Newsletter-21

151 COMPETITION LAW Footsteps of “MFN” Practice in Turkey: Yemek Sepeti Decision* Att. Mert Karamustafaoglu Introduction As the volume of e-commerce has been increasing, online plat- forms have become important suppliers/service providers. In compari- son to conventional sales channels, these platforms provide various advanced options and opportunities for consumers thanks to their superior technological infrastructures; thus, these are favored and pre- ferred more and more among the consumers. Thereby the volume and the market share of e-commerce have increased against conventional sales channels. Considering the increasing market power of online platforms, competition authorities in many countries started to work on this newly emerging sales channel 1 . Of late, reputable competition authorities have begun to introduce new concepts like “Most Favored Nation Clause,” or “Most Favored Customer Clause” that have been already a part of the daily terminol- ogy of online platforms for quite some time. Recent investigations of international e-commerce giants like Amazon or Booking initiated hot discussions about Most Favored Nation Clause (“MFN”) amongst experts of EU competition law. Similarly, the Turkish Competition Authority has initiated an investigation of Booking.com, and this investigation is pending 2 . However, the Turkish competition authority has already announced * Article of May 2016 1 Please see: http://www.bundeskartellamt.de/SharedDocs/Meldung/DE/Meldun- gen%20News%20Karussell/2016/09_06_2016_ThinkTank.html (Access Date: 20.06.2016). 2 http://www.rekabet.gov.tr/tr-TR/Guncel/Bookingcom-BV-ile-Bookingdotcom- Destek-Hizmetleri-Limited-Sirketi-Hakkinda-Sorusturma-Acildi (Access Date: 19.06.2016).