Database

Turkey has made only partial commitments under the WTO Reference Paper on Basic Telecommunications.

The telecommunications market in Turkey is deregulated and open to competition. However, Turk Telecom has de facto monopoly over network access services that are essential for service providers in different segments of the market.

Trade secrets are not protected as an Intellectual Property Right (IPR). The reason is that the IPR protection in principle requires “registration” which would mean that the IPR will be open to public knowledge and will no more be a secret. According to the general Turkish doctrine “trade secrets” and “IPR” concepts are not compatible with each other.

According to several reports, Turkey had little or no progress in being able to enforce existing Intellectual Property Right (IPR) laws and other IPR issues. Judiciary enforcement, in particular, remains weak.

The Turkish Copyright Act includes the doctrines of ‘fair use’ related to copyright and restricts the rights of the copyright-holder for reasons of public policy.

The Electronic Communication Law and the Regulation on Authorization Regarding the Electronic Communications Sector states that all enterprises willing to provide telecommunication services in Turkey require an authorization delivered by the Information and Communications Technologies Authority of Turkey.

A waiver of authorization is admitted in the case of private or public legal entities that employ these services for the satisfaction of their own needs without any kind of commercial intentions.

Article 628 (1) of the New Turkish Commercial code provides that at least one manager of the company must be domiciled in Turkey and must be solely authorised to represent the company

The New Turkish Commercial Code introduced the requirement that at least one member of the Board of Directors should be a citizen and resident of Turkey.

Turkey is currently only an observer to the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement.

Foreign companies have raised concerns that Turkey’s procurement processes can be lengthy and complicated. One of the issues raised is the requirement to use model contracts for public tenders which some government procuring agencies understand as not being subject to modification. It can, however, be difficult for foreign firms to formulate proposals which fully respond to some of the requirements in these model contracts like non-germane financial requirements or some technical specifications.

Turkish government contracting officials are authorized to issue tender documents with provisions that restrict foreign companies’ participation and that award price advantages of up to 15% (particularly for high technology products) to domestic bidders.

In 2015, the Turkish Procurement Code was amended to require all foreign contractors in public tenders exceeding 10,000,000 USD in value to cooperate with local companies.There are four different kinds of cooperation suggested whereof the foreign contractor may choose:
1) Contribution to local production: the foreign contractor uses the existing facilities to produce the product or its part in Turkey;
2) Investment: the foreign contractor uses new facility to produce the product or its part in turkey;
3) Technological cooperation: the foreign contractor transfers skills to local industry;
4) Export: the foreign contractor ensures exports from turkey.

On the 6 February 2014 the Turkish government decided to enforce a local preference margin of 15% for middle and high technology products. Until this decision, the application of this margin was at the discretion of the authority issuing the tender. To this end, article 63 of the Turkish Public Procurement code (Law no. 4734) was amended as follows:
- A 15% preference margin for local service suppliers and construction works can be established at the discretion of the authority issuing the tender;
- It is mandatory to give a 15% preference margin for interested parties which offer locally produced middle and high tech products. Every January, the Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology will publish a list with the eligible products.

The first list which encompasses 2139 products (including computers, mobile phones, TVs, etc.) has been published in January 2015.

Furthermore, on 13 September 2014, the Turkish government specified the conditions for what constitutes a "local product" eligible for the above preference margin for the first time. The conditions are:
- The product has to be produced by industrial enterprises which own a registration certificate issued by the Ministry of Industry. Furthermore, the product has to be listed in the category "production content" of the registration certificate;
- Important stages of the production process with products that have been produced or obtained entirely in Turkey and from the economical point of view necessarily last fundamental processing and workmanship being done in Turkey;
- The value of the local contribution has to be at least 51% of the final production cost.

According to several press reports, the Turkish government changed the conditions for its tender for the installation of 4.5G networks. The first tender for these licenses included the condition to source increasing shares of the construction and maintainence costs for the 4.5G network locally (3% in the first year, 8% and 15% in the second and third year).

Under the new tender, this obligation has been substantially increased to 30% local value in the first year and 40% and 45% respectively in in the second and third year. According to the Turkish government, this measure aims support domestic SMEs and also to increase related local R&D positions by 50%.

Turkey applies a 5% tax on data usage.