A New Sector For Price Squeeze Analysis: Medical Device Secondary Markets

1. Introduction

Turkish competition law addresses the issue of "price squeeze" (or margin squeeze) under Article 6 of the Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition ("Law No. 4054") which prohibits the abuse of dominant position. So far, the Turkish Competition Board ("Board") has assessed only a very limited number of cases that dealt with the price squeeze.

The Board`s SIEMENS decision¹ published in March 2021 was an unexpected contribution to the Board's limited precedents on price squeeze. The decision is important mainly for two reasons. First, SIEMENS is the Board's first decision dealing with the price squeeze in the medical devices sector. Secondly, although the Board had previously looked into very similar allegations in the medical devices sector, it had never considered that the allegations might constitute a violation stemming from the price squeeze in those instances.