2022 has been an important year with significant developments for advertising law practice in Turkey. During this year, new regulations have been enacted and the Advertisement Board rendered prominent guiding decisions regarding commercial advertisements and unfair commercial practices.
According to publicly available statistics, the Advertisement Board reviewed 1101 complaints in the first half of 2022, 949 of which were found contrary to the law and issued cease orders with respect to 721 of them. The Board imposed monetary sanctions against 228 advertisements in the amount of 22.788.684 TRY in total. Similarly, the Advertisement Board reviewed 82 discount sales advertisements and imposed administrative fines in the amount of 4.186.000 TRY in total. Due to the increasing use of digital platforms, the increase in the advertisements made by social media influencers has also drawn attention. Accordingly, the Advertisement Board reviewed 25 complaints regarding advertisements made by social media influencers in the first six months of 2022 and imposed various sanctions with respect to 22 advertisements found to be in violation1.
In 2022, new legislations have been enacted to make the Advertisement Board's surveillance more effective, and the Advertisement Board has been explicitly authorized to issue guidelines to elaborate on existing rules and principles protecting consumers against certain commercial advertisements and unfair commercial practices.
In this respect, the Regulation on Commercial Advertising and Unfair Commercial Practices ("Advertising Regulation") was amended to include new measures and rules to regulate advertisements containing misleading price information and to protect consumers against unfair commercial practices. Following this, The Advertisement Board published Guideline on Advertisements Containing Price Information and Discount Sales Advertisements.
On the other hand, the Advertisement Board has been authorized to block access to online broadcasts or contents which are found to violate the advertising rules in addition to its existing sanction powers under Consumer Protection Law No. 6502. Finally, at the end of 2022, the Guideline on Advertisements Containing Environmental Claims was published.
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