An Overview Of Turkey's New Data Protection Law

After a decade of winding its way through the legislative process, Turkey's new Data Protection Law entered into force on April 7. Although Turkey previously had a few sectoral data protection laws on the books, this is the first time the country has had an omnibus data protection law. Although details remain somewhat scant at this point, this new law deserves the attention of any company that conducts business in Turkey or collects the personal data of customers, employees, or other individuals located in Turkey.

Turkey's new law is fairly similar to the EU's data protection regime in many respects, but it also contains a few notable differences. Although an official English translation of the law is not yet available, reliable secondary sources have indicated that some of the notable features of the law are as follows: