Scope of Application of Turkish Sustainability Reporting Standards Amended

The Board Decision (Amending Decision) dated 16.12.2024 and numbered 01/28294 of the Public Oversight, Accounting and Auditing Standards Authority regarding the amendment of the scope of application of the Turkish Sustainability Reporting Standards (TSRS) is published in the Official Gazette dated 18.12.2024 and numbered 32756.

With the Amending Decision, the Board Decision (Decision) numbered 01/21634 on the Scope of Application of Turkish Sustainability Reporting Standards is amended and the scope of companies obliged to apply TSRS in preparing sustainability reports has been narrowed. The amendments to Article 3 of the Decision are listed below.

• In the Decision, “joint stock companies whose capital market instruments are traded on a stock exchange or other organized markets, or which have a prospectus or issue document approved by the Capital Markets Board with a validity period for their trading” were included among the companies that were obliged to apply the TSRS. This expression has been changed to “corporations traded on stock exchanges, except for corporations whose shares are traded on the Watchlist Market (WL) of Borsa Istanbul A.Ş. (BIST) or the Venture Capital Market (VCM) for sale to qualified investors”.
• Joint stock companies that are not traded on a stock exchange or other organized markets but issue capital market instruments other than shares without public offering or have a valid issuance certificate approved by the Capital Markets Board for this purpose are excluded from the scope of organizations that are obliged to apply TSRS in the preparation of sustainability reports.
• Banks and other financial institutions subject to the regulation and supervision of the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency as specified in subparagraph (b) of Article 3 of the Decision, whose shares are not traded on the BIST and whose number of branches does not exceed 1 or whose number of employees does not exceed 250 as of the end of the previous year, are not required to prepare a sustainability report for the first two reporting periods in which they are exempt from the obligation to disclose greenhouse gas emissions within the scope of Provisional Article 3 of the Decision.

The amendments are effective for annual periods beginning on or after 01.01.2024.