Our webinar will reflect on major competition law developments in Turkey in 2023. We will focus on the following three issues:
- Labor markets - No-poaching agreements. Parallel to the global trend, the Turkish Competition Authority (TCA) has increased the antitrust scrutiny of the labor markets. In June 2023 the investigation involving 49 undertakings operating in diverse sectors was concluded with fines for 16 undertakings for entering into no-poaching agreements, whereas 11 undertakings agreed to settle. We will address main concerns and TCA's approach to anticompetitive no-poaching agreements.
- Merger control - Technology undertaking exception. A special local turnover threshold exception introduced for the notification of concentrations involving technology undertakings and aimed at catching the killer acquisitions deserves a special attention. Although the implementation of this rule is rather new and the boundaries of “technology undertaking” are not crystal clear, there are several landmark decisions (including gun-jumping) starting to form the case law. We will elaborate on the exception along with the case law to give some guidance on how to address the Turkish notification process of mergers with technology dimension and stay fully compliant with the merger control rules.
- Digital markets - DMA-like amendments. Similar to its counterparts around the world, the TCA has displayed a remarkable level of interest in addressing competition concerns in the digital markets. We will go through the draft DMA-like amendments to the Turkish Competition Law underlining main differences and similarities with the EU rules.
