VBER in Turkey

The main legislation applicable to vertical agreements and vertical restraints is Article 4 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition (Law No. 4054) in conjunction with the Block Exemption Communiqué No. 2002/2 on Vertical Agreements (Communiqué No. 2002/2) and the Guidelines on Vertical Agreements. The Article 4 of Law No. 4054 is closely modelled on Article 101.1 TFEU. It prohibits agreements and concerted practices with the object or (potential) effect of restricting competition and deems such agreements and concerted practices to be unlawful.

Law No. 4054 does not provide a detailed definition of vertical restraints; however, Communiqué No. 2002/2 and the Guidelines on Vertical Agreements outline the principles to be adopted in the assessment of vertical agreements. Article 2 of Communiqué No. 2002/2 defines vertical agreements as agreements concluded between two or more undertakings operating at different levels of the production or distribution chain, with the aim of purchase, sale or resale of particular goods or services.

Communiqué No. 2002/2 and the Guidelines on Vertical Agreements are closely modelled after the former Vertical Block Exemption Regulation and Vertical Agreements (VBER) adopted by the Commission in 2010 and does not reflect amendments to the newly introduced European VBER, which entered into force on June 1, 2022. To that end, the hard-core restrictions listed under Article 4(1) of Communiqué No. 2002/2, which excludes the vertical agreement from the scope of the block exemption provided by Communiqué No. 2002/2, only relates to the restrictions on the buyer, but not the supplier.

For more information on VBER in Turkey, please feel free to reach out to ELIG Gurkaynak at +90 212 327 1724 or through gonenc.gurkaynak@elig.com.