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The Exchange of Information as Addressed in Competition
Board Decisions*
Prof. Dr. H. Ercument Erdem
The exchange of information between competitors is not regulated
under Turkish law. This subject was recently handledwithin the Guidelines
Project on the Application of Articles 4 and 5 of the Act No. 4054 on
the Protection of Competition in Horizontal Cooperation Agreements
(“Guidelines”)1. However, the Guidelines have not been published yet.
In the absence of a legal framework, Competition Board (“Board”)
decisions should be taken into account concerning information exchange,
since the Board has given multiple decisions regarding information
exchange and has thus opined on the principles of information exchange
for more than ten years.
Parties to the Information Exchange
It can be observed that the parties to information exchange differ
according to the horizontal or vertical relationship between the parties.
Horizontal Relationships. Although the Board does not expressly
state that information exchange among competitors should be taken into
account, this notion can be easily observed in its decisions; for since its
establishment, the Board has taken special care to examine cases where
there is an exchange of information between competitors. For instance,
the Board, in its decision dated 08.08.2002 and numbered 02-47/586-
* Article of April 2013
1 The Guidelines was submitted to public opinion at the end of 2012. For further information,
see the following link:
(accessed on: 21.03.2013).