NEWSLETTER-2019-metin

113 COMPETITION LAW Expected Second Half of Competition Board’s 12 Banks Decision* Att. Mert Karamustafaoğlu “Awaited always comes late; when it comes, people are somewhere else.” Oğuz Atay (The Disconnected) Introduction The Competition Board’s (“Board”) decision which the highest administrative fine imposed in its history is known as the “12 Banks Decision” 1 . In this decision, the Board has reviewed the investigation of the competition violation claims in the deposit, credit and credit card markets, and imposed heavy administrative fines upon 12 banks, in which Turkey’s largest banks are included. The 12 Banks Decision has imposed a TL 1 billion administrative fine, in total, which com- prises thousands of compensation cases. In this Decision, the Board has assessed that the mentioned banks were in breach of competition in the deposit, credit and credit card services markets between the years 2007 and 2011. Detecting such a wide-ranging competition violation naturally induced the filing of thousands of customer cases. In the history of Turkish competition law, the 12 Banks Decision is a first in many respects, especially the imposed fine is the record as being the greatest administrative fine imposed by the Board in one file. In addition, a very interesting development has taken place after this Decision. Thousands of customers have filed compensation cases based on this decision against the banks that are mentioned in the De- cision. With this Decision, the results of competition law in private * Article of June 2019 1 https://www.rekabet.gov.tr/Karar?kararId=30851aa5-2cf3-4c54-b284-e192ed- 6ed71b (Access date: 30.06.2019).