Unfair competition arising from advertisements emphasizing the sale of certain selected goods, business products or activities below the supply price

Within the free market economy, undertakings compete with other undertakings in order to enter the market, protect their market presence and achieve profit goals. The competition of enterprises with infinite supply capacity to obtain the most benefit from the total market share constitutes the economic competition. This competition is not an unlimited competition. Within the legal framework, certain restrictions have been introduced to protect new participants, existing undertakings, customers and thus public interests wishing to participate in the free market economy. These limitations aim to protect the existence of an honest and unspoiled competitive environment by enabling the creation, operation and maintenance of a competitive market. The existence of an honest and unspoiled competition environment which is tried to be protected by unfair competition provisions aims to protect the interests of not only its competitors, but also all the participants of the market. Therefore, since the provisions of unfair competition appeal to a wider audience, unfair competition situations affecting customers and consumers are included in the Turkish Commercial Code. It is also desirable to protect the interests of both competitors and customers in the event of unfair competition by selling selected products, business products or activities below the procurement price, emphasizing these presentations in their advertisements and thereby misleading their customers about the ability of them or their competitors. This unfair competition into doctrine is called outcrop hunting or trap price application. As a matter of fact, in case of unfair competition, the undertaking uses some of the goods it chooses as a trap and contradicts the honesty rule and misleads its customers. This misconduct has been regulated among the unfair competition cases which are deemed special in the Turkish Commercial Code since it causes the disruption of the competition environment in contradiction with the rule of honesty in the free market economy. For this reason, in this study, firstly the general characteristics of unfair competition, the conditions and legal quality of trap price application within the scope of Turkish Commercial Code, the place of trap price application in advertising law, the cases that can be opened in case of trap price application and temporary legal protection methods will be examined. Keywords: Trap Price Application, Outcrop, Supply Price, Customer, Diversion, Unfair Competition, Legal Responsibility