Turkish Competition Law Newsletter - 2023 Summer Issue

The Turkish Competition Authority (Authority) embarks on a busy summer season. Before starting our remarks on the Authority’s hectic agenda, it is to be noted that the Authority got on with its regular workload after the earthquake that hit Türkiye in February and finally rescheduled oral hearings for nearly 10 ongoing investigations that were postponed due to the natural disaster. That delay had left numerous well-operating companies (such as Trendyol, Sahibinden, EssilorLuxottica, Samsung and LG Electronics) preoccupied with uncertainty as to potential sanctions. It appears from the oral hearings held by the Authority up to mid-August 2023, that the Authority has been unhesitant to impose monetary fines on many prominent companies. Indeed, on 9 August 2023, the Authority imposed a total of EUR 21 million on well-known homeware appliances companies, including Arçelik, Samsung, LG and SVS, which it determined that these companies engaged in resale price maintenance practices.

Another recent decision rendered on 26 July 2023 involved nearly 40 companies from multiple industries, making it the most extensive investigation into no-poach agreements to date. In total, 16 well-established companies were fined for agreeing not to hire each other’s employees, 21 companies were not found in violation of Article 4 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition and the cases against 11 companies were settled during the investigation process. The fined undertakings include one of Türkiye’s largest ready-to-wear fashion retailers, LC Waikiki (fined approximately EUR 2 million), which is followed by Türkiye’s prominent telecommunication operator, Turk Telekom (fined approximately EUR 1.4 million). Another highlight of this summer was the Turkish Constitutional Court’s limitation of the Authority’s on-site inspection powers, which ruled that the Authority cannot carry out on-site inspections without a judicial decision.

The decision surprised many academicians and practitioners as the Law No. 4054 on Competition Law explicitly provides such powers to the Authority. The decision is expected to have a serious impact on the practice of competition law and the legislation in the long term.

It is also noteworthy that the Authority was fairly busy evaluating and clearing mergers. In June and July 2023, the Turkish Competition Board approved approximately 30 transactions, including the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which caused significant uproar and serious resistance worldwide.

This Summer Edition aims first to focus on the important events in the Turkish competition law sphere and mainly discuss the latest non-poaching decision, the Constitutional Court’s unforeseen ruling, the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard mega-merger and the global concerns in the gaming industry as well as the Authority’s recent RPM case against prominent homeware appliance companies. In this Edition, we also address global developments – while forecasting their potential impact in Türkiye – and refer to the European Court of Justice’s approach to RPM with the recent Super Bock decision, the Commission’s latest gun-jumping case – Illumina / GRAIL and finally the intersection between competition and data protection law in light of the European Court of Justice’s ruling on Meta.

We hope you find this Summer Edition helpful. To find out more visit here.