turkish geographic markets.

Our competition and antitrust department regularly reports on competition law developments in our quarterly published Turkish Competition Law Newsletter. In this Issue, you will find information on (i) the recently introduced technology undertaking concept and the relevant case law, (ii) reformative steps amending the main competition legislation in line with the Digital Markets Act, (iii) a more rigid approach on the ancillary restraints in M&A cases, (iv) the potential impact of the new VBER in Turkey and diverging vertical matters between the EU and Turkey, (v) increasing scrutiny in labour markets, (vi) commitment procedure as a useful tool and the recent case law, and (vii) the settlement mechanism as an incentive for companies to come clean for efficiency purposes.

We hope you will find our newsletter useful. You can reach the 2022 Fall Issue full of the newsletter here.