Constitutional Court’s Last Judgement on Inspection of Employees' Correspondences
With the judgement dated 28 December 2021 and numbered 2018/34584[1], the Constitutional Court discussed the employer’s examination of the employees’ correspondence sent through the messaging program called WhatsApp and the termination of the employment contracts based on these correspondences, within the scope of the right to privacy and freedom of communication. In the said decision, the Constitutional Court ruled that the employer's obtaining of the contents of the… »
Transfer of Personal Data to Third Party
Sensitive and non-sensitive personal data may be transferred to third parties if the data subject’s explicit consent is obtained or if one of the additional legal grounds is applicable for such transfer. The Data Protection Law does not define a third party; therefore, any individual or entity (other than the data controller and the data subject) may be considered a third party. This creates a problem, especially about transfers between data controllers and data processors… »
Transfer of Personal Data Abroad
Sensitive and non-sensitive personal data can be transferred abroad with the data subject’s explicit consent. Other legal grounds also apply to transferring personal data to a foreign country. The destination country must have “sufficient protection” to conclude the transfer abroad based on legal grounds other than explicit consent. The Board is expected to determine a list of jurisdictions that provide sufficient protection. The Board has confirmed that they have been… »
Data Breach Notification
The Data Protection Law requires data controllers to notify the relevant data subject and the Board as soon as possible when being made aware of such data breach. In its decision dated January 24, 2019 and numbered 2019/9, the Board clarified the rules and procedures to be applied in data breach incidents. The Board takes the GDPR approach in terms of timing of breach notifications, and clarified that the term of “as soon as possible” within the Data Protection Law must be… »
Data Controllers’ Registry (VERBIS)
According to Article 16 of the Data Protection Law, an obligation to register in the Data Controllers Registry has been introduced for data controllers. In 2018, the Board issued decisions granting exemptions from registration obligation to certain professional groups, associations, and political parties. The Board also granted a general exemption to local data controllers that have less than 50 employees, and actively less than TRY 25 million on their balance sheets. Data… »
Consequences of Data Breach
The Data Protection Law envisages both administrative fines and criminal liability. With regard to criminal penalties, the Data Protection Law refers to the relevant provisions of the Turkish Criminal Code that detail sanctions for the unlawful recording, or disclosing, or transferring of personal data. In addition to criminal sanctions, the Data Protection Law also contains provisions detailing administrative fines that are to be applied in the event of a breach. There are… »