Dawn Raids and Competition Authority Investigations in Türkiye: What to Do

If officials from Türkiye's Competition Authority (Rekabet Kurumu) arrive unannounced at your Turkish office, stay calm, let them in, call competition counsel immediately, and do not delete, hide, or alter anything. This is a "dawn raid" — an on-site inspection authorised by the Competition Board (Rekabet Kurulu) under the Law on the Protection of Competition No. 4054. Case handlers can enter your premises, examine and copy your books and records, image computers and phones, and read email and messaging. Refusing access, deleting data, or giving misleading answers carries separate and serious fines and can make a bad situation far worse. This guide explains exactly what the inspectors can and cannot do, what your company's rights and obligations are during the raid, and a practical first-hour plan for a foreign company's Turkish team.

What a Dawn Raid Is and Where the Power Comes From

A dawn raid (in Turkish practice, yerinde inceleme — "on-site inspection") is an unannounced visit by officials of the Turkish Competition Authority to gather evidence about a suspected breach of competition law. There is no advance warning, by design: the point is to find documents and data before anyone can remove them.

The inspection power sits in Article 15 of the Law on the Protection of Competition No. 4054 (Rekabetin Korunması Hakkında Kanun), enforced by the Competition Authority (Rekabet Kurumu) in Ankara, whose decision-making body is the Competition Board (Rekabet Kurulu). The Board orders or authorises the inspection; case handlers (the Authority's expert staff) carry it out on the ground.

The Authority has also published guidance on how these inspections are run, including the Guidelines on the Examination of Digital Data during on-site inspections, which set out how email, messaging and stored files are reviewed and copied. These guidelines explain practice; the binding power itself comes from Law No. 4054.

What the Inspectors Can Do

The powers under Article 15 are broad. During a lawful on-site inspection, the Authority's case handlers may:

• Enter your premises — offices, branches, and (with the right authorisation) related locations and means of transport.
• Examine your books and records — physical files, contracts, correspondence, notes, and any business documents, whatever their medium.
• Examine and copy digital data — computers, servers, laptops, phones and other devices; they can search email accounts, shared drives, and messaging applications, and take copies or forensic images.
• Take or request explanations — ask employees and managers for verbal or written explanations on specific points relating to the inspection.
• Take copies and samples — make copies of documents and data to take back to Ankara for analysis.

Digital data: assume nothing is "too personal" to look at

Modern raids are largely about digital evidence. Case handlers commonly image devices and review business email and instant-messaging apps (including chat used for work). A practical problem for foreign companies is the line between business and personal data on the same device or account. The Authority's digital-data guidance addresses how this is handled, but you should not assume a work chat thread, a personal phone used for business, or a deleted message is beyond reach. Treat anything created on or synced to a work device as potentially reviewable.

Your Rights and Obligations During the Raid

A dawn raid is not a search by armed police, and it is not open-ended. You have real rights — but they sit alongside a firm duty to cooperate. Getting this balance wrong in either direction is dangerous: stonewalling invites obstruction fines, while passivity can let avoidable harm into the file.

What you are entitled to

• See their identification and authorisation. Ask each case handler for ID and for the document showing the inspection has been authorised, and note the subject matter and scope stated in it. The inspection should stay within that scope.
• Call your lawyer. You may contact competition counsel and ask that they attend or join by phone. In practice you can request that substantive review wait a short, reasonable time for counsel to be reached — but this cannot be used to stall, and inspectors are not obliged to suspend the inspection indefinitely.
• Keep a record. You can keep your own copy of what is taken or imaged, note who was interviewed, and record any objection (for example over a privilege or scope question).

What you must do

• Allow entry and access. Refusing or delaying entry can itself be treated as obstruction.
• Preserve everything. Do not delete emails or files, wipe phones, shred documents, or tell anyone elsewhere in the group to do so — including after the inspectors arrive.
• Answer truthfully and within scope. Employees must not give false or misleading explanations. Where a question goes beyond someone's knowledge or the inspection's scope, it is legitimate to say so and to defer to counsel, but it is not legitimate to invent answers.

The Cost of Getting It Wrong: Obstruction and Misleading Information

Law No. 4054 treats interference with an inspection as a serious matter in its own right, separate from whatever the Authority is investigating. Obstructing or hindering an on-site inspection — refusing access, blocking the examination of records, or failing to cooperate — exposes the company to administrative fines. So does providing incorrect, incomplete, or misleading information in response to the Authority's requests.

Two points make this especially serious for foreign companies:

• It is independent of the merits. You can be fined for obstruction even if the underlying competition concern turns out to be unfounded. The obstruction is the violation.
• Spoliation is the worst version of it. Deleting data, resetting devices, or destroying documents once a raid is foreseeable or under way is the conduct the Authority pursues hardest, and it can also be read as evidence that there was something to hide.

For the broader penalty regime under Law No. 4054 — including the headline fines for cartels, abuse of dominance and gun-jumping in mergers — see our compliance guide for foreign companies. We never guarantee an outcome; the goal of getting the raid response right is to avoid making the position worse.

Your First-Hour Response Plan

The first hour of a dawn raid often shapes the entire case. A foreign company's Turkish office should be able to run the following without improvising. Build it into a short written protocol and rehearse it.

Minute 0–10: contain and call

1. Reception greets, does not resist. Whoever meets the inspectors confirms their IDs, accepts the authorisation document, and shows them to a meeting room. No one says "come back later."
2. Trigger the protocol. Reception immediately alerts the designated internal contact (often the country manager or legal/compliance lead) and IT.
3. Call competition counsel now. Make the call in the first minutes, not after the inspectors have started. Ask whether counsel can attend in person or join by phone, and ask the inspectors to allow a short, reasonable wait where possible.

Minute 10–30: stabilise

1. Stop all deletion — and say so out loud to staff. Instruct everyone, in writing if you can, not to delete emails, messages or files or to alter any device. Suspend any automatic data-deletion routines if IT can do so without destroying anything.
2. Assign shadows. Pair a company representative with each case handler to observe, take notes, and keep a parallel record of what is examined and copied.
3. Note scope and objections. Write down the stated subject matter and raise — calmly and on the record — any concern that a request strays outside it or touches genuinely privileged external legal advice.

Through the rest of the raid

1. Cooperate within scope; route questions sensibly. Let employees answer factual questions they actually know; direct anything legal, strategic, or beyond their knowledge to counsel.
2. Keep a copy of everything taken. Maintain your own list and, where possible, copies of imaged data and seized documents.
3. Do not discuss the substance internally on email/chat during the raid — those channels may be exactly what is being imaged.
4. Debrief with counsel immediately afterwards to assess exposure, preserve your record, and decide next steps (including whether any self-reporting or response is advisable).

How a Foreign Company Prepares Before a Raid Ever Happens

You cannot improvise a good raid response. The companies that come through these inspections best are the ones that prepared while nothing was wrong. Practical, low-cost groundwork includes:

• A written dawn-raid protocol in the local working language, naming who does what in the first hour and how to reach competition counsel within minutes.
• Reception and IT training — the people most likely to be there first need to know to admit the inspectors, accept the authorisation, preserve data, and escalate.
• A named external competition lawyer reachable on short notice, briefed on your business in advance so they are not starting cold.
• Communications hygiene — train commercial, sales, HR and procurement teams on what not to put in writing, and remember that in-house legal emails are not reliably privileged in Türkiye.
• A genuine compliance program tailored to your Turkish risk profile, so a raid finds a documented culture of compliance rather than a problem.

How Lexin Legal helps

Lexin Legal advises foreign companies operating in Türkiye on the full competition lifecycle — preparing and rehearsing dawn-raid protocols, training in-country teams, attending or joining inspections, and representing clients through the resulting Competition Board investigations and any settlement or leniency proceedings. If a raid is under way right now, the immediate priority is to get counsel engaged before any data is touched. To prepare in advance or to respond to an active inspection, see our Corporate & M&A practice or contact our Istanbul office.