Unfair Competition Law in Türkiye

• Article 54 states the guiding principle: deceptive or otherwise good-faith-breaching conduct and commercial practices that affect relations between competitors, or between suppliers and customers, are unfair and unlawful. This general clause matters because it lets courts reach new forms of misconduct that no list could anticipate, such as fake online reviews or deceptive influencer campaigns.
• Article 55 sets out a detailed, non-exhaustive catalogue of prohibited acts; this is the practical heart of the regime.
• Articles 56-63 cover civil claims, the liability of employers and of press, broadcasting, communication and IT businesses, publication of the judgment, limitation, interim injunctions and criminal liability.

Because the general clause and the specific list work together, a claim can succeed even where the conduct does not fit neatly into one of the listed categories, as long as it breaches the underlying duty of good faith.

Foreign clients often conflate this regime with antitrust. The two are separate tracks with different rules, different forums and different remedies:

• Misleading or disparaging statements: untrue or misleading claims about one’s own products, prices or business, or false, misleading or needlessly hurtful claims about a competitor (art. 55(1)(a)(1)-(2)). Untrue, misleading or needlessly denigrating comparative advertising falls here too (art. 55(1)(a)(5)).
• Inducing breach or termination of contract: inducing customers to breach their contracts with others, offering a rival’s employees or agents undeserved benefits to make them act against their duties, or inducing them to disclose or obtain their employer’s secrets (art. 55(1)(b)).
• Misuse of trade secrets: exploiting or disclosing production or business secrets obtained secretly, without permission or otherwise unlawfully, including secrets carried out by a departing employee (art. 55(1)(d)). This category has a practice of its own: see trade secrets and confidentiality disputes.
• Imitation and free-riding: taking measures that cause confusion with another’s goods, work products or business (art. 55(1)(a)(4)), or taking over another’s market-ready work product by technical reproduction without an appropriate contribution of one’s own (art. 55(1)(c)(3)).
• Unfair standard terms: using pre-formulated general terms that, misleadingly and to the other side’s detriment, depart materially from the applicable statutory rules or provide a distribution of rights and duties materially contrary to the nature of the contract (art. 55(1)(f)).

A rule of thumb for foreign clients: hard competition is welcome, deception is not. Beating a rival on price, quality or service is lawful; winning by lying about them, copying their look, or stealing their know-how is not.

What this means for you

If you are the one harmed, the practical question is rarely “is this immoral?” but “can I prove it fits article 54 or 55, and can I stop it now?” If you are the one accused, the defence usually lies in showing your conduct was accurate, independently developed, or ordinary competitive behaviour, not deception. Either way, the outcome is shaped early, by how quickly and how well the facts are captured.

A former employee’s conduct is often governed by a contractual covenant as well, whose penalty clause is examined in penalty clauses in non-compete covenants.

• establishing that the conduct is unfair;
• prohibiting and stopping the conduct;
• removing the material state of affairs it created (for example, recalling infringing packaging) and, where unavoidable to prevent infringement, destroying the means and goods used;
• correcting false or misleading statements; and
• compensating material damages where there is fault, and moral damages where the conditions of article 58 of the Turkish Code of Obligations are met.

Under Article 59, the court may also, at the winning party’s request, order publication of the final judgment at the losing party’s expense.

As compensation under article 56(1)(d), the court may also award an amount equal to the benefit the defendant could have obtained through the unfair competition, which matters where your own loss is hard to quantify but the rival’s gain is visible. Just as important, interim injunctions under article 61 can be obtained early to preserve the status quo and stop damaging conduct before a final judgment, often the decisive step in fast-moving markets, because a stop order that comes two years too late may protect nothing.

First, limitation: under article 60, claims become time-barred one year after the claimant learns that they arose, and in any event three years after they arose; a longer criminal limitation period under the Turkish Penal Code applies instead where the act is also such a crime. These deadlines run quickly, and the earlier you move, the stronger an interim injunction application will be.

Preserve the evidence the moment you suspect a problem. Screenshot the advertisement, keep the emails, buy and store the copied product, and log who had access to the secret. The file you build early often shapes the case.

Second, evidence: unfair competition disputes turn on documented proof: advertisements, correspondence, product comparisons, and records showing how a trade secret was taken. Because Commercial Courts often refer these questions to an expert panel, a clear, well-organised file does double duty: it supports your injunction and it steers the expert’s conclusions.

For online misconduct, timing is even tighter. A misleading advertisement, a fake review campaign or a copied product listing can be edited or deleted within hours of a warning letter. Where the evidence is digital, we typically secure a notarised determination of the web content (a formal record made by a Turkish notary) before alerting the other side, so the proof survives whatever happens next.

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