The TCA’s On-Site Inspection Authority: An Assessment From The Normative Framework To Practical Application

Across modern competition regimes, on-site inspections occupy a central place among the investigative tools of competition authorities and the Turkish Competition Authority (the “TCA”) is no exception, having been entrusted with broad powers to carry out such inspections to detect covert infringements of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition (“Law No. 4054”). Although the scope of these powers has attracted constitutional debate in the legal literature, the TCA’s consistent decisional practice has, in practice, led to the crystallisation of generally accepted standards. Recent constitutional case-law, however, suggests that a distinction may be emerging between the formal validity of these powers and the constitutional limits governing their application in practice.