Pursuant to the Communiqué No. 2010/3 on Right of Access to the File and Protection of Commercial Secrets (“Communique No. 2010/3”), companies can make confidentiality requests regarding commercial secrets included in any document seized by the Turkish Competition Authority (“Authority”) or documents submitted to the records of the Authority by the companies.

Definition of commercial secrets: Any information and documents pertaining to the companies’ fields of activity which they would like to keep secret and which (i) are known or obtainable only by a limited number of people and (ii) could cause harm to the company in case of disclosure to third parties or the general public.
The Authority may reject confidential treatment of information (i) which has been published or disclosed to the public or included in official registries or annual reports, or (ii) which has lost its commercial significance due to reasons such as being no longer effective for a period of more than five years.

In a confidentiality request, the following elements should be indicated to the Authority in writing:

  • the information and documents that include commercial secrets,
  • the grounds that explain why the relevant information and/or documents constitute commercial secrets,
  • the versions of documents that do not include commercial secrets.

Companies can file confidentiality requests solely for commercial secrets that have been obtained from them or that are directly relevant to them.
Companies filing a request for confidentiality should specify the commercial secrets included in the relevant documents individually. Broad explanations declaring that the documents subject to the confidentiality request are commercial secrets as a whole would not be accepted.