With the Regulation on Amendment of the Regulation on Commercial Communication and Commercial Electronic Messages (the “Amending Regulation”), published in the Official Gazette dated 4 January 2020 by the Ministry of Commerce of the Republic of Turkey (“Ministry”), the provisions of the Regulation on Commercial Communication and Commercial Electronic Messages (in Turkish, “Ticari İletişim ve Ticari Elektronik İleti Hakkında Yönetmelik”, the “Regulation”) dated 15 July 2015 were amended and some new articles were added.

As known, pursuant to the Regulation, commercial electronic messages are defined as communications with data, voice and display content which are sent for commercial purposes and which are made through electronic media using means such as telephone, call centers, facsimile, automated diallers, smart voice recording systems, e-mail, short message system (sms) services. The consent of the recipients is required for these messages to be sent.

The essential change made by this Amending Regulation was regarding the establishment of the Commercial Electronic Messages Management System to manage opt-in and opt-out requests, consents  and complaints regarding commercial electronic messages (hereinafter referred to as the “CMMS”, in Turkish, “İleti Yönetim Sistemi- İYS”) and the deadlines provided for both the recepients and service providers who wish to send commercial electronic messages and review the consents to the service providers.

With the Regulation on Amendment of the Regulation on Commercial Communication and Commercial Electronic Messages published in the Official Gazette dated 28 August 2020, the deadline for the registration and the transfer of permissions to the CMMS was extended to 1 December 2020. Another extension through this amendment was also brought for the deadline provided for the recepients who can review their consent declarations on the CMMS until 16January 2021.

In this regard service providers who send commercial electronic messages (including voice, e-mail and sms) are obliged to register and transfer the permissions that they already received from the recipients in accordance with the Regulation, to the CMMS until 1 December 2020 (permissons which are not transferred until this date shall be deemed as invalid).

The deadline for the recipients to review their consent declarations on the CMMS is 16 January 2021.

Despite the fact that service providers are not obliged to take prior permission of the merchants or tradesmen to send them electronic commercial messages, they are still obliged to register the electronic communications addresses of these recipients to the CMMS as per the Article 6/6 of the Regulation which explicitly states that:“Before sending a message within the scope of the third paragraph, the electronic contact addresses of the recepients who are tradesmen or merchants shall be recorded in the CMMS by the service provider and it shall be checked whether the recipients have used their right of rejection through the CMMS.”

Accordingly, if these recipients exercise their right of rejection, commercial electronic messages cannot be sent without their permission.

The texts required for these permissions to be provided from the recepients are “clarification text” and “commercial electronic message approval form” (in Turkish, “Aydınlatma ve Ticari Elektronik İleti Onay Metni”), which may be prepared by our Law Firm upon your kind request.

In conclusion, we kindly remind you that all service providers shall register to the CMMS until 1 December 2020and their existing permissions shall be transferred through the Commercial Electronic Message Management System until 1 December 2020.

Our Law Firm remains at your disposal for any further clarifications you may need.