Insights11.10.2026

The New Axis of Competition Enforcement in the Automotive Sector

I. The general frame

For the Turkish automotive sector, 2026 has been a year in which the centre of gravity of competition-law enforcement has shifted. The Board’s traditional interest in the sector was for a long time shaped around vertical relations — resale-price maintenance, territorial and customer restrictions, and the organisation of authorised dealer and authorised service networks — accompanied by merger control. In the first nine months of this year, the heaviest sanction and the widest investigation concerning the sector have been directed not at product markets but at the labour market.

The shift is not accidental. From 2020 the Authority steadily built a line of case law and, at the end of 2024, turned it into secondary legislation; in 2025 and 2026 it has applied that text sector by sector. The automotive supply industry is, so far, the most crowded link in that wave of enforcement, and the most homogeneous in sectoral concentration.

Vertical relations have not, however, left the agenda; they have been tied to a more concrete compliance standard. The decision in the tyre manufacture and distribution investigation will affect the whole sector, not only by its monetary size but by the behavioural obligations it imposes on how suppliers must structure price communication with their dealer networks. On the digital-platform side, the commitment practice concerning trade in used vehicles has shown that the transfer of a data advantage between markets can itself be a ground for intervention.

This note addresses four subjects: the labour-market investigation (II), the tyre manufacture and distribution investigation and its implications for vertical relations (III), the commitment practice on digital platforms and in the used-vehicle market (IV), and the merger picture (V). The final part of the note is given to concrete compliance implications for undertakings (VI).

II. The labour market: the investigation into the automotive supply industry

A. Subject and scope of the investigation

By its decision of 13 August 2026, numbered 26-29/831-M, the Competition Board decided to open an investigation in order to determine whether thirty-seven undertakings active in the automotive supply industry, and two associations of undertakings, had infringed Article 4 of Act No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition. The decision was announced to the public on 7 September 2026, after the notification process was complete.

The starting point was the preliminary inquiry conducted in respect of the TOSB Automotive Supply Industry Specialised Organised Industrial Zone and its members. In the light of the information and documents obtained in that inquiry, the Board concluded that there was sufficient suspicion in respect of two separate types of conduct.

No-poach agreements. The undertakings were assessed as having entered into gentlemen’s agreements, through meetings held within TOSB and the Automotive Suppliers Association of Türkiye (TAYSAD) and through various channels of communication, not to employ one another’s employees.
Exchange of competitively sensitive information. Findings were reached that the same undertakings had shared with one another information on employee wages and other working conditions.

Among the parties are established players of the sector such as A Raymond, Aisin, Assan Hanil, Autoliv Cankor, Benteler, Beyçelik Gestamp, Coşkunöz, Denso, Diniz Adient, Ecoplas, Eku Fren, Farba, Farplas, Kanca, Parsan, Pimsa, Tekno Kauçuk, Tırsan, Toyota Boshoku, Toyotetsu and ZF Sachs. The composition of the list is striking: Turkish subsidiaries of foreign-owned global suppliers and domestic family companies stand together in the same file, and legal persons at holding level are also parties.

In the Board’s own words, a decision to open an investigation does not mean that the parties have infringed the Act or that they will face a sanction. Opening an investigation at the end of a preliminary inquiry does, however, mean that the Board has found the evidence in its hands to be “serious and sufficient”, and in practice it should be read as a threshold that shows the weight of the file.

The geographic concentration of the file is also notable. A substantial part of the parties operate along the Gebze, Çayırova and Bursa line, in plants within walking distance of one another. That concentration makes a narrow definition of the geographic market easier in a labour-market analysis: two suppliers established in the same district compete directly for the same skilled toolmaker or press operator, and one preventing staff from moving to the other restricts mobility on the relevant labour market to a significant degree. The relevant-market definition that the Board has drawn on a nationwide scale in earlier files may be expected here to be drawn on a regional scale.

A point can also be made about the source of the findings. In the Board’s labour files the evidentiary base typically consists of email correspondence, instant-messaging records and minutes of association meetings obtained in dawn raids. The first step of a defence is therefore for the party to review its own internal correspondence independently and to inventory the documents likely to be in the Authority’s hands. In files where that work is not done, the defence is confined to learning the statement of objections once it is served, and falls into a reactive position.

B. The legal framework to be applied

The legal frame of the file is drawn by Article 4 of Act No. 4054 and by the Guidelines on Competition Infringements in Labour Markets, adopted by the Board’s decision of 21 November 2024, numbered 24-49/1087-RM(4), and published on 3 December 2024. Three findings of the Guidelines are decisive for this file.

First, undertakings are treated as competitors on the labour market to the extent that they compete for labour of the same kind, even if they are not competitors on a product market. That finding is the legal basis on which undertakings active in different product groups (fasteners, seat systems, brakes, tooling, trailers), such as the members of TOSB and TAYSAD, can be gathered in a single file. Being established in the same organised industrial zone, and seeking engineers, technicians and blue-collar labour of similar qualification, makes up for the absence of overlap on the product market.

Second, no-poach agreements are characterised as restrictions by object corresponding to customer- or market-sharing agreements, and wage-fixing agreements as restrictions by object corresponding to price-fixing agreements. The consequence of that characterisation is severe: proof of an actual restrictive effect is not separately required, and the conduct is treated as a cartel. The Board first set out this approach with this clarity in the 2020 decision on Aegean container carriers, and turned it into a text with the Guidelines.

Third, the Guidelines accept that no-poach clauses in merger agreements and in joint-venture and similar cooperation relationships may constitute ancillary restraints. Restrictions that are ancillary are not assessed under Article 4; restrictions that are not are treated directly as restrictions by object. In practice this distinction is the most critical line of the defence: it will be examined whether the no-poach clause is attached to a main transaction, objectively necessary for that transaction to be carried out, and proportionate in duration, persons and geographic scope.

C. The course of the Board’s labour-market case law

The automotive file is not an isolated development. It is the latest link in a six-year line of enforcement.

The course of the Board’s labour-market enforcement.

Period	Case	Outcome
2020	Aegean container carriers	No investigation opened; the theoretical framework was set out
November 2020	Private hospitals	The start of the labour-focused investigation wave
April 2021	E-commerce, software and IT (thirty-two undertakings; dawn raids raised the number to forty-eight)	In 2023, administrative fines totalling TRY 151,148,000 on sixteen undertakings
2024–2025	Pharmaceuticals	TRY 403,767,108 in total on the parties that settled
January 2026	Banking, insurance and information technologies (twenty-six undertakings)	Investigation continuing
August 2026	Automotive supply industry (thirty-seven undertakings and two associations)	Investigation continuing

Two tendencies emerge from the table. First, the Board now targets not individual undertakings but the sector as a whole and the organisational ground of that sector. Second, the source of investigations is, with growing frequency, horizontal contact inside structures such as associations and organised industrial zones.

D. Responsibility of associations of undertakings: TAYSAD and TOSB

The most striking aspect of the file is that TAYSAD and TOSB have been included in the investigation directly as parties. Characterising a sectoral association and a specialised organised industrial zone as associations of undertakings within the meaning of Act No. 4054, and holding them separately responsible for the conduct of their members, has a direct consequence for every association and platform activity in the sector.

The status of an association of undertakings matters in two respects. First, the decisions of the association fall within Article 4 even if they are not binding; a recommendatory announcement of a wage band, or a board wish that members not take staff from one another, may constitute an infringement. Second, where association meetings are treated as the platform for the exchange of information among members, participation eases proof in respect of every member who attended: the burden of proving that a member whose attendance is recorded clearly distanced itself from the infringement passes to that member.

Human-resources committees, wage surveys and human-resources gatherings of sectoral associations are a widespread practice in Türkiye. The automotive file makes it necessary to rebuild the legal ground of that practice.

E. Procedure, sanctions and the problem of the fine base

Procedure. Under Article 43 of the Act an investigation is completed within six months of the decision; where it is considered necessary, an additional period of at most six months may be granted once. The parties are given a staged right of written defence, and an oral hearing is held if requested. A final decision in the file should accordingly be expected within 2027.

Settlement and leniency. Both mechanisms are open to the parties. A reduction in the administrative fine can be obtained through settlement; indeed, a substantial part of the parties in the tyre file took that route. In addition, the characterisation of no-poach agreements as a cartel under the Guidelines opens the way to a leniency application. In an infringement of a cartel nature, the first applicant may obtain full immunity from the fine. In a crowded file such as the automotive supply industry, that means a serious race of timing among the parties.

The fine base. The question that is debated in practice, and that is expected to arise in this file as well, is the turnover on which the administrative fine is to be based. In earlier labour files the Board applied the fine to settling undertakings on general turnover, while for undertakings that did not settle it took a narrower base by having regard to the share of employee costs in turnover. That distinction creates an unexpected disadvantage for undertakings that choose settlement, and it weakens the incentive function of the settlement mechanism. How the base is chosen in the automotive file will directly affect the parties’ settlement decisions. The fines will be determined within the Fining Regulation published in the Official Gazette of 27 December 2024, numbered 32765.

Private-law liability. Alongside the risk of an administrative sanction, it should not be forgotten that, under Article 57 and the following articles of Act No. 4054, those who have suffered harm may claim treble damages. In infringements directed at the labour market, the status of injured person belongs directly to the employees. If a final infringement decision becomes final, a collective action by persons who worked at these undertakings in the relevant period, alleging that their wages were artificially suppressed, will cease to be a theoretical possibility. A type of action that as yet has no precedent in Türkiye may carry the real cost of the automotive file well above the administrative fine.

Finally, it should be kept in view that the final decision will be subject to review by the administrative courts and that an action for annulment does not of itself stay execution. A defence strategy built during the investigation is therefore much more effective than one left to the judicial stage.

III. The tyre manufacture and distribution investigation

A. The decision and the sanctions

By its decision of 4 June 2026, numbered 26-20/612-242, the Board concluded the investigation it had conducted in the field of tyre manufacture and distribution in the automotive sector and imposed administrative fines totalling TRY 3,633,935,171.32.

The allegations examined in the investigation covered a wide range: concerted practice concerning price movements, exchange of competitively sensitive information, resale-price maintenance, territorial and customer restrictions, discrimination, non-compete obligations and no-poach. The composition of the file is instructive in showing that a single investigation can cover the horizontal, vertical and labour dimensions at the same time.

According to the distribution of fines that has reached the public, the highest sanction was imposed on Brisa, followed by Goodyear; Continental, Petlas, Hankook, Pirelli, Prometeon and Michelin are also among the undertakings fined. During the investigation Petlas, Tatko, Üstündağ Lastik and certain distributor undertakings chose settlement. In respect of some undertakings it was held that there was no ground to impose a fine on certain allegations, and in respect of two undertakings that there was no need to impose a fine because of limitation. The final table of the distribution of fines will become clear when the reasoned decision is published, and figures based on press statements should at this stage be treated with caution.

The consequences of two procedural choices are clearly visible in the file. For the undertakings that chose settlement, the investigation ended earlier and at a reduced level; the undertakings that did not settle had to complete the whole process. The limitation defence produced a result for two undertakings, and no fine was imposed on them because the period under the Misdemeanours Act had expired. In files that contain conduct which ended a long time ago, a limitation objection is not a technical detail; it is a line of defence that can produce a direct result.

Another instructive aspect of the decision is that a single file contains the horizontal, vertical and labour dimensions together. In practice undertakings usually manage competition risk in separate categories, and treat pricing policy, dealership agreements and human-resources practices as processes independent of one another. The tyre file has shown that evidence obtained in the same dawn raid can be used simultaneously in all three areas. The compliance programme therefore also has to be designed as a single whole.

B. Behavioural obligations and the approach to indirect information exchange

The most lasting aspect of the decision for practice is not the fine but the behavioural obligations the Board imposed on producer and supplier undertakings in the tyre-replacement market. Those obligations fall under three heads.

Use, on price lists and on every announcement relating to price, of a visible watermark and a specific coding system that distinguishes each dealer.
Sharing of price information not by mass transmission but only through an individual portal, accessed with a username and password, on a dealer-by-dealer basis.
Addition to dealership agreements of deterrent penalty clauses and termination-for-cause provisions that prevent future price information from being shared with competitors.

The theoretical approach behind these measures is clear. The Board assessed that the price alignment it found among producers was fed not by direct horizontal contact but by indirect information exchange through common dealers. This is one of the most concrete examples in Turkish practice of the structure called hub and spoke in international practice. If future price information that a supplier sends to a dealer reaches a competing supplier through the dealer, liability for concerted practice can arise even if the supplier has never been in direct contact with its competitor.

The decision also found it appropriate that Brisa benefit from the group exemption under the Block Exemption Communiqué on Vertical Agreements in the Motor Vehicle Sector, which shows that the sector-specific exemption regime remains alive.

The concrete counterpart of the obligations is a matter of technical infrastructure. In a compliant structure a price list is not distributed as a single central file; each dealer, in the area it enters with its own credentials, sees only the list assigned to it and visibly marked. The marking makes it possible to identify the source if the list is captured as a screenshot and put back into circulation. Keeping access logs is decisive for the supplier’s ability to prove its own position if an allegation of leakage arises. These measures are therefore not only an obligation towards the Board; they are also a tool that strengthens the supplier’s own capacity to defend itself.

As to the standard of proof, the point that calls for care is this: on the indirect-exchange approach, the supplier’s liability depends on it being shown that the information actually reached the competitor and that the supplier could foresee that result. What is required is that the supplier which shared the information with the dealer acted in an environment in which it could reasonably expect the information to be passed on to competitors. By contrast, concrete and documentable measures taken by the supplier to prevent the flow of information make it harder to establish liability. The obligations imposed by the Board define precisely the content of those measures.

C. An effect that spreads across the sector

Formally, the obligations are confined to the tyre-replacement market. The standard the Board has set here has nonetheless become a practical point of reference for every automotive player that works through an authorised dealer and authorised service network. A distributor that does not review the infrastructure of its price communication with the dealer network against these three criteria will be in a position that is hard to defend in later files.

IV. Digital platforms and the used-vehicle market

The Board examined three separate allegations concerning Sahibinden Bilgi Teknolojileri Pazarlama ve Ticaret A.Ş.: the tying of the online platform service for vehicle sales with the Otobid service; exploitative practices vis-à-vis consumers; and the use of advantages arising from dominance on the listing market in order to strengthen Otobid on the online market for the purchase and sale of used vehicles.

On the tying allegation, the Board rejected the claim, finding that participation in Otobid was not made a condition of using the listing service and that the two services could be used independently. On the allegation of an exploitative effect, it assessed that the provision-fee practice had a contractual basis.

An investigation was nevertheless opened on the third allegation, and the process ended in commitments. The package accepted contains the following elements: removal of steering towards Otobid over the platform; prevention of the use in Otobid of listing data that are not public; implementation of technical and organisational measures for the separation of data; and obligations that, if specified conditions arise, prevent Otobid’s advertising expenditure from being supported by cross-financing.

The sectoral importance of the decision is that, in the digitising part of used-vehicle trade, the transfer of a data advantage is accepted as a competitive concern in its own right. Where a platform launches a new vertical service inside its own ecosystem, carrying data and user traffic from the existing market into the new service can be a ground for intervention even if a classical tying allegation is not proved. The same logic applies to the tendency of distributors to establish their own used-vehicle and trade-in platforms: the transfer of customer and price data obtained from the intra-brand sales network into an independent used-vehicle business will, in the period ahead, become a subject that can be examined on its own.

Procedurally, the file is also important in showing the effectiveness of the commitment mechanism. On the commitment route the undertaking proposes measures that remove the competitive concerns without admitting an infringement; if the Board finds the commitments sufficient, it closes the investigation without a finding of infringement and without an administrative fine. In files where the legal characterisation is debated, such as allegations of abuse of dominance, this route provides a markedly more predictable outcome than a long investigation and judicial process. Because a separate sanctioning regime applies if the commitments are breached, however, the measures proposed have to be operationally capable of actually being applied.

The practical implication of the decision for automotive distributors concerns data governance. In structures that run new-vehicle sales, used-vehicle trade, trade-in, inspection and financing within the same group, the flow of data among those businesses has to be limited contractually and technically. In particular, non-public data obtained from independent dealers or third-party sellers, when used in the commercial decisions of the group’s own used-vehicle business, become examinable both under dominance and under the exchange of competitively sensitive information.

V. The merger picture

The Board’s clearance decisions concerning the automotive sector at the end of 2025 and in the first half of 2026 point to a consolidation in two directions.

A. Concentration on the used-vehicle and retail side

In the same period clearance was given to the acquisition of sole control of Araba Sepeti by BOD, within the Borusan group; to the acquisition by Yes Oto of the ikinciyeni.com brand within Çelik Motor together with the Carwizz inspection business; and to the acquisition by Otokoç of Nazer Otomotiv’s Peugeot, Citroën and Opel dealership premises. The Board saw no competitive concern in any of the three transactions. For the Otokoç and Nazer transaction, it was decisive that the parties’ combined market share remained below ten per cent and that some nine hundred authorised dealers under more than fifty brands were active on the market.

What these decisions share is that the Board accepts the market in new-vehicle retail as still fragmented, and permits large fleet and retail groups to widen their dealership portfolios. If consolidation continues at its present pace, however, brand-based regional market definitions should be expected to come onto the agenda in the period ahead, and the thresholds to be assessed more carefully.

B. Heavy commercial vehicles and the battery value chain

The acquisition by TML CV Holdings of the shares of IVECO Group N.V., excluding the defence business, was cleared unanimously, despite the horizontal overlap in the distribution of medium and heavy commercial vehicles, having regard to the presence of strong competitors on the market. Another example in which there was no affected market in Türkiye is the TAI and LGESMI joint venture established for the collection, processing and commercialisation of battery materials; the Board cleared the transaction having regard to the fact that the joint venture would operate only in the United States. The transaction shows that global structures in battery recovery also have to be followed for the notification obligation in Türkiye.

C. The notification obligation and pre-closing risks

The common lesson of the decisions above is that the notification obligation arises when the turnover thresholds are exceeded, even if there is no affected market in Türkiye. In the automotive value chain those thresholds are frequently exceeded because of the parties’ high global turnover, and a joint venture with no activity at all in Türkiye can still be subject to Board clearance. In transactions that close without clearance, a proportional administrative fine is applied on the turnover of the parties concerned, and that fine is unaffected by the transaction being unproblematic from a competitive standpoint. In cross-border transactions the Turkish notification therefore has to be placed in the timetable from the outset.

Transactions for the transfer of dealership premises and business lines contain a separate area of risk. Customer lists, pricing data, stock information and staff-cost tables shared between the parties during transfer talks can constitute an exchange of competitively sensitive information before closing. The risk is particularly high in a transfer process between two retail groups active on the same market. The practical answer is to tier the data room, to open sensitive data only to a team isolated from the buyer’s commercial decision-making or to an independent adviser, and to put in writing a protocol that preserves the parties’ commercial independence until closing.

VI. Implications for compliance

Bringing the human-resources function within competition law. For many years competition compliance programmes have focused on sales, marketing and procurement. The automotive file shows that human-resources and compensation units carry an equal risk. At a minimum, written or oral practices of not accepting applications from competitors, the correspondence of human-resources managers in sectoral association meetings and in informal channels, and the external sharing of wage, bonus and fringe-benefit data should be reviewed.
Rebuilding wage surveys. Wage-benchmarking exercises are not prohibited as such. The conditions the Guidelines require must, however, be met: collection and processing of the data by an independent third party; retrospective aggregation of data from a sufficient number of participants; the absence of current or forward-looking information; and the impossibility of disaggregating the data by undertaking. Exercises run through an association secretariat, in which the participants know one another, do not meet those conditions.
Review of no-poach clauses in contracts. Personnel no-poach provisions in supply contracts, joint-development protocols, confidentiality agreements and share-transfer agreements should be screened. For an ancillary-restraint defence to stand, the clause must be attached to a main transaction, objectively necessary for that transaction, and proportionate in duration, the persons covered and geographic area. General clauses that are independent of a main transaction, of indefinite duration, or that cover all personnel, are not defensible.
Rebuilding price communication with the dealer and distributor network. The three obligations in the tyre decision should be treated as a practical sector standard: watermarked and coded price lists on a dealer basis, an authenticated individual portal instead of mass email, and a contractual sanction mechanism. In addition, future price information should not be discussed on common platforms where dealer representatives are present.
File preparation and a dawn-raid protocol. The size of the supply-industry file shows that similar preliminary inquiries may be opened in the period ahead. Preparation as to a dawn-raid protocol, a policy for retaining digital data, and corporate communication in employees’ instant-messaging applications is no longer a matter that can be postponed.

This note has been prepared for general information and is not a legal opinion. Reasoned decisions in the investigations mentioned have not yet been published, and the assessment rests on announcements of the Competition Authority and on sources open to the public.