In the Law, special categories of personal data are defined in a limited manner as data related to a person’s race, ethnic origin, political opinions, philosophical beliefs, religion, sect, or other beliefs, attire, membership in associations, foundations, or trade unions, health, sexual life, criminal convictions, security measures, as well as biometric and genetic data.
Before the enactment of the Amendment Law, the processing of special categories of personal data under…
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Prior to the Amendment Law, personal data could mostly be transferred abroad with the explicit consent of the data subject, as the other legal grounds specified in the legislation were either not available or not applicable. Since the Law's enactment in 2016, the fact that the Board had not yet established a list of countries providing adequate protection had significantly limited and complicated the practice of cross-border data transfer. This situation made obtaining…
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Pursuant to Article 16 of the Law, data controllers who meet certain criteria are obliged to register with the Data Controllers’ Registry ("VERBIS"). The procedures and principles regarding the VERBIS system, which is open to the public, are determined by the "Regulation on the Data Controllers Registry" dated December 30, 2017 ("VERBIS Regulation").
With the Board's decisions dated 2018, various professional groups, associations, foundations and political parties were…
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With the rapid expansion of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and its integration into all areas of life, it has become essential to establish a legal framework that regulates the safe and ethical development, distribution and use of AI systems, considering the complexity and unique characteristics of this technology.
In addition to promoting the safe, transparent, and human rights-respecting development of AI technologies, and aiming to protect the safety, rights, and…
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Cookies play a crucial role in personalizing and improving the user experience in the digital world. Although the use of cookies contributes greatly to personalizing the internet experience and remembering users’ online preferences, this process has also raised various privacy and data protection concerns. One of the biggest concerns regarding the processing of personal data through cookies is that users are often unaware of this process or that sufficient transparency is not…
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The Law requires data controllers to notify the Board and the data subject as soon as possible after becoming aware of the data breach. In its decision dated January 24, 2019 and numbered 2019/19 ("Decision"), the Board clarified the rules and procedures to be followed in data breach cases.
The Board adopted the approach of the GDPR in terms of the timing of breach notifications and explained that the phrase "as soon as possible" in the Law must be interpreted as within 72…
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Pursuant to the Law, the Board has the authority to impose administrative sanctions. It has been regulated that the Board may impose administrative fines for non-compliance with the obligation of disclosure, obligations related to data security, failure to comply with the decisions issued by the Board, violations of the obligation to register and notify the Data Controllers’ Registry, or non-compliance with the notification obligation regarding standard contracts. In addition…
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The primary regulation on the protection of personal data in Turkiye is the Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698 (“Law”), which came into force in 2016. Based on the European Council Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC, the Law has been influenced by the provisions of the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and its implementation is shaped by both the GDPR and the decisions of European data protection authorities. The Law adopts similar objectives and…
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AI technologies and their relationship with Intellectual Property (IP) rights have remained a prominent topic on the global agenda this year, as they were last year. With the increasing presence of generative AI models such as ChatGPT, BERT, LaMDA, and DALL-E2, which are capable of creating original content by processing data like text, images and sound, debates continue over whether the outputs generated by these models qualify as copyrighted works, who owns the rights to…
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According to the Competition Authority's (“Authority”) activity report for 2023, it is seen that 68 of the 117 investigation files were concluded with settlements and 28 files were concluded with commitments. Although the activity report for 2024 has not yet been published by the Authority, announcements of final decisions on its website indicate that the majority of investigations in 2024 have also been concluded through settlement.
Investigation of competition law…
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The pharmaceutical sector saw a 2.7% increase in production in 2023. However, between January and July of 2024, there was a 5.2% decrease compared to the same period in the previous year. By 2023, pharmaceutical imports increased by 8.8% reaching a value of 5.4 billion USD, while pharmaceutical exports grew by 15.8% to the size of 2.2 billion USD. In the first half of 2024, exports rose by 1.9%, while imports increased by 4.9% [1].
In 2023, the Turkish pharmaceutical market…
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The Named Patient Programs (NPP) are import regimes that allow medicines not authorized in Türkiye or authorized but unavailable for various reasons to be imported from abroad upon request by a physician.
Following publication of the Regulation on the Importation of Medicines from Abroad ("NPP Regulation") published on 3 February 2023, the roles of stakeholders in the relevant process have been clarified. According to this NPP Regulation, institutions and organisations…
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