The Turkish Competition Board (“Board”) may grant a negative clearance certificate to a certain agreement, decision, transaction, act or practice, upon a company’s or a trade association’s application. The negative clearance certificate indicates that the notified agreement, decision, practice, merger or acquisition (i.e. whatever act the negative clearance is requested for) does not violate competition laws. That means the act in question is not contrary to any of Articles 4, 6, or 7 of Law on the Protection of Competition No. 4054 (“Competition Law”).
The Board may revoke the negative clearance certificate at any time, if one of the following three conditions set out in Article 13 of the Competition Law is met:
- Change in any of the underlying events constituting the basis of the decision;
- Failure to fulfill the terms or obligations that the negative clearance certificate is conditioned upon;
- Negative clearance turned out to having been taken on the basis of incorrect or incomplete information concerning the notified act.
The revocation of the negative clearance certificate will be effective as of the date of the change in case of condition (a); or the date of taking the exemption or negative clearance decision in case of conditions (b) and/or (c). If the incorrect or incomplete information under condition (c) is supplied by the parties intentionally or fraudulently, the negative clearance certificate will be deemed not to have been taken at all.
If the notified agreement, decision, practice, transaction or act would violate competition laws after revocation, the Board may decide to impose administrative monetary sanctions on the parties. Nevertheless, the sanctions would not apply for the period between the grant and revocation.
Please also see the “individual exemption/negative clearance application form” for further information.