September 2025 – On 12 September 2025, a landmark decision of the Turkish Court of Cassation's Board for the Unification of Case Laws (Yargıtay İçtihatları Birleştirme Büyük Genel Kurulu) ("Decision") has been published in the Official Gazette. With this landmark Decision, the issue of which court is competent for disputes arising from non-compete obligations has been resolved.
Background
The question of jurisdiction over employment-related non-compete disputes has long been debated. In practice, different chambers of the Court of Cassation (Yargıtay) had taken divergent positions. The 9th Civil Chamber held that labour courts (iş mahkemeleri), which hear disputes arising from employment agreements, should have jurisdiction over disputes concerning non-compete clauses. In contrast, the 11th Civil Chamber took the view that such disputes should be heard by commercial courts (ticaret mahkemeleri).
The Decision
The Board for the Unification of Case Laws, which is empowered to resolve such inconsistencies, issued its binding decision on 13 June 2025 (numbered 2025/3), ruling that:
- claims based on Articles 444–447 of the Turkish Code of Obligations relating to employees' non-compete obligations constitute absolute commercial disputes;
- once the employment relationship ends, the employee's duty of loyalty also terminates, which may transform the non-compete obligation into a new and independent contractual relationship; and
- accordingly, such claims must be heard before the commercial courts of first instance, rather than the labour courts.
Conclusion
With this unification of case law, the divergent approaches of Turkish courts have been eliminated. Going forward, commercial courts of first instance will have jurisdiction over disputes arising from non-compete obligations in the context of employment relationships.
For detailed information, you can read the decision here (in Turkish only).
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