Introduction
Article 4 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition (“Law No. 4054”) prohibits agreements, concerted practices and decisions of associations of undertakings that have as their object or effect the prevention, distortion or restriction of competition within a product or service market in Türkiye. Modelled closely on Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the provision covers the full spectrum of horizontal restraints (price-fixing, market allocation, bid-rigging, supply restriction) as well as vertical restraints such as resale price maintenance and exclusive dealing.
This article examines the principal changes to Article 4 enforcement between 2020 and 2025:
(i) the statistical expansion of the Turkish Competition Authority’s (the “TCA” or the “Authority”) and its decisive body, the Turkish Competition Board’s (the “TCB” or the “Board”) case law and the shifting balance between horizontal and vertical restraints;
(ii) the 2020 legislative amendments that introduced settlement, commitment and de minimis mechanisms;
(iii) the practical deployment of those mechanisms (frequently in combination with the leniency programme) across landmark decisions in fast-moving consumer goods, food, industrial inputs and labour markets;
(iv) the comprehensive recasting of the fining regime in the December 2024 New Regulation on Administrative Fines; and
(v) the emergence of labour market collusion as a stand-alone enforcement priority following the November 2024 Guidelines on Competition Infringements in Labour Markets.
1. Decision and Investigation Statistics (2020–2025)
The five-year period under review witnessed an expansion of Article 4 enforcement, both in absolute terms and as a share of the TCA’s overall caseload. The Authority’s annual reports record the breakdown of competition-violation decisions by reference to the article of Law No. 4054 alleged to have been infringed, as set out in the table below. The horizontal, vertical and mixed columns sum to the Article 4-related total (Article 4 only plus Article 4 and 6 cases).
| Year | Total infringement decisions | Art. 4 only | Art. 6 only | Art. 4 & 6 | Horizontal | Vertical | Mixed (H/V) | Individual exemption decisions | Negative clearance decisions |
| 2020 | 65 | 36 | 22 | 7 | 31 | 10 | 2 | n/a (group + individual reported together: 16 granted, 7 conditional, 7 not granted) | 3 |
| 2021 | 74 | 40 | 23 | 11 | 30 | 19 | 2 | 17 (9 granted, 2 conditional, 3 group, 3 conditional group) | 5 |
| 2022 | 78 | 58 | 14 | 6 | 38 | 25 | 1 | 15 (5 granted, 4 conditional, 3 group, 1 withdrawn, 2 combined) | 4 |
| 2023 | 145 | 121 | 18 | 6 | 55 | 69 | 3 | 6 (4 granted, 1 conditional, 1 group) | 2 |
| 2024 | 166 | 148 | 13 | 5 | 90 | 55 | 8 | 7 (5 granted, 1 conditional, 1 group) | 3 |
| 2025 | 104 | 82 | 14 | 8 | 56 | 33 | 1 | 8 (5 granted, 2 conditional, 1 not granted) | 2 |
Two trends dominate: (i) Article 4 cases consistently accounted for the bulk of the Board’s docket, from 66 per cent of competition-violation decisions in 2020 to roughly 92 per cent in 2024, with the absolute number of Article 4-related decisions more than tripling and peaking at 153 in 2024 before easing to 90 in 2025. (ii) The mix of Article 4 cases tracked enforcement priorities: horizontal agreements led between 2020 and 2022; vertical restraints overtook them in 2023 (69 vertical against 55 horizontal of 127), reflecting the TCA’s focus on resale price maintenance and hub-and-spoke arrangements; horizontal cases reasserted themselves in 2024 and 2025 alongside the labour-market, food-retail and white-meat investigations.
The Board’s ex officio enforcement also expanded sharply. Article 4 ex officio decisions grew from 8 in 2020 to 84 in 2024 before easing to 21 in 2025. Sectoral focus shifted from logistics, chemicals and mining and machinery (in 2020 and 2021) to the food industry, construction and culture, arts and education in 2024 and, by 2025, to agriculture, machinery, food, construction and, for the first time as a stand-alone category, the labour market.
The post-2020 procedural toolkit has become the default. In 2024, 90 of 139 investigation decisions closed by settlement and 23 by commitments; in 2025, 47 of 89 settled and a further 11 closed by commitments. Fewer than one in three investigations now ends through traditional adversarial process.
2. The 2020 Amendment to Law No. 4054
No single development has shaped Article 4 enforcement more profoundly than the amendment package that entered into force on 24 June 2020.3 The Amendment Law introduced three major changes.
2.1 The De Minimis Principle
For the first time in Turkish competition law history, a de minimis safe harbour was codified under amended Article 41. Agreements between competing undertakings holding a combined market share below ten per cent, and agreements between non-competing undertakings where no party’s market share exceeds fifteen per cent, are now outside the scope of investigation. The implementing Communiqué No. 2021/3 on De Minimis Applications, which entered into force on 16 March 2021, clarified that the safe harbour does not extend to hardcore restrictions: price-fixing, territory and customer allocation, supply limitation and bid-rigging remain fully actionable regardless of market share. The practical effect has been to focus the Authority’s investigative resources on cases with genuine competitive significance and to reduce the administrative burden on smaller operators whose conduct poses no material risk to market competition.
2.2 The Settlement Mechanism
Perhaps the most operationally significant innovation was the introduction of a settlement mechanism under new Article 43 of Law No. 4054. Inspired broadly by the European Commission’s settlement procedure in cartel cases, the Turkish settlement mechanism allows parties under investigation for Article 4 infringements and Article 6 abuse-of-dominance cases to acknowledge liability in exchange for a reduced fine. The implementing Settlement Regulation entered into force on 15 July 2021, and the Regulation on Administrative Fines provides for a fine reduction of between ten and twenty-five per cent for parties that successfully conclude the settlement process. The mechanism has proven particularly effective in cases where the infringement is not disputed in substance, converting adversarial proceedings into a negotiated resolution that preserves investigative resources for more complex cases.
2.3 The Commitment Mechanism
Alongside settlement, the Amendment Law introduced a commitment mechanism for non-hardcore violations. Under Communiqué No. 2021/2 on Commitments for Preliminary Investigations and Investigations on Anticompetitive Agreements, Concerted Practices, Decisions and Abuse of Dominant Position, parties under either preliminary or full investigation for Article 4 concerns may voluntarily propose structural or behavioural remedies to address the Authority’s competition concerns. If the Board finds the commitments adequate, the investigation is closed without a violation finding and without a fine. The mechanism is expressly unavailable for price-fixing, bid-rigging, market allocation and other hardcore restraints. The Board moved quickly to deploy both the settlement and commitment mechanisms in live cases, as explained below.
3. Settlement and Commitment in Practice: From Novelty to Norm
The 2020 amendments were intended to give the TCB a richer, more flexible enforcement toolkit, and the past five years of Article 4 enforcement have demonstrated, decision after decision, that the new mechanisms are doing exactly that. The Board has used the settlement mechanism, the commitment mechanism and the existing leniency programme not as alternatives to one another but as components of a layered, calibrated case-resolution architecture.
The first settlement: Philips Türkiye (2021)
The first settlement decision under Law No. 4054 was rendered against Türk Philips Ticaret AŞ and four authorised dealers in the small household appliances sector.4 Philips Türkiye was found to have engaged in resale price maintenance, namely vertical price-fixing within the prohibition of Article 4, by determining the prices at which dealers resold Philips products to end consumers. The investigation was concluded with separate settlement decisions for each investigated party, with the applicable percentage reduction applied to each fine.
The first combined settlement and leniency decisions: Kınık and Beypazarı (2022)
Less than a year later, the Board issued the first decisions combining settlement with active cooperation under the Leniency Regulation. The investigation concerned an exchange of competitively sensitive pricing information between two undertakings active in the mineral water and beverages market. Kınık Maden Suları AŞ, the first leniency applicant, received a 25 per cent settlement reduction (the maximum available) and a 35 per cent leniency reduction, totalling 60 per cent; its administrative fine was reduced from TL 2,322,328.75 to TL 928,931.50.5 Beypazarı İçecek, which applied for leniency after Kınık in the same investigation, received a 25 per cent settlement reduction and a 30 per cent leniency reduction, totalling 55 per cent; its fine was reduced from TL 21,885,323.28 to TL 9,848,395.48.6 These decisions demonstrated, for the first time, how the two instruments could be stacked and, equally importantly, how the order of leniency application affected the level of reduction available, providing a clear procedural incentive for early cooperation.
Facilitator liability and the Lesaffre settlement (2022)
In the wider yeast-sector investigation, the Board accepted a settlement from Lesaffre Turquie Mayacılık Üretim ve Ticaret AŞ as a cartel facilitator.7 Although Lesaffre was not a direct party to the price-fixing and customer / region-allocation cartel between rival yeast dealers, it had organised, coordinated and ensured the continuity of that cartel and was therefore liable as a facilitator under Article 4. The Board imposed a base fine of TL 134,275,671.50, reduced by 35 per cent for active cooperation under the Leniency Regulation and by a further 10 per cent under the Settlement Regulation, resulting in a final fine of TL 73,851,619.33. The 10 per cent settlement reduction sits at the floor of the 10 to 25 per cent statutory range and contrasts with the maximum 25 per cent reduction granted in the more recent egg-tray, refractory and electric-equipment decisions. The full investigation against the remaining yeast producers and dealers was subsequently concluded in Fresh Yeast, where 14 dealers were fined a total of TL 35,446,535.28 for price-fixing, customer and regional allocation and supply restriction.8
Early settlements in the labour-market technology investigation: Kafein and Testinium (2023)
The labour-market technology investigation produced two early settlement-plus-leniency decisions well in advance of the main fining decision against the non-settling parties. Kafein Yazılım Hizmetleri Ticaret AŞ admitted to no-poach gentlemen’s agreements with seven other IT-services undertakings; the Board imposed a base fine of TL 3,943,688.20, reduced by 35 per cent for leniency cooperation and 25 per cent for settlement, for a final fine of TL 1,577,475.28.9 Testinium Teknoloji Yazılım AŞ admitted to similar no-poach agreements with five further IT-services undertakings; its base fine of TL 906,628.54 was reduced by 30 per cent for leniency and 25 per cent for settlement, for a final fine of TL 407,982.84.10 The remaining eight non-settling undertakings were fined a total of TL 91,697,701.37 in the main labour-market decision.11
The egg-tray (viyol) cartel: three combined leniency-and-settlement decisions in a single month (2024)
The egg-tray cartel produced the clearest illustration to date of the graduated reductions available to leniency applicants under the combined mechanisms. Six undertakings (Dentaş Kağıt, Güneş Kalıplı Basma Kutu Ambalaj, Güres Tavukçuluk, Keskinoğlu, Özay Karton Ambalaj and Yuva Viyol ve Ambalaj) were found to have engaged in price-fixing and customer allocation, including through coordinated meetings at İstanbul and İzmir restaurants in late 2021. Three of the six combined leniency and settlement, with reductions calibrated to application order. Güres Tavukçuluk, the first leniency applicant, received a 45 per cent leniency reduction plus a 25 per cent settlement reduction, totalling 70 per cent; its fine fell from TL 12,620,077.22 to TL 3,786,023.17.12 Güneş Kalıplı Basma Kutu Ambalaj, the second applicant, received a 30 per cent leniency reduction plus a 25 per cent settlement reduction, totalling 55 per cent; its fine fell from TL 2,260,006.43 to TL 1,017,002.89.13 Yuva Viyol ve Ambalaj, the third applicant, received a 1/6 (approximately 16.67 per cent) leniency reduction plus a 25 per cent settlement reduction, totalling 41.67 per cent; its fine fell from TL 745,241.88 to TL 439,592.10.14 The three decisions, all issued within fifteen days of each other, illustrate both the diminishing leniency benefit available to later applicants and the cumulative effect of stacking settlement on top of leniency.
A bid-rigging settlement in industrial inputs: Haznedar Durer (2024)
The Authority’s enforcement against bid-rigging in industrial input markets produced one of its largest single combined leniency-and-settlement reductions to date. Five refractory materials manufacturers (Asmaş, Daussan, Kümaş, Haznedar Durer and Piromet) were investigated for jointly raising prices and rigging tenders. Haznedar Durer Refrakter Malzemeleri Sanayi ve Ticaret AŞ admitted to price-fixing in tenders, customer allocation and exchange of competitively sensitive information. The Board imposed a base fine of TL 98,472,019.67, reduced by 35 per cent for leniency cooperation and 25 per cent for settlement, for a final fine of TL 39,388,807.98.15 The combined 60 per cent reduction matches that granted to Kınık in 2022, but the absolute monetary saving (close to TL 60 million) underlines how powerful the combined regime has become as an incentive for early cooperation in high-value bid-rigging cases.
A multi-party bid-rigging settlement: Armtek and others (2025)
The Board concluded its investigation into Armtek Elektrik Sanayi ve Ticaret AŞ, ATS Elektrik Pano Sanayi Ticaret Ltd. Şti., Europower Enerji ve Otomasyon Teknolojileri Sanayi Ticaret AŞ and Girişim Elektrik Sanayi Taahhüt ve Ticaret AŞ, four manufacturers of electric transmission and distribution equipment, for collusive tendering and bid allocation in tenders organised by electricity distribution companies. All four undertakings settled with the Authority, each receiving the maximum 25 per cent settlement reduction. Armtek additionally applied for leniency and received a further 35 per cent reduction under the Leniency Regulation, with a final administrative fine of TL 13,535,420.61. ATS settled without leniency and was fined TL 3,876,582.00, while Europower and Girişim Elektrik (treated by the Board as a single economic unit) were collectively fined TL 37,335,576.43.16 The decision is a representative illustration of the post-2020 amendments model: settlement was the disposition method of choice for every party found in violation.
On the same day, the same Board panel issued a companion contested-track decision in the wider power and distribution transformer market. Of eleven undertakings found to have violated Article 4, eight were separately fined (Astor + EFG, BEST, Beta, Ekos, Eltaş, Eva, Monokon and Ulusoy, with Astor obtaining an additional leniency reduction), four were cleared (Hitachi, Kontrolmatik, Meksan and Grid Solutions) and three (Armtek, ATS and Europower / Girişim) were not separately fined under ne bis in idem given the parallel settlement.17
Egg producers: settlement deployed at scale in mass-party investigations (2023)
The egg-producer investigations of 2023 illustrate settlement at scale. In Egg I,18 17 egg producers were initially investigated for joint price-setting and region / customer allocation; the investigation was later expanded to 17 further undertakings. Of the resulting 34 parties, 14 settled, 12 were found in violation and 8 were cleared. The parallel Egg II decision19 concerned the Central Union of Egg Producers (Yumbir) and 12 affiliated local unions, which had set floor prices and restricted supply across Türkiye through WhatsApp coordination among union leaders. Total fines across the two decisions reached approximately TL 98 million, demonstrating settlement’s viability even where dozens of parties are involved.
Considered together, these cases show that the post-2020 amendments have reshaped the Board’s case-resolution model. Settlement provides commercial certainty for cooperating parties; leniency continues to drive cartel detection by rewarding the first mover with the deepest discount or full immunity; and the commitment mechanism reserves a non-fining outlet for non-hardcore conduct. The novelty of 2020 has, in a few years, become the norm.
4. The New Regulation on Administrative Fines (2024)
The fine-setting regime under Law No. 4054 was substantially recast in late 2024. The Regulation on Administrative Fines to Apply in Cases of Agreements, Concerted Practices and Decisions Limiting Competition and Abuses of Dominant Position (the “New Regulation on Fines”) was published in the Official Gazette on 27 December 2024, replacing the regulation in force since 2009. The New Regulation on Fines entered into force on the same date with no transitional period, and the Authority’s accompanying Guidelines on Administrative Fines, which provide detailed implementation guidance and illustrative calculation tables, were approved by the Board on 13 February 2025.
The most significant change for Article 4 enforcement is the abolition of the long-standing distinction between “cartel” and “other infringements” for the purposes of the basic fine rate. Under the former regulation, the basic rate was set between 2 and 4 per cent of turnover for cartels and between 0.5 and 3 per cent for other infringements, a distinction not provided for in Law No. 4054 itself, and one criticised in the doctrine and in defences before the Board as inconsistent with the principle of legality (nulla poena sine lege). The New Regulation on Fines abandons that bifurcation. The starting rate of fine is now to be determined “specifically” by reference to (i) the severity of the actual or potential damage caused by the infringement and (ii) whether the infringement is “naked and / or hardcore”. The Guidelines treat price-fixing, customer or territory allocation, supply restriction and bid-rigging as paradigmatic naked and / or hardcore conduct, and confirm that effects-based defences will not be accepted in respect of such infringements.
The duration multiplier has been recalibrated. The former regulation provided a single 50 per cent uplift for infringements lasting between 1 and 5 years and a 100 per cent uplift beyond 5 years. The New Regulation on Fines replaces that binary structure with a stepped scale: 20 per cent (1 to 2 years), 40 per cent (2 to 3 years), 60 per cent (3 to 4 years), 80 per cent (4 to 5 years) and 100 per cent (more than 5 years).
The aggravating and mitigating factor regimes have been redesigned. The lower and upper limits previously applicable to repetition-based increases and to mitigation-based reductions have both been abolished, expanding the Board’s discretion. New aggravating factors include “decisive influence”, defined as an “indispensable role in the formation and / or continuation” of the infringement, and breach of the confidentiality obligation under the Settlement Regulation. The mitigating-factor list is no longer numerus clausus and now expressly recognises overseas sales revenues, a low revenue share from infringing activities, and assistance during on-site inspections going beyond the parties’ legal obligations.
5. Labour Market Enforcement: An Emerging Frontier
One of the most significant recent developments in Article 4 enforcement has been the Authority’s explicit recognition of labour market competition as a domain within the scope of competition law protection. While the private hospitals decision of 24 February 202220 already addressed wage-fixing and no-poach agreements as Article 4 violations in the context of a broader investigation in the Bursa healthcare sector, the publication of the Guidelines on Competition Infringements in Labour Markets on 21 November 2024 marked the Authority’s formal commitment to treating labour market restrictions as a stand-alone enforcement priority.
The Guidelines establish that agreements between competing employers to fix wages, bonuses or other compensation terms, or to refrain from recruiting or hiring each other’s employees (so-called “no-poach” or “gentlemen’s” agreements), constitute restrictions of competition under Article 4. The Authority’s analysis aligns Turkish enforcement practice with developments in the United States, the European Union and a growing number of other jurisdictions that have identified labour market collusion as a significant source of consumer harm, namely harm that occurs not through higher consumer prices but through depressed wages and reduced employment mobility for workers.
The Guidelines signal that the Authority views workers as market participants entitled to the protections of competition law, not merely as inputs in a production function, a framing with significant implications for HR practices across all sectors. Wage benchmarking arrangements, reciprocal information exchange among HR professionals about compensation ranges and informal agreements not to approach competitors’ employees are now expressly identified as potential Article 4 violations.
5.1 Key decisions
The first stand-alone Turkish labour-market decision was the multi-sector “gentlemen’s agreements” decision of 26 July 2023,21 in which the Board investigated 37 undertakings spanning e-commerce, retail, software, telecommunications, food services and media for entering into bilateral no-poach arrangements. Sixteen undertakings were found to have violated Article 4 and were fined a combined total of approximately TL 151.1 million; twenty-one undertakings were cleared. The largest single fines fell on LC Waikiki (TL 59,590,457.10), Türk Telekom (TL 41,022,658.16), Flo (TL 18,021,702.86), TAB Gıda (TL 7,293,869.36) and Koçsistem (TL 6,513,239.09). The Board characterised the no-poach arrangements as cartel conduct, equating them in nature to customer- or market-allocation agreements.
A dedicated technology and telecommunications labour-market investigation followed in February 2024. Of the 25 undertakings ultimately drawn into the investigation, five (RDC,22 İzibiz,23 Borusan,24 Kafein and Testinium) settled in separate decisions issued in 2023. In the final non-settling decision, of the remaining 20 undertakings, eight (Egem, Ericsson, Etiya, İnnova, i2i, Netaş, Pia and Turkcell) were fined a combined total of TL 91,697,701.37, with the largest fines on Turkcell (TL 57,300,961.97), İnnova (TL 11,428,409.23) and Ericsson (TL 7,441,079.06). The remaining twelve undertakings were cleared. As described above, Kafein and Testinium combined leniency and settlement applications.
Two education-sector cases followed in 2024. In the Istanbul French High Schools decision of April 2024,25 five private French high schools (Saint-Joseph, Saint Benoît, Notre-Dame de Sion, Saint-Michel and Sainte Pulchérie) were found to have violated Article 4 in two parallel respects: (i) jointly fixing school enrolment fees and the components making up those fees, and (ii) jointly fixing the salaries of Turkish teachers. The TCB imposed two separate fines on each school, with aggregate fines for the enrolment-fee violation of TL 12,794,945.46 and for the wage-fixing violation of TL 8,529,963.63 (approximately TL 21.3 million in total). In the Doğa Koleji standalone decision of October 2024,26 arising from a wider investigation into Kocaeli private schools, eighteen schools settled in earlier proceedings and only Arı İnovasyon ve Bilim Eğitim Hizmetleri AŞ (Doğa Koleji) was the subject of a non-settling decision. The Board found that Doğa Koleji had violated Article 4 by participating in no-poach and wage-fixing arrangements concerning teachers (the meal-price allegation against this undertaking was not established). Fine: TL 591,347.22.
The largest labour-market case decided to date is the pharmaceuticals sector decision of 11 September 2025.27 Seventeen non-settling undertakings were found to have violated Article 4: ten through bilateral no-poach agreements concerning sales-force, medical-affairs and other pharma personnel (Adeka, Argis, Arven, Berko, Farmatek, Helba, İlko, Sanovel, Santa Farma and Servier), and seven through the exchange of future wage and benefit information among major originator-pharma companies (Amgen, AstraZeneca, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer and Sanofi). Sanovel and Merck were found to have been party to both forms of restriction. Total fines on the 17 non-settling undertakings amounted to TL 244,801,302.91, with the largest individual fine on Sanovel (TL 79,358,342.19). One investigated undertaking (AbbVie) was cleared. In addition, six undertakings (GSK,28 Abdi İbrahim,29 Bilim,30 Drogsan,31 Genveon32 and Menarini33) settled during the investigation in separate 2024 decisions. The settled fines totalled TL 481,638,111.42, exceeding the aggregate non-settling fines and reflecting the substantial Turkish turnovers of the settling parties (most notably Abdi İbrahim, TL 184,363,976.71, and Bilim, TL 155,488,332.29). Combined, the pharmaceuticals labour-market investigation produced sanctions of TL 726,439,414.33, the highest aggregate sanction the Authority has imposed in a single labour-market matter.
5.2 Take-aways
Three features of this decisional arc are particularly noteworthy. First, the Board treats no-poach and wage-fixing arrangements as object infringements equivalent in nature to customer- or market-allocation cartels, with the consequent application of cartel-level base fines. Second, the Authority has shown a clear willingness to apply its post-2020 procedural toolkit (settlement, leniency and combinations of the two) to labour-market matters, allowing co-operating undertakings to obtain reductions of up to 60 per cent. Third, even where settlement is widely used, total sanctions can be very large; the pharmaceuticals decision alone generated more than TL 700 million in fines once settling and non-settling undertakings are read together. HR practices that historically operated through industry conventions, including informal hiring “rules of engagement”, reciprocal salary benchmarking and gentlemen’s understandings between competitors, should now be considered through an Article 4 lens.
Conclusion
The five years between 2020 and 2025 have witnessed a comprehensive transformation of Article 4 enforcement in Türkiye. The legislative overhaul of June 2020 provided the Authority with a richer toolkit, namely settlement and commitment mechanisms that enable faster and more flexible case resolution, and a de minimis threshold that focuses investigative resources on cases of genuine significance. The Authority has deployed these tools purposefully, producing landmark decisions in the food retail, pharmaceutical, healthcare and banking sectors, and has signalled through its November 2024 Labour Market Guidelines that worker welfare is now explicitly within competition law’s protective ambit.
For practitioners, the period has been intellectually rich. The development of Turkish jurisprudence on hub-and-spoke cartels, the first combined application of settlement and leniency mechanisms, the extension of Article 4 to labour markets and the gradual integration of digital market concerns all represent doctrinal advances that will continue to generate litigation, regulatory engagement and compliance work in the years ahead. Türkiye’s competition law system has come of age, and Article 4 enforcement is the clearest expression of that maturity.