Turkish DPA's Decision On Right To Access Personal Data

Turkish Personal Data Protection Board ("Board") published a landmark decision (2020/13) at the Data Protection Authority's ("DPA") website on March 13, 2020 regarding data subjects' "right to access personal data". Before this precedent, Turkish data protection laws did not expressly provide a "right to access personal data", unlike the European General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") and thus there was an uncertainty on how a data subject request for access to personal data would be processed in the Turkish jurisdiction. The Board has now, with this recent precedent, recognized data subjects' right to access personal data within the scope of their right to obtain information on the processing conducted on their personal data and provided data controllers with guidance on how to process and comply with such requests, without harming or violating rights of third parties.