Processing Personal Data
Personal data can be processed based on the below specified legal grounds:
If explicit consent of the data subject is obtained;
If processing is clearly proposed under the laws;
If processing is mandatory for the protection of life, or to prevent the physical injury of a person, in cases where that person cannot express consent, or whose consent is legally invalid due to physical disabilities;
If processing is necessary for and directly related to…
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The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (“the Singapore Convention”) on 20 December 2018, which was signed by Turkey on 07 August 2019 in Singapore.
Turkey enacted the Law No. 7282 dated 25 February 2021[1] concerning the approval of the Singapore Convention, which was followed by the Presidential Decree (3866) dated 21 April 2021[2] concerning its ratification.
Finally, with the Presidential…
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Minor alterations were previously considered sufficient for consumers to distinguish between short marks
The PTO recently held that the word mark M + PLUS was similar to the opponent’s series of earlier M marks
The office diverged from standard practice in a decision that focused on the overall impression made by the marks on consumers
Background
When the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office assesses whether two signs are confusingly similar under Article 6/1 of the…
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Explicit consent has been defined as consent that relates to a specified issue, declared by free will, and based on information.
The definition provides that not all kinds of consent will suffice under the Data Protection Law. The data subject must know for what s/he is giving consent and must clearly express his/her consent. For example, consent obtained in English from non-English speakers in Turkey would not be considered to be explicit consent. Further, implied consent is…
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With the judgement dated 28 December 2021 and numbered 2018/34584[1], the Constitutional Court discussed the employer’s examination of the employees’ correspondence sent through the messaging program called WhatsApp and the termination of the employment contracts based on these correspondences, within the scope of the right to privacy and freedom of communication.
In the said decision, the Constitutional Court ruled that the employer's obtaining of the contents of the…
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Sensitive and non-sensitive personal data may be transferred to third parties if the data subject’s explicit consent is obtained or if one of the additional legal grounds is applicable for such transfer.
The Data Protection Law does not define a third party; therefore, any individual or entity (other than the data controller and the data subject) may be considered a third party. This creates a problem, especially about transfers between data controllers and data processors…
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Sensitive and non-sensitive personal data can be transferred abroad with the data subject’s explicit consent.
Other legal grounds also apply to transferring personal data to a foreign country. The destination country must have “sufficient protection” to conclude the transfer abroad based on legal grounds other than explicit consent. The Board is expected to determine a list of jurisdictions that provide sufficient protection. The Board has confirmed that they have been…
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The Data Protection Law requires data controllers to notify the relevant data subject and the Board as soon as possible when being made aware of such data breach. In its decision dated January 24, 2019 and numbered 2019/9, the Board clarified the rules and procedures to be applied in data breach incidents.
The Board takes the GDPR approach in terms of timing of breach notifications, and clarified that the term of “as soon as possible” within the Data Protection Law must be…
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According to Article 16 of the Data Protection Law, an obligation to register in the Data Controllers Registry has been introduced for data controllers.
In 2018, the Board issued decisions granting exemptions from registration obligation to certain professional groups, associations, and political parties. The Board also granted a general exemption to local data controllers that have less than 50 employees, and actively less than TRY 25 million on their balance sheets.
Data…
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The Data Protection Law envisages both administrative fines and criminal liability.
With regard to criminal penalties, the Data Protection Law refers to the relevant provisions of the Turkish Criminal Code that detail sanctions for the unlawful recording, or disclosing, or transferring of personal data.
In addition to criminal sanctions, the Data Protection Law also contains provisions detailing administrative fines that are to be applied in the event of a breach. There are…
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The Data Protection Law does not include an explicit provision concerning the appeal process of Board decisions imposing administrative fines; however, it is accepted that criminal courts of peace are the authorized courts pursuant to Law No. 5326 on Misdemeanours dated 30/3/2005 since the title of Article 18 of the Data Protection Law is “Misdemeanours,” and administrative fines are issued as per Article 18 of the Data Protection Law. Having this in mind, decisions imposing…
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Processing Sensitive Personal Data
Proposed amendments to the Data Protection Law, which have been drafted by the DPA and which introduce some modifications to certain disputed provisions of the Data Protection Law, have been presented for the related institutions and organisation’s consideration. Articles proposed to be amended are Article 6, regulating the legal grounds for processing sensitive personal data and Article 9, regulation transfer of personal data abroad.
Under…
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