354 NEWSLETTER 2021 Employers’ Right to Monitor Employees’ E-Mails: Criteria Introduced by the Decision of the Constitutional Court Dated 12.01.2021* Prof. Dr. H. Murat Develioğlu Introduction Per Article 1 of Law No. 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data, the purpose of the Law is to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals, especially the confidentiality of private life within the scope of processing personal data, and to establish the obligations, procedures, and principles to be followed by natural and legal persons who process personal data. According to the same Law, personal data means all kinds of information regarding an identified or identifiable natural person. Names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, health conditions, websites visited, correspondences are examples. On the other hand, the concept of processing personal data means any action taken with respect to data, such as obtaining, recording, storing, preserving, changing, reorganizing, disclosing, transferring, taking over, rendering available, classifying, or preventing their usage and, in general terms, processing without complying with the conditions stipulated under the Law on the Protection of Personal Data, is considered as an unlawful process. The protection of employee’s personal data within the scope of service agreements is also secured under the the aforementioned law, as well as the Turkish Criminal Code, the Turkish Code of Obligations, and the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey. In this context, the question as to whether the employer is allowed to process an employee’s e-mails; that is, whether he/she may process employee’s personal data and, if so, under what conditions arise in the decision of the Constitutional Court dated 12.01.2021, which we discuss, below. * Article of March, 2021
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