The preemption right and its limitations

The preemption right is a formative right that provides the right-holder with an authority to acquire the respected property associated with the right in preference to third parties in case of sale of the property. There are two different types of preemption right: the rights arisen from law and contracts. The contractual preemption rights can be established on a voluntary basis through contracts or wills whereas the statutory preemption rights have been prescribed in various laws, particularly the Turkish Civil Code numbered 4721. The preemption rights shall be exercised by filing a lawsuit in case of sale of the respected propriety, which is the subject of the right, or transactions equivalent to the sale. The preemption rights will be void three months after the notification of the respective transaction to the right-holder or in any case two years after the transaction. The sales or the equivalent transactions to the sale, which allow exercising the preemption rights, are entitled "preemptive events." In the law, the events which can be accepted as a preemptive event are not limited, not numerus clauses. Accordingly, it is controversial whether transactions such as preliminary purchase contracts, purchase contracts, and exchange agreements can be counted as a preemptive event. Additionally, based on the precedents of the Turkish Court of Cassation, it has been accepted that the purchase contracts made in cases where there is a de facto partition in the joint ownership and the purchase contracts made to the spouse and relatives cannot be considered as a preemptive event, and thus, the preemption rights cannot be exercised in these cases. In our study, firstly, the preemption rights were emphasized, and then the following subjects have been evaluated: the occurrence of preemptive events -which is one of the conditions for the exercise of the preemption right-, the exercise of the preemption rights through filing a lawsuit and periods of prescription for the preemption rights. In the last part of our study, the transactions in which the preemption rights cannot be exercised are examined in detail. Keywords: The preemption right, the rights arisen from law, the rights arisen from contracts, exercising of preemption rights, the transactions in which the preemption rights cannot be exercised.