Information Exchange Between Competitors in Turkey: Competition Law Risks for International Companies (2026 Updated Guide)

International companies exchanging prices, costs, customer, capacity, salary or strategic information with competitors in Turkey may face serious competition law risks. Learn the key rules, investigation risks and compliance measures.

International companies operating in Turkey frequently communicate with competitors through trade associations, industry meetings, joint projects, benchmarking studies, distributors, consultants, digital platforms and informal business contacts. Such communication is not automatically unlawful. However, exchanging competitively sensitive information can create significant exposure under Turkish competition law where the exchange reduces uncertainty about competitors’ future market conduct or facilitates coordination. The Turkish Competition Authority’s Horizontal Cooperation Guidelines identify information concerning prices, quantities, customers, costs, turnover, sales, purchases, capacity, product characteristics, marketing plans, investments, technology and research and development as potentially competitively sensitive. Price and quantity information are generally regarded as particularly strategic.

For international companies, the risk is particularly important because conduct developed through regional headquarters, multinational industry associations or international benchmarking systems may still affect competition in Turkey. A company should therefore assess not only formal agreements with Turkish competitors but also emails, WhatsApp groups, meetings, surveys, algorithms and information exchanged through third parties.

When Does Information Exchange Become a Competition Law Risk in Turkey?

Article 4 of the Turkish competition framework prohibits agreements, concerted practices and decisions of associations of undertakings that have the object or effect of restricting competition. Information exchange can fall within this framework where it reduces strategic uncertainty and makes coordination between competitors easier.

The Competition Authority’s current approach emphasizes that the legal assessment depends heavily on the nature of the information, its strategic importance, age, level of aggregation, frequency of exchange, market coverage and characteristics of the relevant market.

Accordingly, the fact that companies did not expressly agree to fix prices does not necessarily eliminate competition-law exposure.

Price Information Creates Particularly High Risk

Competitors should exercise extreme caution regarding current or future prices. Information concerning planned price increases, discount policies, minimum prices, customer-specific pricing, expected tender prices, margins or future pricing strategy can significantly reduce uncertainty regarding competitive behavior.

For example, a sales manager telling a competitor that the company intends to increase prices by a particular percentage next month can create a substantially different risk from discussing historical and genuinely aggregated industry statistics.

Future Information Is Particularly Sensitive

Future commercial intentions generally create greater competition concerns than sufficiently historical information because competitors can use them to adjust their own behavior.

Future production volumes, planned capacity reductions, expected price increases, marketing campaigns, tender strategies and customer allocation intentions should therefore be subject to strict internal controls.

Customer Information Can Also Be Sensitive

Companies should be cautious when exchanging customer identities, customer-specific prices, contract renewal dates, bidding intentions, sales volumes or information about whether particular customers will receive discounts.

Information exchanges that facilitate customer allocation or coordinated treatment of customers can create serious competition concerns.

Cost Information Is Not Automatically Safe

Companies sometimes assume that sharing costs is less problematic than sharing prices. This is incorrect.

The Horizontal Cooperation Guidelines expressly identify costs among categories of potentially strategic information.

Sharing current or future input costs, margins or detailed cost structures can enable competitors to predict each other’s pricing behavior.

Capacity and Production Information Can Create Risks

Competitors should also assess carefully any exchange concerning production quantities, capacity utilization, future output, planned shutdowns or inventory.

If competitors know that one another intend to reduce production, the information may influence independent decisions concerning output and pricing.

Marketing and Investment Plans Can Be Competitively Sensitive

Competition law risks extend beyond price and output.

Future investment, geographic expansion, product launches, marketing strategies, technological development and research programs can also contain strategically valuable information.

The level of sensitivity depends on the competitive characteristics of the relevant market.

Trade Association Meetings Require Special Controls

Trade associations perform many legitimate functions, but they can also create environments in which competitors communicate directly.

An association meeting should not become an opportunity to discuss future prices, margins, customers, capacity or other individual commercial strategies.

The Competition Authority recognizes that information may be exchanged directly or through associations and other intermediaries; using an association does not automatically eliminate competition concerns.

Benchmarking Can Be Lawful but Must Be Structured Carefully

Benchmarking can produce legitimate efficiencies. However, the structure of the benchmarking program matters.

Information that is sufficiently aggregated so that individual competitors’ data cannot readily be identified generally presents lower competition risk than company-specific information. The Horizontal Cooperation Guidelines specifically recognize that adequately aggregated information is less likely to generate restrictive effects than individually identifiable company data.

Historical Information Is Generally Less Risky Than Current Information

The age of information is an important factor.

Information that is sufficiently old to have lost strategic value will generally present less risk than real-time or future information. There is no single period that automatically converts all information into harmless historical data; the commercial characteristics of the market matter.

In rapidly changing markets, information can lose strategic value relatively quickly. In stable markets, older information may remain commercially useful for longer.

Public Information Can Present a Different Risk Profile

Information genuinely available to everyone can present a different competition-law assessment from confidential information privately exchanged among competitors.

However, companies should not assume that labeling something “public” automatically makes every communication harmless. The actual accessibility of the information and the circumstances of communication should be considered.

Unilateral Disclosure Can Also Create Problems

Information exchange does not always require two competitors to send information to one another simultaneously.

A competitor may disclose sensitive information unilaterally, and the recipient’s conduct afterward can become relevant. The Competition Authority’s materials recognize that information exchanges may be unilateral or multilateral and can occur through direct or indirect channels.

What Should an Employee Do If a Competitor Sends Sensitive Information?

The employee should not respond by providing equivalent information or continuing the discussion.

The company should immediately preserve the communication, involve competition counsel, assess whether a clear written objection or distancing response is appropriate and prevent further circulation of the information internally unless necessary for legal review.

Deleting the message may destroy evidence and create additional difficulties.

WhatsApp Groups Can Create Competition Evidence

Business communications increasingly occur through WhatsApp and similar messaging applications.

Informal language does not prevent a message from becoming relevant evidence. Discussions about prices, customers, salary increases, tenders or production plans can become important during a competition investigation.

Employees should therefore apply the same competition-law rules to messaging applications as they apply to formal emails and meetings.

Third Parties Do Not Eliminate the Risk

Companies cannot necessarily avoid competition-law exposure by exchanging information through consultants, distributors, market research companies, platforms or other intermediaries.

The legal assessment focuses on the substance of the information flow and its competitive implications.

Hub-and-Spoke Information Exchange Can Create Exposure

A supplier, distributor, consultant or platform may potentially operate as an intermediary through which competitors receive one another’s sensitive information.

Companies should therefore assess what information intermediaries collect, how it is processed and whether competitor-specific information is communicated back to market participants.

Algorithms and Digital Platforms Require Competition Review

Automated pricing systems and digital platforms can process extensive market information. Companies should examine whether algorithms receive non-public competitor information or facilitate coordinated commercial behavior.

Automation does not remove responsibility for competition compliance.

Tender Information Is Particularly Dangerous

Competitors should not exchange intended tender prices, decisions about whether to participate, customer allocation, bid levels or arrangements concerning who should win particular tenders.

Such communications can move beyond problematic information exchange and create evidence of more serious coordination.

Salary Information Is Now a Major Competition Law Risk

Competition law does not apply only to the sale of products and services. Labor-market competition has become an important enforcement area.

The Competition Authority’s labor-market guidelines state that information concerning wages, wage increases, working hours, fringe benefits, compensation and leave conditions may constitute competitively sensitive information where it affects labor mobility or employee choices.

International companies should therefore ensure that human-resources departments are included in competition compliance programs.

Recent Turkish Enforcement Shows the Risk Is Real

Turkish enforcement activity has specifically addressed exchanges of competitively sensitive employment information. In September 2026, the Competition Authority announced an investigation involving 37 undertakings and two associations concerning alleged no-poach arrangements and exchanges of information relating to employee remuneration and other employment conditions.

The Authority also concluded another labor-market investigation in 2025 involving companies largely operating in the pharmaceutical sector, imposing administrative fines on undertakings found to have participated in prohibited conduct.

International companies should therefore treat HR information exchange with the same seriousness as sales and pricing information.

Market Characteristics Affect the Assessment

Information exchange does not operate identically in every market.

Market concentration, transparency, stability, complexity and the similarity of competing undertakings can influence whether an exchange facilitates coordination. The frequency and market coverage of the exchange can also be relevant.

A recurring exchange covering most competitors in a concentrated market can therefore present a substantially different risk from isolated, aggregated statistical information.

Can Competitors Conduct Industry Surveys?

Potentially, provided that the system is structured carefully.

A legitimate industry survey should be designed to reduce the ability of participants to identify individual competitors’ commercially sensitive information. Depending on the circumstances, safeguards may include independent data collection, aggregation, appropriate treatment of historical data and restrictions on participant access to underlying individual information.

Clean Teams Can Reduce Risk in Transactions

Companies involved in mergers, acquisitions or joint ventures may genuinely need to exchange sensitive information during due diligence.

Where the parties remain competitors before completion, access to competitively sensitive information should be restricted appropriately. Clean-team arrangements, external advisers and controlled data rooms can help reduce unnecessary exposure.

Joint Ventures Require Similar Caution

Companies exploring legitimate cooperation may need information to evaluate a proposed joint venture.

Only information reasonably necessary for the project should be shared, and sensitive data should be protected where possible through clean teams or other safeguards.

Internal Documents Can Become Important Evidence

Competition investigations frequently involve interpretation of emails, presentations, meeting notes and messages.

Employees should therefore avoid ambiguous expressions suggesting that competitors have agreed to stabilize prices, avoid customers or coordinate commercial conduct.

The objective is not to create artificial language but to ensure that business decisions are genuinely independent.

What If an Employee Attends a Problematic Competitor Meeting?

Remaining silent may not always be the safest response.

The employee should clearly distance the company from prohibited discussions, request that the objection be recorded where appropriate, leave the discussion if necessary and report the incident immediately to the company’s legal or compliance function.

The circumstances should be documented.

Companies Should Preserve Evidence When a Risk Is Discovered

If potentially unlawful information exchange is identified, the company should consider an immediate internal investigation.

Relevant emails, messaging records, meeting minutes, calendars, documents and electronic evidence should be preserved.

Employees should not be instructed to delete communications.

Conduct a Privileged Internal Competition Review

The company should identify who participated, what information was exchanged, when exchanges occurred, whether they were repeated, which competitors were involved and whether commercial decisions were affected.

The investigation should distinguish isolated employee misconduct from a broader company practice.

Review Trade Association Participation

Companies should identify every association, committee, working group and informal industry network in which their employees participate.

Competition-law protocols should define prohibited subjects and establish escalation procedures when discussions become problematic.

Review Information Received From Distributors

Sales teams should be trained not to ask distributors to obtain confidential information about competing suppliers.

The fact that competitor information came through a common customer or distributor does not automatically make every use of that information lawful.

Establish Written Competition Compliance Rules

International companies operating in Turkey should maintain clear policies covering competitor contacts, industry meetings, benchmarking, tenders, HR information, digital communications and third-party data providers.

Training should include realistic scenarios rather than abstract legal principles.

Dawn Raids Create Additional Risks

Competition investigations can involve extensive review of company records and electronic communications.

Businesses should maintain a dawn-raid protocol explaining responsibilities of reception personnel, management, IT staff and legal counsel.

Employees should understand that documents must not be destroyed or concealed during an investigation.

Administrative Fines Can Be Significant

Competition infringements can expose undertakings to substantial turnover-based administrative fines. Turkey introduced a revised fining framework at the end of 2024, followed by a Competition Authority guideline explaining factors used in determining administrative fines, including infringement characteristics, duration and aggravating or mitigating circumstances.

The financial consequences of an information-exchange infringement can therefore extend well beyond the commercial transaction in which the communication occurred.

International Group Policies Should Be Adapted to Turkey

A global competition compliance manual is useful, but it should be reviewed against Turkish enforcement practice.

Particular attention should be given to trade associations, labor markets, distributor relationships, tender communications and electronic messaging.

What Should a Foreign Company Do After Discovering an Information Exchange?

The company should stop potentially problematic communications, preserve evidence, prevent further dissemination of competitor information, conduct a legally structured internal review and determine whether additional competition-law measures are necessary.

Management should avoid contacting competitors informally to coordinate a common explanation.

2026 Competition Compliance Priorities

International companies operating in Turkey should treat competitor information exchange as a standalone competition-law risk rather than focusing exclusively on explicit cartels. Current Turkish enforcement demonstrates particular attention to competitively sensitive information, including information exchanged in labor markets.

Compliance programs should therefore cover sales, procurement, HR, finance, strategy, trade associations and senior management.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is every exchange of information between competitors illegal in Turkey?

No. The assessment depends on the nature of the information, market characteristics, frequency, age, aggregation and competitive consequences.

What information creates the greatest risk?

Current or future information concerning prices, quantities, customers and other strategic commercial matters can create particularly significant risks.

Can competitors exchange historical data?

Potentially. Historical information generally presents less risk than current or future strategic information, but whether information has genuinely lost competitive value depends on the market.

Can a trade association collect competitors’ data?

Potentially, but the system should be designed carefully. Aggregated data that prevents identification of individual competitors generally presents lower risk than company-specific information.

Is salary information covered by competition law?

Yes. Wage and other employment-condition information can constitute competitively sensitive information under the Competition Authority’s labor-market framework.

Are WhatsApp messages relevant in a competition investigation?

They can be. Companies should treat business communications through messaging applications as potentially relevant evidence.

What should an employee do if a competitor unexpectedly reveals future prices?

The employee should avoid reciprocal disclosure, distance the company from the exchange, preserve the communication and seek immediate competition-law guidance.

Can information exchange through a consultant still create risk?

Yes. Indirect exchange through an intermediary does not automatically eliminate competition-law concerns.

Can international companies be investigated in Turkey?

Where conduct falls within the scope of Turkish competition law and affects competition in Turkey, foreign ownership does not by itself prevent competition-law scrutiny.

What is the most important compliance rule?

Competitors should make their commercial decisions independently. Before sharing or receiving non-public information about prices, customers, quantities, costs, capacity, salaries or future strategy, companies should determine whether the exchange is genuinely necessary and compatible with Turkish competition law.

Client-Focused Legal Support for Competition Law and Competitor Information Exchange

Information exchange between competitors can expose international companies to Competition Authority investigations, electronic evidence reviews, administrative fines, trade association scrutiny and significant reputational and commercial risks. Fırat Fesih Kaya Law Office assists foreign investors, multinational companies and international businesses with competition-law compliance, internal investigations, competitor communications, trade association participation and defense strategies concerning alleged restrictive agreements or information exchanges in Turkey. Lawyer Fırat Fesih Kaya provides legal assistance in assessing potentially sensitive communications, establishing competition compliance procedures, preparing companies for investigations and developing legal defense strategies where competitor information exchange is questioned.

Phone:
+90 312 434 22 22

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+90 532 769 22 22

Email:
info@firatfesihkaya.av.tr

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Mevlana Boulevard No:221, Yıldırım Tower, Office No:148, 06520 Balgat, Çankaya, Ankara, Turkey