Self-Preferencing in Turkish Competition Law
While the Turkish competition law regime has no specific rules on self-preferencing for the time being, the Turkish Competition Board (Board
) is not unfamiliar with self-preferencing conduct. In previous decisions, although the Board did not explicitly evaluate the investigated conduct under self-preferencing, it did assess the dominant undertakings’ conduct of favoring their own products/services under Article 6 of Law No.4054 on the Protection of Competition (Law No. 4054
) (see, e.g. Android (19.09.2018; 18-33/555-273), Shopping (13.02.2020; 20-10/119-69), Local Search (08.04.2021; 21-20/248-105), Facebook (20.10.2022; 22-48/706-299)). Specifically, the Board defines self-preferencing as the dominant undertaking’s conduct of favoring its own products or services over the rivals competing with those products and services on the basis of the same platform service.
The Board also states that self-preferencing is a type of exclusionary type of abuse of dominance, which can be evaluated under Article 6(1)(a) of Law No. 4054. In parallel to the leveraging theory, the Board notes that self-preferencing constitutes a competition concern since undertakings that hold a dominant position in a platform service gain an unfair competitive advantage by projecting their market power to another related market (see, Trendyol (26.07.2023; 23-33/633-213)).
Following the Digital Markets Act in the European Union and the German digital markets regulation, a Draft Proposal on Amending Law No. 4054 was prepared, focusing on updating the existing competition rules to address the concerns in the digital markets. The Draft Proposal on Amending Law No. 4054 was sent to various stakeholders for comments on October 14, 2022, and is not yet enacted by the Turkish Parliament. That said, the Turkish competition law regime is expected to be updated in the near future to address new types of conduct in the digital markets, including self-preferencing.
For more information on self-preferencing in Turkish competition law, please feel free to reach out to ELIG Gurkaynak at +90 212 327 1724 or through gonenc.gurkaynak@elig.com.