What Awaits Turkish Companies in 2025 in Terms of Digital Markets and Digital Services?

In recent years, legal systems worldwide have struggled to keep the pace with the rapid evolution of digital markets. Traditional laws have become inadequate to address the unprecedented scale and speed of digital businesses, the dominance of a few major players, and cross-border nature of digital transactions. Many jurisdictions have initiated regulatory measures, with some laws already taking effect. The EU, for instance, has introduced the Digital Markets Act (“DMA”) and Digital Services Act (“DSA”) to address the substantial influence of major tech companies in our everyday lives. These platforms have become integral to everyday activities—whether it’s online shopping, social media content sharing, streaming movies, or ordering food.

Türkiye has also followed this regulatory trend, by implementing new regulations and announcing legislative amendments. The Annual Presidential Plan signals further potential legislative updates anticipated for 2025.

1. Annual Presidential Plan

The Annual Presidential Plan of Türkiye for the year 2025 (the “Annual Presidential Plan”) dated October 29, 2024 and numbered 9074, as approved by Ministry of Treasury and Finance and Presidency of Strategy and Budget, was published in the Official Gazette dated October 30, 2024 and numbered 32707.

The Annual Presidential Plan outlines recent developments in the global economy and sets out projections for the years ahead. It also focuses on Türkiye’s economic landscape, detailing sectoral growth, employment targets, ongoing investments, export and import activities, as well as inflation figures and related strategies.

The Annual Presidential Plan also sets forth detailed policies and measures aimed at achieving the targets outlined for 2025, including initiatives that indicate forthcoming legislative amendments related to digital markets and digital services in Türkiye.

2. What Are Digital Markets and Digital Services?

Digital services, encompass a wide range of online services that operate through digital platforms. These include websites, internet infrastructure services, hosting providers and all type of online platforms. Digital markets on the other hand refer to the broader industry in which digital service providers operate.

Regulations targeting digital markets and digital service providers have already been implemented in many jurisdictions around the world, with more laws continuing to be introduced. In Türkiye, while there are existing regulations in the digital sector, new legislative updated aligned with the EU framework are also on the horizon, according to the Annual Presidential Plan.

3. Overview of Turkish Digital Markets & Digital Services Laws

Türkiye’s digital legal framework already covers several key laws and regulations:

Personal Data Protection Law (“KVKK”): Modelled after the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, KVKK regulates the processing of personal data in Turkey. It establishes principles for data processing, regulates cross border data transfer, outlines data subjects’ rights, and imposes obligations on data controllers and processors to ensure the protection of personal data in Türkiye.

Consumer Protection Law: Turkish consumer protection laws apply to digital transactions, ensuring that consumers’ rights are protected in digital platforms. These laws address issues such as unfair terms, misleading advertisements, and consumers’ withdrawal rights in distance contracts.

Electronic Commerce Regulation: Substantially amended in 2022, the E-Commerce Regulation governs e-commerce activities in Türkiye. The recent amendments include the requirement for high-volume e-commerce actors to obtain licenses and set forth separate obligations for e-commerce service providers (entities offering goods or services directly to consumers) and e-commerce intermediary service providers (marketplaces like Amazon, Trendyol, and Hepsiburada that facilitate transactions between service providers and customer). It establishes a tiered system of obligations and penalties based on transaction volumes of digital platforms, aiming to level the market for smaller e-commerce actors and promote fair competition, somewhat resembling to the DMA.

Draft Amendments to Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition: The draft regulation circulated on October 14, 2022 primarily focuses on defining core platform services and imposing specific obligations and restrictions on undertakings with significant market power, just like the DMA. Undertakings meeting pre-established criteria must apply to the Competition Board, which will then evaluate whether such entity holds significant market power in core platform services. If so, the Competition Board will issue a decision outlining the specific obligations and restrictions that the entity must adhere to.

 Current EU Regulations and their Potential Impacts on Turkish Digital Markets

The primary EU legislation governing obligations in digital sector is the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). GDPR is a comprehensive data protection law adopted by the European Union in May 2018. It has a wide scope of application, as it imposes obligations onto persons/entities anywhere, as long as they collect data related to people in the EU.

The EU also introduced new obligations through DMA and DSA specifically for those holding considerable market power, aiming to create a balanced, safer and a more competitive digital environment.

DMA, adopted by the European Parliament and the European Council on September 14, 2022, introduces a set of regulations for gatekeeper platforms—major digital platforms that hold significant influence in the EU market. These regulations aim to prevent anti-competitive practices, such as the unfair promotion of a platform’s own services over those of competitors. Gatekeepers are also required to ensure compatibility with competing services, allowing users to communicate seamlessly across platforms. Additionally, among many others, DMA enforces transparency in how gatekeepers rank or prioritize search results, products, and services and also prohibits any practices that prevent users from uninstalling any existing software or application. On September 6, 2023, the European Commission designated 6 companies as “gatekeepers” namely, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft within the scope of DMA.

Adopted in 2022, DSA complements DMA but mostly focuses on prevention of illegal and harmful activities online and the spread of disinformation. DSA ensures content and user safety, and transparency, rather than competition. It applies to all online services, however places stricter requirements for very large online platforms (VLOPs) and Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs), defined as those with over 45 million users in the EU.

The Measures[1] of the Annual Presidential Plan, states that the effects of EU’s digital market regulations on export of good and services from Türkiye will be analysed and a roadmap will be prepared to identify necessary steps to be taken, based on these assessments. Additionally, the digital infrastructure for e-commerce platforms will be enhanced, the payment and logistics systems will be strengthened to support electronic exports and to increase the active participation of Turkish exporters in the e-commerce market.

These measures signal the impending regulatory changes aligned with the EU’s DMA and DSA. Additionally, the increasing global adoption of various electronic payment systems suggests a shift towards their broader implementation in Turkey, where their current usage remains limited in e-commerce transactions.

In addition, pursuant to the Annual Presidential Plan[2], the alignment process of KVKK with the GDPR will be completed, as part of broader efforts to harmonize Turkish regulations with EU’s. The initial steps towards aligning KVKK with GDPR were taken in 2024, resulting in significant amendments to the KVKK, particularly concerning the processing of sensitive personal data and cross border data transfers.

[1] Measure 359.1 and 359.4

[2] Measure 359.2

All these measures implies that Turkish businesses will need to adapt to the new digital standards and legal frameworks, in order to comply with evolving regulations and maintain their competitive edge.