New rules in e-commerce in Turkey
Regulation on Electronic Commerce Intermediary Service Providers and Electronic Commerce Service Providers is published. In addition to the obligations of electronic commerce service providers (ECSPs) to provide information and the obligations of electronic commerce intermediary service providers (ECISPs) to provide information and verification, the Regulation also sets out the scope of unlawful content and unfair commercial practices, complaint application procedure of infringement of intellectual and industrial property rights, minimum elements of the intermediary agreement, establishment of an internal operating facility, data usage and sharing rules, regulatory compliance report and obligations regarding payment services.
ECISPs were already obliged to verify the identifying information of the ECSPs through the documents provided by the ECSP itself or through the publicly available electronic systems of the relevant institutions. However, with the new changes, to the extent that this verification is not possible, the ECISPs will not be able to work with the relevant ECSP. In addition, the obligation to ensure that this information is up to date has also been imposed on ECISPs. This obligation needs to be fulfilled until January 1, 2024 for ECISPs providing intermediary services before January 1, 2023.
ECISPs are also obliged to designate at least one natural or legal person as a contact point to enable public institutions and organizations to communicate directly with them.
The Regulation also introduces rules on the content of the transaction guide that must be prepared by ECIPs and the ECSPs that conduct sale activity through its own electronic environment, as well as regulations on ordering and order confirmation.
Although the principle that ECISPs will not be liable for unlawful content is maintained, it is regulated that if the ECISP is aware that the content offered by the ECSP is unlawful, it must remove this content from publication within 48 hours at the latest and notify the ECSP and the relevant public institutions and organizations of the unlawfulness with reasoning. In addition, it is ruled that the regulatory compliance report will be prepared as a result of the review that the medium, large and very large-scale ECISPs will conduct every year in order to determine the issues contrary to the Law on the Regulation of Electronic Commerce, the Law on the Protection of Personal Data, the Industrial Property Law and their secondary legislation regarding the content provided by the ECISP.
As for unfair commercial practices in electronic commerce, new examples have been added to the examples given in the Law on the Regulation of Electronic Commerce.
The complaint application for violation of intellectual and industrial property rights will be made to ECISP via internal communication system, notary public or registered electronic mail, again including the issues specified in the Regulation. Upon receiving the applications containing the matters specified in the Regulation, ECISP is required to remove the product subject to the complaint from publication within 48 hours and notify the ETHS and the rightholder. ECSP will be able to object to the complaint as specified in the Regulation. Internal communication system needs to be established until July 7, 2023 and transactions to be carried out through the internal communication system can be carried out by means such as electronic mail until July 7, 2023.
The Regulation also sets out the minimum content of the intermediation agreement to be signed between the ECISP and the ECSP. Until January 6, 2023, the relevant provisions of existing intermediation agreements that are not harmonized with the Regulation will be deemed invalid.
