Labour markets have emerged as one of the most consequential frontiers of Turkish competition law enforcement. Over the past two decades, the Turkish Competition Board (“TCB”), the decision-making body of the Turkish Competition Authority (“TCA”), has moved from cautious and limited engagement with anticompetitive conduct in labour markets to increasingly assertive enforcement, emerging as one of the most active labour market enforcers among comparable jurisdictions. Indeed, while the TCB imposed its first-ever fine for a labour market restriction in 2022; by mid-2026, it had folded labour market findings into a TRY 3.63 billion cartel decision in the tyre sector, initiated a cross-sectoral investigation including banking, insurance and information technology (“IT”) sectors, and adopted its own dedicated guidelines to codify the field.
This article examines that evolution chronologically: the early period of doctrinal hesitation and tolerant enforcement running from the TCB’s first labour market decisions through 2021, the consolidation phase in 2023–2024, during which the TCB imposed its first large-scale fines and subsequently codified its approach with the Guidelines on Competition Infringements in Labour Markets1 (the “Labour Guidelines” or the “Guidelines”); and the maturation phase from 2025 onwards, during which enforcement expanded into new sectors, the evidentiary bar for establishing an infringement fell further still, and labour-related restrictions in commercial agreements came under sustained scrutiny of their own. The article concludes with the practical compliance takeaways that follow for companies operating in, or transacting into the Turkish market.
I. Introduction: A Doctrine Under Construction
The application of competition law to labour markets is a relatively recent phenomenon, globally and in Turkish practice. Indeed, despite competition law's unqualified applicability to every market for goods or services, labour markets were areas from which both the TCA and its European counterparts kept a conspicuous distance, until the late 2010s. This position has changed markedly over the past decade, as authorities worldwide have turned their increasing attention to anticompetitive conduct in labour markets. What began as a US-led enforcement trend has since spread well beyond American borders; the European Commission, together with regulators across a wide range of jurisdictions from Canada to China, have all taken comparable steps. Turkish practice, for its part, has moved in step with this global trend only more recently: over the recent years, no-poach agreements have risen to sit near the top of the TCA's own enforcement agenda. Indeed, in barely four years from the TCB’s Private Hospitals decision2 to its decisions on the automotive tyre sector3, Turkish labour market enforcement has evolved from its first-ever administrative fine into a formalised enforcement framework of clear economy-wide relevance, supported by the tailored guidelines.
This trajectory did not occur through a single legislative reform. Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition (“Law No. 4054”) contains no express reference to labour markets, and its Article 4 on the prohibition of anticompetitive agreements is, on its face, addressed to “undertakings” operating in “markets for goods or services”. Whether that language extends to the market for labour was, for over a decade, a genuinely open question in Turkish legal doctrine4, a debate the TCB later resolved through case law5 rather than legislative amendment, well before the TCA codified its position in November 2024, by adopting the Labour Guidelines.
II. From Tolerance to the Private Hospitals Turning Point (2001–2022)
The TCB’s engagement with labour market conduct dates back to its Sports Clubs6 decision of 2001, a preliminary inquiry launched on Galatasaray Spor Kulübü, Beşiktaş Jimnastik Kulübü and Fenerbahçe Spor Kulübü. Its engagement with the topic resumed only in 2005, in its TV Producers7 decision concerning an alleged no-poach and wage fixing agreement among television series producers. Although that investigation likewise did not proceed to a full investigation for lack of evidence, the TCB’s reasoning was significant this time: it characterised wage fixing as functionally equivalent to price fixing, a principle that would recur, largely unchanged, in every subsequent decision on the topic going forward.
Over the following fifteen years, the TCB issued a small number of further decisions applying essentially the same logic while consistently sending written opinions to the investigated undertakings under Article 9/3 of Law No. 4054 and not imposing fines.8 For example, in a decision concerning private schools9 in 2011, the TCB considered that the exchange of information on wages, salaries and staffing policy in meetings between competing schools was capable of raising Article 4 concerns, but closed the file by sending a written opinion. Nearly a decade later, in its Bfit decision10 in 2019, the TCB examined a contractual clause prohibiting franchisees from employing Bfit’s former or competitors’ personnel without prior written consent; on the facts, the TCB found that the clause did not amount to a classic no-poach restriction, since it did not impose an absolute prohibition and evidence showed that personnel transfers had in practice occurred, but it went on to articulate an analytical framework that the TCB would later rely on in subsequent cases, including the observation that no-poach agreements suppress wage growth by restricting employees’ ability to move to higher-paying roles.
The clearest statement of principle in this tolerant era came in the TCB’s Container Transportation Drivers decision11, where the wage fixing and no-poach agreements are characterized as, in substance, no different from cartels formed on the buying side of the market, and confirmed that such conduct could constitute a violation by object, requiring no separate effects analysis. Yet the TCB did not open a full investigation, citing the limited scope of the conduct, and instead issued a formal warning; over three dissenting opinions calling for a full investigation to be initiated. That three-member dissent proved prophetic: it anticipated the doctrinal shift that would follow by two years.
That shift arrived with the TCB’s Private Hospitals decision12 published in 2022, which stands as the clear turning point in Turkish labour market enforcement. The investigation, covering roughly eighteen private healthcare institutions operating in Samsun and Bursa and two associations of undertakings, concerned the joint fixing of operating-theatre rental fees charged to freelance physicians, coordinated pricing for certain surgical procedures, an explicit gentlemen’s agreement not to transfer physicians between competing hospitals, and the joint setting of minimum and maximum salary increase bands for hospital staff. For the first time, the TCB abandoned the effects-based written opinion approach that had characterised every prior decision on the topic and instead applied a straightforward restriction-by-object standard, which dispenses with any separate market-effects analysis, and imposed an aggregate administrative fine of approximately TRY 58 million (approximately USD 3.5 million13). The decision’s significance lay less in the fine amount than in the doctrinal statement it made: labour market restraints would henceforth be assessed as cartel conduct, full stop, without the effects-based caveats and dissenting hesitation that had accompanied every earlier decision.
III. Consolidation and Codification (2023–2024)
1. The Labour Market-I Decision: A Cross-Sectoral Cartel
The TCB’s Labour Market-I decision14 still remains, in terms of scope, the most consequential labour market enforcement action taken by the TCB to date. Originating from an on-site inspection at an online food delivery platform, the investigation initially started against 32 undertakings which then ultimately covered 48 undertakings across retail, telecommunications, software, logistics, fintech and e-commerce sectors with no obvious product market overlap with one another. The TCB found that a series of bilateral and multilateral “gentlemen’s agreements” not to hire each other’s employees constituted a cartel and an object-based restriction of competition, irrespective of the fact that the participating undertakings were neither competitors in any output market nor connected by any vertical commercial relationship. Sixteen undertakings, including Turkcell, Türk Telekom, LC Waikiki, Flo, Vodafone and Zomato15, were ultimately fined a combined total of approximately TRY 151.15 million (approximately USD 6.4 million16), with a further group of undertakings concluding the matter through settlement. As a result, including the settling parties, the investigation was concluded with total administrative fine of approximately TRY 252 million (approximately USD 10.6 million).
Beyond its size, the decision is doctrinally significant for two further reasons. First, the TCB confirmed that labour market boundaries need not track product market boundaries: undertakings with no plausible product market rivalry were nonetheless found to be competitors in the labour market, a conclusion consistent with the emerging international consensus that labour market analysis requires its own, input market definition rather than a mechanical import of output market boundaries. Second, and most significantly for present purposes, the TCB rejected an ancillary restraints defence raised during the oral hearings, on the basis that no written agreement existed between the parties capable of satisfying the ancillary restraints test; while nonetheless leaving open, in the absence of a published reasoned decision at the time, whether such agreements could in principle be so characterised. The TCB also confirmed, in a formulation that would recur throughout the following three years of enforcement, that the concept of “employee” for these purposes extends to former as well as current staff, and that the standard of proof required to establish an infringement had fallen markedly compared to the TCB’s earlier decisions: certain findings rested on as little as a small number of undated pieces of internal correspondence.
2. The Labour Market-II Decision: Ancillary Restraints/Non-Poaching in the IT Sector:
Approximately seven months later, in the Labour Market-II - IT Sector decision17 the TCB turned its attention to the labour market violations on the IT sector, investigating twenty-five undertakings for bilateral no-poach agreements evidenced through internal correspondence via e-mail and messaging applications. Eight undertakings, namely, Turkcell, Ericsson, Innova, Netaş, i2i, Pia, Etiya and Egem18 were fined a combined total of approximately TRY 91.7 million (approximately USD 2.8 million19), while twelve undertakings were found not to have violated Law No. 4054. As a result, including the administrative fines imposed on the settling parties, the investigation was concluded with a total administrative fine of approximately TRY 126 million (approximately USD 3.9 million).
Procedurally, this decision illustrates how the TCB treats undertakings seeking to conclude a labour market investigation. Commitment applications submitted by three of the investigated undertakings were rejected outright, on the grounds that the conduct at issue was capable of being characterised as naked and hardcore infringements; a category the TCB treats as categorically ineligible for the commitment mechanism. By contrast, two undertakings, Kafein Yazılım Hizmetleri Ticaret A.Ş. and Testinium Teknoloji Yazılım A.Ş., obtained a more favourable outcome by combining leniency with settlement: each first secured a fine reduction under the Regulation on Active Cooperation for the Purpose of Uncovering Cartels (the "Leniency Regulation") (35% and 30%, respectively) for active cooperation, before separately settling under the Regulation on the Settlement Procedure for Investigations on Anticompetitive Agreements, Concerted Practices, Decisions and Abuse of Dominant Position (the "Settlement Regulation") to bring their proceedings to a close.
3. Sector-Specific Enforcements: Education Sector
Having first applied its hardened, cross-sector approach to the IT sector, the TCB's next site of sector-specific enforcement was education; rendering two further significant decisions in this sector within the same year, 2024. Indeed, in its decision concerning five private French high schools20, the TCB found two separate infringements: a tuition fee and scholarship rate cartel, and a distinct wage fixing infringement concerning the joint determination of Turkish teachers’ salaries. The TCB imposed a combined fine of approximately TRY 21.32 million (approx. USD 652k) across both counts, of which the labour-market-specific component; the teacher wage fixing infringement; accounted for approximately TRY 8.53 million (approximately USD 261k), underscoring a recurring feature of the TCB’s recent practice: labour market conduct is now routinely investigated and fined as a legally distinct infringement even where it arises within the same file, and often the same set of undertakings, as an ordinary product or service market cartel.
On the other hand, a separate investigation in the education sector into nineteen private schools operating in Kocaeli province was also concluded in the same year. The investigation concerned both fee coordination and agreements concerning the non-poaching of teachers and the fixing of teachers’ wages, evidenced through messaging groups and was concluded via settlement for eighteen of the schools. Arı İnovasyon ve Bilim Eğitim Hizmetleri A.Ş. (“Doğa Koleji”), was the sole undertaking that proceeded through the ordinary investigative procedure rather than settling. As a result, the TCB imposed an administrative fine of approximately TRY 591k (approximately USD 18k) on Doğa Koleji for the labour market infringement alone21. Notably, the TCB reached this finding despite the absence of any message actually sent by Doğa Koleji's representatives in the relevant WhatsApp group. However, mere membership in a channel where anticompetitive coordination was discussed was held sufficient to establish participation, on the basis that an undertaking exposed to competitively sensitive information must explicitly and openly distance itself from the discussion to avoid liability. This evidentiary approach; treating passive, non-objecting presence in a communication channel as tantamount to agreement merits particular attention from undertakings whose personnel participate in sector-wide messaging groups.
4. The Labour Guidelines: Codifying an Enforcement Trajectory
At the end of 2024, the TCA adopted the Labour Guidelines following a public consultation period. The Labour Guidelines does not introduce new prohibitions so much as codify the enforcement trajectory the TCB had already charted across the preceding three years: wage fixing agreements are treated as cartel conduct, no-poach and gentlemen's agreements are treated as equivalent to customer or provider allocation cartels, and the exchange of competitively sensitive information related to employee compensation is capable of constituting an independent, standalone infringement even absent any underlying agreement to restrict hiring or pay. Three features of the Labour Guidelines merit particular attention.
- First, it identifies a set of five cumulative safeguards, commonly referred to in practice as a safe harbour, though the Guidelines frame them as conditions supporting a finding that the exchange is unlikely to raise competition concerns rather than constituting an automatic exemption for legitimate compensation benchmarking and salary survey exercises: (i) the exchange must be conducted through an independent third-party intermediary; (ii) individual contributors’ data must not be attributable back to source; (iii) the underlying data must be at least three months old; (iv) at least ten undertakings must contribute to the dataset; and (v) no single contributing undertaking’s data may account for more than 25% of the aggregate dataset.
- Second, the Guidelines formalise the ancillary restraints framework that the TCB had applied inconsistently in its case law to date, confirming that labour-related restrictions in commercial agreements generally fall outside Article 4 of Law No. 4054 where they are directly related to, and necessary and proportionate for, the implementation of the underlying transaction, assessed by reference to duration, geographic scope and the category of personnel covered.
- Third, and notwithstanding the Guidelines’ formal classification of wage fixing and no-poach conduct as cartel equivalent, the practical sanctioning consequence of that classification has since been complicated by the contemporaneous Regulation on Fines (the Regulation on Fines to Apply in Cases of Agreements, Concerted Practices and Decisions Limiting Competition and Abuse of Dominant Position) reform. The amendment, which entered into force on 27.12.2024, abolished the categorical “cartel” versus “other infringement” base-fine-rate brackets altogether, replacing them with a more open-textured discretion under which the base fine rate is set by reference to the nature of the infringement and the actual or potential effects on competition, including whether the conduct is “naked and/or hardcore” in nature. As a result, the cartel equivalent label under the Labour Guidelines now informs that qualitative assessment rather than triggering an automatic, pre-set quantitative bracket.
IV. 2025–2026: Maturation and Sectoral Proliferation
If 2023–2024 was the period in which the TCB’s labour market doctrine crystallised, 2025–2026 has been the period of its widest application to date. Indeed, within a single twelve month span running from September 2025 to September 2026, the TCB concluded labour market investigations spanning pharmaceuticals, media and entertainment, automotive components sectors; whereas, opened a new investigation in the banking, insurance and information technology sectors.
1. The Pharmaceutical Sector Decision: The TCB’s Most Comprehensive Labour Market Decision
The TCB’s Pharmaceutical Sector Decision22 is, on any measure, the most comprehensive labour market decision issued to date; and the first to address no-poach conduct, information exchange, ancillary restraints and successor liability within a single set of proceedings. Indeed, of 30 undertakings23, 17 were ultimately found to have infringed Article 4 of Law No. 4054, whereas 10 of them; Adeka, Argis, Arven, Berko, Farmatek, Helba, İlko, Sanovel, Santa Farma and Servier, for participating in bilateral no-poach agreements, and 7; Amgen, AstraZeneca, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer and Sanofi (together with Sanovel, found liable under both counts), for exchanging competitively sensitive information on employee wages and fringe benefits.
As a result of the investigation, the TCB imposed a total administrative fine of approximately TRY 244.8 million on these non-settling undertakings. Combined with six earlier settlement decisions concluded during the course of the same investigation, the aggregate fine across the entire investigation reached approximately TRY 726.3 million (approximately USD 18.4 million24), the highest cumulative figure yet recorded in a single Turkish labour market file.
In the decision, none of the no-poach agreements identified by the TCB had been reduced to writing; each was instead established through internal correspondence among general managers and human resources directors, containing phrases such as “we do not hire from that company”, references to “blacklisted” or “prohibited” companies, and, on several occasions, express mention of a “gentlemen’s agreement”. Consistent with its approach, the TCB treated the use of informal channels, WhatsApp among them, as immaterial to the finding of infringement, focusing on the substance and practical effect of the communications rather than the form in which they were recorded. Nor was the TCB moved by the argument, raised by several undertakings, that employee transfers had in fact continued during the relevant period: because no-poach agreements restrict competition by object, the TCB held that proof of their practical effect, including proof that they were ever fully observed, is not a precondition to liability. As to structure, the infringement was characterised not as a single multilateral scheme but as a network of independently assessed bilateral understandings, confirming that even one informal, two-party understanding not to recruit a rival’s staff suffices to establish liability under Article 4. The point is illustrated most starkly by Sanovel, whose no-poach conduct spanning roughly a decade, from March 2013 to March 2023, and touching six separate counterparties (Abdi İbrahim, Bilim İlaç, Berko, Genveon, İlko and Santa Farma), attracted the single largest fine imposed in the decision.
The decision’s approach to ancillary restraints is more nuanced than a simple accept-or-reject test; two different outcomes were reached, for two different reasons. First, a twelve month, post-termination no-poach clause in the logistics distribution agreement between Allergan İlaçları Ticaret A.Ş. (“Allergan”)25 and Abdi İbrahim was treated as an accepted ancillary restraint. The TCB’s reasoning: it had already reviewed the same agreement in a 2010 exemption decision26, and while it refused to exempt the non-compete clause in that agreement, it raised no objection to the no-poach clause. Second, a sixty month no-poach clause in a licence and co-promotion agreement between Menarini Asia Pacific Holdings and AstraZeneca UK, and a twelve month no-poach clause limited to named German employees in a pre-acquisition due diligence confidentiality agreement between Menarini Biotech and Merck Germany, were both found to meet the ancillary restraints test in principle; direct relation, necessity, and proportionality were all satisfied. But that is not why they were cleared. The TCB's real basis for finding no infringement was the effects doctrine under Article 2 of Law No. 4054: neither clause had any direct, foreseeable, or significant effect on the Turkish market. The ancillary restraints analysis was only a secondary, back-up argument. On the other hand, the Bausch & Lomb–Liba matter was decided on different grounds again. There was no written no-poach clause at all; only a 2021 internal WhatsApp message referring to a “gentlemen's agreement” tied to a 2016 distribution agreement. Bausch & Lomb was not even a party to that agreement, but was treated as indirectly involved because it belonged to the same economic unit as the company that was. The TCB still found no infringement, for three reasons: the relationship was vertical, Liba's headcount had fallen sharply over the period (from around 104–106 employees in 2019–2020 to about 20 by 2024); and there was no evidence that the restriction ran only one way. Taken together, these three outcomes show that the TCB’s ancillary restraints analysis depends heavily on the facts and the type of transaction. Sitting inside a commercial contract does not, by itself, give a restriction a safe harbour.
Finally, the decision touches on successor liability, though nothing ultimately turns on it. AbbVie faced no-poach and information exchange allegations largely tied to Allergan; AbbVie obtained clearance to acquire Allergan in 2019, with the transaction closing in 2023. The TCB confirmed, as a general principle, that an acquirer inherits a target’s pre-closing liability of Article 4 under Turkish law. But that principle did not end up mattering here: the TCB found no infringement at all, either from the Allergan-era conduct or from AbbVie's own conduct afterward; evidence showed employee transfers had continued, and the information exchange claim failed for lack of strategic content, or because AbbVie was never shown to have received the relevant messages. The Sanovel/Arven finding is different, and more consequential: there, the TCB actually applied an economic continuity test; looking at turnover, headcount, and the number of licensed products, to hold Sanovel liable as Arven's economic successor, drawing on reasoning similar to the EU courts’ economic unit doctrine. The practical takeaway for M&A practitioners is straightforward: unresolved labour market exposure at a target can follow the deal to the buyer, even where the conduct predates closing and the transaction itself raised no competition concerns.
2. Ay Yapım/Med Yapım: Information Exchange Without an Agreement
In the TCB’s Ay Yapım/Med Yapım decision27, the TCB concluded the investigation concerning the information exchange of current employee wage between the competing TV producers, Ay Sanat Prodüksiyon ve Yapım Anonim Şirketi (“Ay Yapım”) and Med Yapım Televizyon ve Filmcilik Anonim Şirketi (“Med Yapım”). The investigation was concluded through settlement, with Ay Yapım and Med Yapım fined approximately TRY 75.8 million and TRY 47.8 million (approximately USD 1.9 million and USD 1.2 million) respectively.
This decision is significant less for its fine amount than for what it reveals about the evidentiary floor the TCB is now prepared to accept. Unlike the above decisions, which each rested on multiple communications across several relationships, the Ay Yapım/Med Yapım finding rested on a single identified chain of correspondence concerning employee wages. No underlying no-poach or wage fixing agreement was alleged or required: consistent with the standalone information exchange infringement clarified in the Labour Guidelines, the mere fact of the exchange, was treated as sufficient to establish an object-based infringement of Article 4 of Law No. 4054 in the absence of any accompanying restrictive understanding. The TCB was explicit on this point, holding that even a one-off exchange of strategic information may constitute a violation without requiring evidence of actual effects on the market. The decision illustrates how little documentary evidence may be sufficient to establish a labour market infringement on the information exchange under Turkish practice, a notable data point for an international audience more accustomed to information exchange theories of harm requiring a developed effects analysis or a pattern of repeated, structured exchanges.
3. The Automotive Tyre Sector Decision: Labour Restraints as an Ancillary Finding Within a Larger Cartel
In the TCB’s Automotive Tyre Sector decision28, the TCB concluded the investigation into the automotive tyre manufacturing and distribution sector, covering Brisa Bridgestone, Goodyear, Continental, Michelin, Hankook, Pirelli, Prometeon and a number of dealer and distribution undertakings29. The primary finding concerned a price coordination and resale price maintenance, together with territorial and customer restrictions imposed on dealers; the TCB imposed an aggregate administrative fine of TRY 3.63 billion across the investigation as a whole, comprising TRY 497.1 million imposed as a result of the settlement procedure and TRY 3.14 billion imposed at the end of the full investigative procedure. This represents the largest fine recorded to date in a single sector in Turkish competition law practice. It bears emphasis that this aggregate figure reflects the full multi-count cartel finding; price coordination, resale price maintenance and territorial restrictions chief among them, rather than the labour market conduct specifically. Each undertaking's fine is a single, composite figure covering every count on which it was found liable, with the labour market finding folded in as one ground among several rather than broken out as a separate, specifically quantified sanction.
The significant feature of the decision is that the TCB found that Brisa, Goodyear, Hankook, Pirelli and Prometeon had exchanged competitively sensitive labour market information and/or entered into no-poach agreements, a ground expressly listed among the bases for each of their fines; Continental and Michelin, by contrast, were fined for the product market conduct only, with no labour market finding against either. Notably, the labour market conduct also extended beyond the manufacturer level. Among the settling undertakings, both Petlas and Tatko30 were separately found to have engaged in information exchange related to the labour market. The decision illustrates a pattern increasingly visible across the TCB's recent investigations: labour market conduct is no longer investigated only as a standalone matter as in the above decisions, but is now routinely examined, and factored into the fine as one strand within broader, multi-count cartel investigations that originate from an entirely different competitive concern; in this instance, price coordination in the product market for tyres.
4. The Early-2026 Wave
a. The Banking, Insurance and IT Sector Investigation: The Next Frontier
According to the TCA’s announcement of 24.02.2026, the TCB decided to launch an investigation31 into twenty six undertakings operating in the banking, insurance and IT sectors on the allegations of no-poach agreements and/or the exchange of competitively sensitive labour market information.
The investigation remains ongoing at the time of writing, and no final reasoned decision has yet been published. According to a notification made through the Public Disclosure Platform32, one investigated undertaking, QNB Bank A.Ş., has already resolved its exposure through settlement, for a fine of TRY 1.01 billion the first concrete outcome to emerge from the investigation. The scale of the investigation, spanning three sectors and twenty six undertakings simultaneously, and the fact that it has already resulted with a settlement fine exceeding TRY 1 billion imposed on a single undertaking, even before any final decision has even been issued, suggests that the TCB regards the banking and financial services sector, which has not previously been a focus of Turkish labour market enforcement, as the next significant frontier for its enforcement programme.
b. The Independent Audit and Financial-Advisory Investigation
The banking, insurance and IT investigation did not arrive in isolation. According to the TCA’s announcement33 on its official website, the TCB also initiated an investigation34, on 29.01.2026, into 63 undertakings and two associations of undertakings operating in the independent audit and certified public accountant services market, including the Turkish entities affiliated with the so-called Big Four (Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG35) and professional associations that those undertakings are members of. The investigation addresses both output market conduct (price fixing and customer allocation in audit and advisory services) and labour (input) market conduct (no-poach and wage fixing agreements, together with information exchange spanning both the input and output sides of the market), and adoption of decisions by associations of undertakings that have a competition restricting nature; illustrating, within a single file, the now familiar pattern of labour market scrutiny riding alongside a conventional output market cartel investigation, as was already the case in the Automotive Tyre Sector decision.
c. Engineering-Design Software: The Dassault Dealer Investigation
Separately, the TCB initiated an ex officio investigation36 into several dealers of Dassault Systèmes37 (the provider of the SolidWorks and CATIA engineering-design software suites) following on-site inspections that, in addition to yielding evidence of price and customer allocation coordination among the dealers, also produced findings of no-poach agreements affecting the dealers’ employees. Taken together with the pharmaceutical, media, automotive and financial services investigations discussed above, these two investigations confirm that the sectoral proliferation identified throughout the early 2026 era is not a temporary spike, but a sustained feature of the TCB’s current enforcement priorities.
d. The Automotive Supply Industry Investigation into the Labour Market
Most recently, the TCB launched another investigation38 into thirty seven undertakings operating in the automotive supply industry and two associations of undertakings, namely, the Automotive Suppliers Association of Türkiye (“TAYSAD”) and the Automotive Supply Industry Specialised Organised Industrial Zone (“TOSB”), on the allegations of entering into gentlemen’s agreements not to hire each other’s employees and exchanging competitively sensitive information on wages and other conditions of employment, allegedly through meetings held and communications made within TOSB and TAYSAD.
The naming of both the industrial-zone administration and the sector’s trade association as parties in their own right, rather than merely as venues where the alleged conduct occurred, continues a pattern already visible in the Shipbuilding Sector investigation, in which facilitating associations were investigated alongside the undertakings operating in the market.
V. Conclusion and Practical Takeaways
The TCB’s approach to labour market conduct has become considerably more stringent. Indeed, what began in 2001 and 2005 as tentative and largely unfined enforcement against wage fixing and no-poach conduct, cases the TCB subsequently addressed for nearly two decades through written opinions issued under Article 9/3 of Law No. 4054, has become one of the most active and doctrinally developed labour market enforcement programmes of any jurisdiction by 2026. Files that would once have drawn no more than a written opinion, or at most a formal warning, are today met with administrative fines running into the hundreds of millions of Turkish liras, imposed in volume and at a pace with no precedent in the TCB’s earlier practice.
As illustrated at the cases above, wage fixing and no-poach agreements continue to be treated as restrictions by object, and the TCB has shown progressively less tolerance for such conduct with each successive file. This shift has, by now, been codified. The Labour Guidelines, adopted in November 2024, did not create the trend; rather, they set out in a single dedicated document what had until then only been visible through case law: wage fixing treated as cartel conduct, no-poach and gentlemen’s agreements treated as equivalent to customer or provider allocation cartels, and even a standalone exchange of information on employee wages capable of infringing Article 4 of Law No. 4054 without any underlying agreement to restrict hiring or pay. That enforcement reach now takes three distinct procedural forms, as illustrated in this article.
- The TCB may initiate a single, cross-sectoral investigation covering undertakings with no plausible product market relationship to one another, as in the Labour Market-I decision, where 48 undertakings from a range of sectors including retail, telecommunications, software, logistics, fintech and e-commerce were investigated together due to their shared exposure to the same labour pool.
- The TCB may instead proceed on a sector-by-sector basis, launching dedicated investigations into specific sectors including education, IT, pharmaceuticals and, most recently, banking, insurance, audit and financial advisory.
- As the 2025–2026 period illustrates, it may also examine labour market conduct as part of an investigation initiated on entirely different grounds. In the Automotive Tyre Sector decision, for instance, an investigation into price coordination and resale price maintenance also identified no-poach conduct and information exchange among other matters, without labour market conduct ever having been the investigation's original trigger.
The developments of the past twelve months indicate that all three channels continue to be used concurrently, with no indication that any of them is being retired in favour of the others. On this trajectory, labour market enforcement in Türkiye is likely to remain an area of increasing focus. This gives rise to several practical considerations for companies active in the Turkish market:
- HR-level and recruiting-level communications with competitors should be treated as carrying the same competition law risk as discussions concerning prices or customer allocation. The TCB has repeatedly relied on WhatsApp messages, informal e-mails and undocumented verbal understandings between general managers or HR directors as sufficient evidence of an infringement under Article 4 of Law No. 4054, without requiring a formal written agreement.
- The absence of a formal contract should not be regarded as providing protection against enforcement. In certain circumstances, the ancillary restraints defence may be rejected notwithstanding the absence of a written agreement. Accordingly, the informal nature of an agreement does not, in itself, mitigate competition law risks.
- Compensation benchmarking and participation in salary surveys should be assessed against the Labour Guidelines’ five cumulative safeguards: independent third-party administration, non-attribution of individual data, a minimum three-month data lag, contribution of at least ten undertakings, and no single contributor exceeding 25% of the aggregate dataset.
- In M&A and joint venture transactions, non-compete, non-solicitation and no-poach clauses should be drafted with the same rigour as any other potentially restrictive covenant: the duration, geographic scope and the category of personnel covered should be limited to what is demonstrably necessary for the transaction’s implementation. The specific commercial rationale for the restriction, such as the protection of trade secrets, the continuity of key personnel, and the like, should also be clearly articulated. Acceptance as an ancillary restraint does not constitute a blanket exemption for any restriction merely because it is included in a transaction document; rather, it remains a fact-specific finding that must be established on the particular restriction's own terms.
- Competition law due diligence concerning labour market conduct should be undertaken as part of acquisitions, independent of any broader competition law review. The Pharmaceutical Sector decision confirms that undisclosed labour market liability at a target may transfer to the acquirer under the doctrine of universal succession, even where the underlying conduct predates closing and the transaction itself raised no substantive competition concerns.
- Companies should also take into account the increasing breadth of the sectors subject to labour market enforcement. Between late 2025 and mid-2026 alone, the TCB launched or concluded labour market investigations involving pharmaceuticals, media, automotive, audit and financial advisory, software dealer networks and, most recently, banking, insurance and IT sectors. These developments provide a strong signal that no sector should now regard itself as outside the scope of this enforcement programme.
Footnotes
1. The Guidelines on Competition Infringements in Labour Markets adopted with the TCB’s decision dated 21.11.2024 with number 24-49/1087-RM(4); published on 03.12.2024. Please see: https://www.rekabet.gov.tr/Dosya/is-gucu-piyasalarindaki-rekabet-ihlallerine-yonelik-klavuz-ingilizce-20241205105305297.pdf
2. The TCB’s decision dated 24.02.2022 with number 22-10/152-62.
3. The TCB's decisions dated 04.06.2026 with number 26-20/612-242, dated 20.11.2025 with number 25-43/1070-610, and dated 20.11.2025 with number 25-43/1046-598. As of the date of this article, the reasoned decisions have not yet been published. The information above is based on the announcement on the TCA's official website. Please see: https://www.rekabet.gov.tr/en/Guncel/investigation-conducted-on-undertakings--5558125e5f69f11193eb0050568549fa
4. Some commentators had read the preamble to Article 3 of Law No. 4054, which excludes “the labour market where the principle of collective bargaining is accepted from the statutory definition of “services” as a general carve-out for labour market conduct. Others took the narrower view that the preamble was intended only to exclude collective bargaining type arrangements, not agreements between employers more broadly.
5. The TCB’s Container Transportation Drivers decision dated 02.01.2020 with number 20-01/3-2, where it is stated that the preamble does not immunise agreements between undertakings concluded in labour markets.
6. The TCB’s decision dated 25.12.2001 with number 01-63/645-171. Following the news alleging that football clubs had entered into a protocol not to make transfer offers to players registered with one another and not to compete for player transfers from other clubs, a preliminary investigation was initiated. However, as no such agreement could be substantiated and it was established that the clubs had in fact engaged in player transfers and competed for the same players, it was decided not to initiate a formal investigation.
7. The TCB’s decision dated 28.07.2005 with number 05-49/710-195. Given the potential for restrictions of competition through the prevention of actor mobility and the fixing of actors’ wages in the television series production market, the TCA had limited its action to issuing written opinions to the parties and had decided not to initiate a formal investigation.
8. See, for example, the TCB’s decisions dated 28.07.2005 with number 05-49/710-195, dated 03.03.2011 with number 11-12/226-76, dated 07.02.2019 with number 19-06/64-27, dated 02.01.2020 with number 20-01/3-2, and dated 26.05.2011 with number 11-32/650-201.
9. The TCB’s decision dated 03.03.2011 with number 11-12/226-76.
10. The TCB’s decision dated 07.02.2019 with number 19-06/64-27.
11. The TCB’s decision dated 02.01.2020 with number 20-01/3-2.
12. The TCB’s decision dated 24.02.2022 with number 22-10/152-62.
13. The amounts in USD for the year 2022 are converted at the exchange rate USD 1 = TRY 16.56 in accordance with the applicable Turkish Central Bank average buying rate for 2022.
14. The TCB’s decision dated 26.07.2023 with number 23-34/649-218.
15. Turkcell İletişim Hizmetleri A.Ş. (“Turkcell”), Türk Telekomünikasyon A.Ş. (“Türk Telekom”), LC Waikiki Mağazacılık Hizmetleri Ticaret A.Ş. (“LC Waikiki”), Flo Mağazacılık ve Pazarlama A.Ş. (“Flo”), Vodafone Telekomünikasyon A.Ş. (“Vodafone”) and Zomato İnternet Hizmetleri Ticaret A.Ş. (“Zomato”).
16. The amounts in USD for the year 2023 are converted at the exchange rate USD 1 = TRY 23.74 in accordance with the applicable Turkish Central Bank average buying rate for 2023.
17. The TCB’s IT Sector decision dated 27.02.2024 with number 24-10/170-66.
18. Ericsson Telekomünikasyon A.Ş. (“Ericsson”), Innova Bilişim Çözümleri A.Ş. (“Innova”), Netaş Telekomünikasyon A.Ş. (“Netaş”), i2i Bilişim Danışmanlık Teknoloji Hiz. ve Paz. Tic. A.Ş. (“i2i”), Pia Bilişim Hizmetleri A.Ş. (“Pia”), Etiya Bilgi Teknolojileri Yazılım Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (“Etiya”) and Egem Bilgi İletişim Ticaret A.Ş. (“Egem”).
19. The amounts in USD for the year 2024 are converted at the exchange rate USD 1 = TRY 32.7 in accordance with the applicable Turkish Central Bank average buying rate for 2024.
20. The TCB’s decision dated 24.04.2024 with number 24-20/466-196.
21. The TCB’s decision dated 03.10.2024 with number 24-40/948-407.
22. The TCB’s decision dated 11.09.2025 with number 25-34/810-474.
23. Namely, AbbVie Tıbbi İlaçlar Sanayi ve Ticaret Ltd. Şti. (“AbbVie”), Adeka İlaç Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (“Adeka”), Amgen İlaç Ticaret Ltd. Şti. (“Amgen”), Argis İlaç Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (“Argis”), Arven İlaç Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (“Arven”), AstraZeneca İlaç Sanayi ve Ticaret Ltd. Şti. (“AstraZeneca”), BASF Türk Kimya Sanayi ve Ticaret Ltd. Şti. (“BASF”), Bausch & Lomb Sağlık ve Optik Ürünleri Ticaret A.Ş. (“Bausch&Lomb”), Bayer Türk Kimya Sanayii Ltd. Şti. (“Bayer”), Berko İlaç ve Kimya Sanayi A.Ş. (“Berko”), Daiichi-Sankyo İlaç Ticaret Ltd. Şti. (“Daiichi-Sankyo”), Farmatek İlaç Sanayi Ticaret A.Ş. (“Farmatek”), Helba İlaç İç ve Dış Sanayi Ticaret A.Ş. (“Helba”), İlko İlaç Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (“İlko”), Johnson and Johnson Sıhhi Malzeme Sanayi ve Ticaret Ltd. Şti. (“J&J”), Liba Laboratuarları A.Ş. (“Liba”), Merck İlaç Ecza ve Kimya Ticaret A.Ş. (“Merck”), Michael Page International Nem İstihdam Danışmanlığı Ltd. Şti. (“Michael Page”), Merck Sharp Dohme İlaçları Ltd. Şti. (“MSD”), Neutec İlaç Sanayi Ticaret A.Ş. (“Neutec”), Novartis Sağlık, Gıda ve Tarım Ürünleri Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (“Novartis”), Novo Nordisk Sağlık Ürünleri Ticaret Ltd. Şti. (“Novo Nordisk”), Panasonic Elektronik Satış A.Ş. (“Panasonic”), Pfizer PFE İlaçları A.Ş. (“Pfizer”), Sanofi İlaç Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (“Sanofi”), Santa Farma İlaç Sanayi A.Ş. (“Santa Farma”), Sanovel İlaç San. ve Tic. A.Ş. (“Sanovel”), Servier İlaç ve Araştırma A.Ş. (“Servier”), SIFI İlaç A.Ş. (“SIFI”) and World Medicine İlaç Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (“World Medicine”).
24. The amounts in USD for the year 2025 are converted at the exchange rate USD 1 = TRY 39.48 in accordance with the applicable Turkish Central Bank average buying rate for 2025.
25. AbbVie’s acquisition of sole control over Allergan was approved by the TCB’s decision dated 11.10.2019 and with number 19-35/517-213, and the transaction was closed on 01.08.2023.
26. The TCB’s decision dated 17.06.2010 with number 10-44/784-261.
27. The TCB’s decision dated 20.11.2025 with number 25-43/1044-596.
28. The TCB’s decision dated 04.06.2026 with number 26-20/612-242; The TCA’s announcement dated 16.06.2026. It should be noted that the reasoned decision has not been published yet.
29. Brisa Bridgestone Sabancı Lastik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. ("Brisa Bridgestone"), Otomotiv Lastikleri Tevzi A.Ş. ("Continental"), Goodyear Lastikleri Türk A.Ş. ("Goodyear"), Michelin Lastikleri Ticaret A.Ş. ("Michelin"), Hankook Lastikleri A.Ş. ("Hankook"), Pirelli Otomobil Lastikleri A.Ş. ("Pirelli"), and Prometeon Turkey Endüstriyel ve Ticari Lastikler A.Ş. ("Prometeon").
30. Abdulkadir Özcan Otom. Lastik. San. Tic. A.Ş. (“Petlas”) and Tatko Lastik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (“Tatko”).
31. The TCB’s decision dated 29.01.2026 with number 26-03/75-M.
32. Please see: https://kap.org.tr/tr/Bildirim/1611239
33. The TCA’s announcement dated 11.03.2026. Please see: https://www.rekabet.gov.tr/en/Guncel/investigation-initiated-about-undertakin-27a01af3231df11193f60050568585c9
34. The TCB’s decision dated 29.01.2026 with number 26-03/91-M.
35. Namely, DRT Bağımsız Denetim ve Serbest Muhasebeci Mali Müşavirlik A.Ş. ("Deloitte"), Güney Bağımsız Denetim ve Serbest Muhasebeci Mali Müşavirlik A.Ş. ("EY"), KPMG Bağımsız Denetim ve Serbest Muhasebeci Mali Müşavirlik A.Ş. ("KPMG") and PwC Bağımsız Denetim ve Serbest Muhasebeci Mali Müşavirlik A.Ş. ("PwC").
36. The TCB’s decision dated 16.04.2026 with number 26-14/399-M
37. Dassault Systèmes SE, Dassault Systèmes International SAS, Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corporation, and Dassault Systèmes İstanbul İnovasyon Teknoloji Ltd. Şti. (together, "Dassault")
38. The TCB's decision dated 13.08.2026 with number 26-29/831-M. The investigation remains ongoing as of the date of this article.
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