Effective Data Protection Compliance In Turkey

Introduction

While European Union's data protection regulations date as far back as to 1995, Turkey recently announced the enactment of the Turkish Law on the Protection of Personal Data after a decade of legislative process. Pursuant to the Turkish Law on the Protection of Personal Data, the Data Protection Authority ("DPA") was also established as the main regulatory body responsible for data protection in Turkey. Prior to the Turkish Law on the Protection of Personal Data, the data protection regime in Turkey had been governed by other legislation such as the Turkish Criminal Code, the Turkish Civil Code as well as sectoral specific laws such as the Law on Regulation of Electronic Commerce and the Banking Law. It should be emphasized that the aforesaid legislation relating to data protection is still in effect, but the general framework of the data protection regime shall be governed by the Turkish Law on the Protection of Personal Data ("Data Protection Law").