Comparative advertising in Turkish and European Union Law

One of the most effective commercial activities to support sales amounts is comparative advertising. That new and progressing presentation method has started nearly a hundred years ago for the first time. In such kind of advertising, advertiser shows not only his products, but also competitor?s products in presentation. Nevertheless he features his products. Comparative advertising had been regarded as a kind of unfair competition for long years by doctrine and courts. But the growing conscious especially on consumer protection in USA and EU Countries has changed minds and thoughts about comparative advertising. To date, because of different legislation, the courts of several countries have presented many different decisions on comparative advertising. Today advertisings exceed the national borders and affect the people of other countries. So the countries which had strict economic relations with each other?s needed common rules against misleading and unfair comparative advertisements (like Directive of EC 1984/450). In Turkey, till the article 16 of the act on Consumer Protection no. 4077 had never been any legislation about comparative advertisings which was added in 2003. But it has limited scope of application which is only in the frame of consumer protection. After long negotiations and preparations of new TTK (Turkish Commercial Code no 6102) has been enacted by TBMM (Turkish Parliament) in 2011 and got into effect in 2012. For the first time the subject of comparative advertising related to commercial activities has been hold by the article 55/1 (a) (5) of TTK which is substantiality convenient to acquis communautaire. Especially before of the acceptance of no 6102 TTK, Yargıtay (Turkish Cassation Court) had given different decisions which were sometime good and sometime contradicted to basic rules of unfair competition related to comparative advertisings. Submitting my thesis, I wanted to make a contribution to Turkish Jurisprudence even it is so small.The first part of Thesis has been comprised of the section of general definitions and terminology of advertisements including comparative advertisements and uses and harms of comparative advertisements. The second part has included the Turkish legislation on comparative advertisings and the control mechanisms and methods thereof. The third and last part has been constituted only with the EC legislation and practises of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). In conclusion section, both (Turkish and EC) legislations and systems has been compared, evaluated, criticized the Turkish law and submitted a bundle of suggestions requiring new steps on Turkish legislation.Key Words:Advertising, Comparative Advertising, Keyword Advertising, Deceptive (misleading) Advertising, Unfair Advantage of Reputation of a Competitor or Distinguishing Trade Mark, Likelihood of Confusion