In Turkey, parties of a dispute tend to resort to courts even if they have a valid arbitration clause for the respective dispute. In the Final Award in Case 8887 (“Case”), International Chamber of Commerce (“ICC”) ruled that the defendant Turkish company (“Defendant”), by pursuing an action in the Turkish Courts despite the existence of a valid arbitration clause, breached its agreement to arbitrate and therefore it is liable for damages which the claimant Italian company (“Claimant”) might suffer due to this breach. In this article, we will briefly share the details of the Case and touch upon the reasoning of the ICC for deciding that Defendant is liable for the damages that the Claimant might suffered due to this breach.

On October 26, 2022, the Turkish Competition Board (“Board”) published its reasoned decision dated June 23, 2022 and numbered 22-28/443-180, upon its preliminary investigation initiated against six undertakings (i.e. Ahmet Tanrıbuyurdu, Emin Helal Et ve Gıda A.Ş., Göktaşlar Et-Et Ürünleri Yan San. ve Tic. Ltd. Şti, Namet Gıda Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş., Pınar Entegre ve Un Sanayi A.Ş. and Sultan Et ve Gıda Üretim Tic. Paz. Ltd. Şti.) that are active in the red meat industry to determine whether the undertakings have violated Article 4 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition (“Law No. 4054”).

Law No. 7418 on Amendment of Press Law and Certain Laws (“Amendment Law”) is published in Official Gazette of October 18, 2022 and introduced significant amendments on certain laws including the Press Law No. 5187, the Turkish Criminal Code No. 5237 and the Law No. 5651 on the Regulation of Broadcasts via the Internet and the Prevention of Crimes Committed through Such Broadcast (“Law No. 5651”) and the Law No. 5809 Electronic Communications Law (“Law No. 5809”).

The Turkish Competition Board (“Board”) conditionally approved the acquisition of sole control over Ferro Corporation (“Ferro”) by American Securities LLC (“American Securities”) through its solely controlled affiliate ASP Prince Holdings Inc. (“Prince”). The Board determined that the transaction would result in the significant impediment of effective competition in the market for glass coatings for home appliances in Turkey. That being said, the Board conditionally approved the transaction subject to the commitments submitted by the parties to the European Commission (“Commission”) on the grounds that the commitments removed the entire horizontal overlap between the parties in the horizontally affected markets in Turkey. 

This case summary includes an analysis of the Ankara 2nd Administrative Court’s (“the Court of First Instance”) Sahibinden SoE decision (E. 2022/254, 15.04.2022) in which the Court of First Instance stays of execution of the Board’s decision where the Board imposed an administrative monetary fine on Sahibinden for hindering and complicating the on-site inspection as per Article 16 of the Law No 4054 on the Protection of Competition (“Law No 4054”) based on the grounds that the deleted WhatsApp messages did not contain business related issues and were still accessible from the other employees’ WhatsApp group (21-27/354-174, 27.05.2021).  

Recently, there have been certain significant developments regarding the data protection practice and some important guidelines have been published by the Turkish Personal Data Protection Authority. Below is an overview on the important points of the relevant developments.

A real estate sales agreement is an agreement that is executed by and between the buyer and seller for the acquisition of real estate and is regulated under the Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098 (“Law No. 6098”). By executing the real estate sales agreement, the seller promises to transfer the real estate and the buyer promises to pay the sale price of the real estate. Pursuant to the Article 237 of Law No. 6098, real estate sales agreements are subject to the official form requirement. In order to fulfill this requirement, the real estate sales agreements used to be only executed before the land registrars since Article 26 of Land Registry Law No. 2644 (“Law No. 2644”) specifically authorizes land registrars to execute the real estate sales agreements.

This article aims to provide information regarding the ancillary restraints under Turkish Merger Control Regime and also analyses the Turkish Competition Board’s (“Board”) Vinmar/Arısan decision which provides insight into the Board’s approach to assessing the scope of ancillary restraints in merger cases and foreshadows potentially stricter scrutiny over such restrictions.

Under the Turkish Commercial Code, a commercial enterprise is defined as an enterprise, operating continuously and independently, aiming to generate income which exceeds the income thresholds stipulated for tradesman (“esnaf” in Turkish) enterprises.

Pursuant to Article 1524 of the Turkish Commercial Code (“TCC”) which was enacted in 2012, companies that are subject to independent audit are required to not only set up a website, which then will be registered to the trade registry and announced in the trade registry gazette, but also allocate a certain tab of their website for the necessary announcements required by law, within three months following the registry and announcement of their incorporation. Accordingly, Regulation on the Websites to be Established by Stock Corporations (“Regulation”) was enacted in 2013, to stipulate the principles and procedures regarding the website requirement.

The Turkish Competition Authority (“Authority”) has published its Nadirkitap decision in which it evaluated the allegation as to whether Nadirkitap Bilişim ve Reklamcılık AŞ (“Nadirkitap”), a company providing mediation services in the online sale of the second-hand books through its website named www.nadirkitap.com, violated Article 4 of the Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition (“Law No. 4054”) by way of hindering the activities of the competitors by way of not providing the data sets of its seller members who wish to market their products through rival intermediary service providers (“Investigation”). Upon its investigation, the Competition Board (“Board”) decided to impose an administrative monetary fine on Nadirkitap.

According to Turkish Commercial Code (“TCC”), some companies are defined as equity companies. Joint stock companies are one of these equity companies and are within the scope of "Principle of Maintenance of Share Capital" under TCC. The principle of maintenance of share capital requires full payment of the share capital value committed by the shareholders to the company and accordingly protecting the creditors of the company. In this context, considering that the shareholders already owe the capital payment to the joint stock company, this article will focus on how the shareholders may borrow money from the company and how the company may borrow money from the shareholder.

The Law No. 7416 on Amendment of the Law on Regulation of Electronic Commerce (“Amendment Law”), published in the Official Gazette of July 7, 2022[, introduces new obligations for e-commerce intermediary service providers and e-commerce service providers. Most of the provisions of the Amendment Law will enter into force on January 1, 2023 but the Amendment Law also stipulates different effective dates and transition periods for certain obligations. Amendment Law’s liability regime is tiered in line with the criteria of net transaction volumes and order numbers in a calendar year. E-commerce intermediary service providers and e-commerce service providers under this regime should follow certain compliance steps in due time.

The Competition Board (the “Board”), the competent decision-making organ of the Turkish Competition Authority, no longer has the quorum required to render final/executable decisions as the tenure of three (3) members came to an end as of the beginning of August 2022. Final decisions, including merger clearance decisions, closure of pre-investigation and investigation procedures, are currently pending while the Board is awaiting official assignment of new board members to re-establish final/executable decision quorum.

Due to the rapidly growing real estate sector, the lawmaker specifically regulates contractual relationships between the parties in order to prevent any loss of right of any one of the parties. Along with the typical real estate sales agreements, preliminary sales agreements are also needed by the sellers and buyers due to many reasons (such as planning a budget for construction, speeding up the period of the construction etc.).

On June 3, 2022, the Turkish Competition Board (“Board”) published its reasoned decision dated September 9, 2021 and numbered 21-42/611-298, rejecting Solgar Vitamin ve Saglik Urunleri Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S.’s (“Solgar”) exemption application for its dealership agreements (“Board’s Decision”).

The Turkish Competition Board (“Board”) published its latest reasoned decision concerning the acquisition of joint control over the industrial sewing machine business (“Target Business”) of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (“Melco”) by Juki Corporation (“Juki”) and Melco. The Board evaluated that the transaction concerning the acquisition of joint control by Juki over the Target Business, which was under the sole control of Melco pre-transaction, is an “acquisition” within the meaning of Article 7 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition (“Law No. 4054”) and granted its unconditional approval.

The Turkish Competition Authority (“Authority”) published its Final Report on the E-Marketplace Sector Inquiry (“Final Report”) on April 14, 2022, after a period of almost a year after publishing its Preliminary Report on the E-Marketplace Sector Inquiry (“Preliminary Report”) on May 7, 2021.