Oppressive provisions in non-competition agreements

Non-competition agreements, which are a restriction of the constitutional right of freedom to contract and work, are agreements in which the employee, who is in possession of special secrets, customer environment or product formula information belonging to the enterprise due to the employment contract, undertakes to refrain from opening a business on his own account, working in a competitor's business or competing in any way against the employer after the termination of the employment relationship with the employer. The legislator has conditioned the validity of non-competition agreements, which are a limitation of a constitutional freedom, on a number of form and content requirements. In the doctrine, cases where the economic freedom of the employee is contentwise excessively restricted, are referred to as oppressive agreements. In our thesis, the concept of freedom of contract will be analyzed first, and then non- competition agreements, which limit the concept of freedom of contract. Finally, the oppressing nature of non-competition agreements will be analyzed and results of the oppressive contracts will be examined.