The "Annual Report" regarding the activities of the Turkish Competition Authority for the year 2022 has been published on the official website of the Authority.
As stated in the "2022 in Numbers" section of the Annual Report, in 2022, the Turkish Competition Authority concluded 245 Merger & Acquisition files, 78 Competition Violation files, and 19 Exemption & Negative Determination files.
In 2022, with regard to allegations of violation of Article 4 and/or 6 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition, the Competition Authority initiated investigations in 78 cases, out of which 17 were initiated ex officio by the Competition Authority. Out of the 17 cases initiated ex officio, 16 pertain to the violation of Article 4 of Law No. 4054.
Upon examination of the 78 files related to competition violation decisions, it is observed that in 20 out of 24 files subject to preliminary inquiry, the allegations were dismissed; in 5 out of 54 investigation files, the file was concluded with commitments; and in 34 files, it was concluded through settlements. Administrative fines were imposed in 15 sectors.
In 2022, the Competition Board rendered decisions on a total of 19 exemption/negative determination files, consisting of 4 negative determinations and 15 exemptions. Among the sectors subject to exemption/negative determination review in this year, the banking, capital markets, finance and insurance services; healthcare services, food industry, and chemical and mining sectors were predominant.
Out of the 245 Merger & Acquisition applications concluded in 2022, 65% consisted of acquisition transactions, while 31% involved joint venture establishment transactions. Additionally, 2 merger transactions and 7 privatization transactions were concluded in 2022. The sectoral distribution of the merger and acquisition transactions subject to Board decisions in 2022 is as follows: chemical and mining, information technologies and platform services, healthcare services, banking, capital markets, finance and insurance services sectors. The outcomes of the Board decisions in merger and acquisition applications were as follows: unconditional approval for 209 transactions, conditional approval for two transactions, and evaluation of 34 transactions as out-of-scope or below thresholds.
In the files concluded in 2022, a total of TRY 1,731,940,315 administrative fines were imposed on undertakings found to be in violation of competition rules according to Law No. 4054. In 2022, the food industry sector had the highest application of administrative fines due to the violation of competition law rules. This was followed by the information technologies and platform services sector, agriculture and agricultural products sector, and healthcare services sector.
Furthermore, within the scope of the Competition Authority's advocacy activities, sector inquiries for "fuel", "online advertising", "pharmaceuticals", "regular line container transportation and container port services market", "fast-moving consumer goods retailing", and "automotive" markets are ongoing as of the end of 2022.
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