Recently Published Guidelines Of The Turkish Competition Authority On Examination Of Digital Data During On-site Inspections

1. Introduction

The Turkish Competition Authority (“TCA”) recently published its Guidelines on Examination of Digital Data during On-site Inspections (“Guidelines”),¹ which set forth the general principles with respect to the examination, processing and storage of data and documents held in the electronic media and information systems, during the on-site inspections to be conducted by the TCA. According to the recitals of the Guidelines, the TCA deemed that it was necessary to determine and set out these relevant principles, in light of the recent amendment to Article 15 (“On-Site Inspections”) of the Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition (“Law No. 4054”).²

The Guidelines essentially (i) clarify the procedures to be abided by when the data on the electronic media or information systems are required to be examined by the case handlers during on-site inspections, in a way that relatively echoes the recent enforcement practices of the TCA, and (ii)