The Door Opens to Judicial Review of Competition Board Investigations Concluded Through Settlement
A recently finalized decision of the Council of State now enables undertakings that settle in investigations conducted by the Turkish Competition Board to challenge, before the administrative courts, inequalities that arise after the settlement.
Under the established practice of the administrative courts, actions challenging settlement decisions are dismissed at the preliminary examination stage without consideration of the merits, based on the statutory bar on challenging settlement decisions under Article 43 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition. This practice has, at times, prevented settling undertakings from challenging unequal treatment arising to their detriment when compared with undertakings that declined settlement and remained subject to the investigation until its conclusion.
The Council of State precedent addressing this issue became final on September 24, 2026. It established that Competition Board decisions rejecting applications submitted under Article 10 of the Administrative Judicial Procedure Law (İYUK) after the conclusion of an investigation, with a view to resolving inconsistencies between decisions resulting from the operation of the settlement mechanism, are subject to administrative judicial review. Accordingly, where a settlement decision and the final decision concluding the remainder of the same investigation contain inconsistencies and discrepancies that violate the principle of equality, the settling undertaking may apply to the Competition Board under Article 10 of İYUK to remedy that unequal treatment. An express or tacit rejection of such an application may, in turn, be reviewed by the administrative courts.
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