Constitutional bases of competition law and legal nature of the administrative prohibition and sanctions of Turkish competition act

This paper is intended to give a general overview of foundation andevaluation of Turkish Competition Authority and Competition Law numbered4054 with a special emphasis on its constitutional basis. Article 167 of TurkishConstitution gives State both the responsibility and duty of acting againstcartels and monopolies in order to maintain free competition. Accordinglycompetition law numbered 4054 was codified and Turkish CompetitionAuthority was established as an independent administrative agency. Thedecisions of Turkish Competition Authority, which is an official administrativebody, are subject to administrative judicial review mechanism in accordancewith the Article 125 of the Turkish Constitution.Competition in a market is restricted either by market behaviors ofundertakings or by measures of the State acting as a public authority. Theformer is controlled by Competition Law numbered 4054 whereas the latter isout of scope of it. While this is current situation, The Law makes no distinctionbetween public or private undertakings; this makes it a must to set clear andeasy undertaking criteria for the behaviors of the State who is naturallyresponsible for the second type of restrictions.Competition Law numbered 4054 imposes Council of State as thejuridical supervision authority. Accordingly it has a vital importance to studyand clarify the issue of judicial review of the decisions of the TurkishCompetition Authority in order to make the Turkish Competition Law to set onstrong principles. It is possible that the conceptual problems arising from theword form of the Competition Law numbered 4054 and the difficulties rootedin the structure of the Law of Administrative Procedures of Trials could bothdiminish the positive effects of the judicial review mechanism. Thus, it is acrucial necessity to examine the judicial of the decisions of the TurkishCompetition Authority in order to improve the ground for reaching solutionsfort he existing and possible future problems.