The Turkish Competition Authority clarified with its decision dated 11 January 2021 and numbered 21-02/25-M that the Competition Board has started an investigation in respect of Facebook Inc. and Facebook Ireland Ltd., as well as WhatsApp Inc. and WhatsApp LLC and imposed an interim measure on the prospective WhatsApp terms of service and privacy policy.
The terms of service were published on WhatsApp declared that it will receive and share information with other Facebook Companies. Facebook doesn’t have a good record in terms of data protection due to its involvement in the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the heavy sanctions imposed on it by many data protection authorities throughout the World. Facebook will be authorized to use and collect the data provided by WhatsApp. The users who did not accept these Terms of Services, will be prevented from accessing WhatsApp in 8th February.
The Scope of the Investigation
The Turkish Competition Authority announced on 11 January 2021 that the investigation started by the Competition Board pursuant to Article 6 of the Law on the Protection of Competition numbered 4054. The investigation will be about whether Facebook holds a dominant position” in terms of competition rules. If the dominant position does exist, the investigation will then concentrate on whether there is an abuse of such dominant position.
The Board has also imposed an interim measure against the implementation of the Terms of Service. According to the interim measure, Facebook is obliged to halt the implementation of the Terms of Service that was anticipated to be implemented on 8 February 2021, and notify all WhatsApp users accordingly prior to such date.
Please contact our qualified lawyers if you or your company would like to get more information regarding the data protection in Turkey.
