The right to be forgotten in the context of private law

The right to be forgotten, is a right that ensures that individual's personal data regarding their private life to be deleted from public memory due to the passage of time, it is also a right that provides the individual with control over on their personal data. Today, with the speed of development of the Internet and the increase in the number of uses all over the world, human history has made a rapid transition to the Internet age, and with it, the sharing of information and access to information has become quite easy compared to the past. In addition to the fact that people use only the content of major content providers on the Internet, their becoming a content producer has enabled the flow of information to be much faster and the information to be circulated by more than one source. Along with all this, nearly most of the people use the Internet for one reason or another and, as a matter of fact, they start producing content, which causes the boundaries of their personal lives to narrow significantly. Considering that every useful thing can have a drawback, it should be taken into account that the Internet can make our lives easier as well as make them difficult. In this context, the right to be forgotten appears as a right that become frequently needed lately and the studies on it are rapidly increasing. Within the scope of this study, firstly, the definition of the right to be forgotten, its elements, legal nature and its relationship with other rights were emphasized, in the second part, the place of the right to be forgotten in foreign legal systems was tried to be revealed, and in the third part, the place of the right to be forgotten in Turkish law, the application opportunities provided regarding the right to be forgotten and the court decisions were examined.