Competition Council of Turkic States to be established

The Organization of Turkic States was founded under the Nakhichevan Agreement dated 3 October 2009 as a platform for political, economic, and cultural cooperation in Central Asia, Caucasus, Anatolia, and Central Europe. The organization’s members include Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan as well as Hungary, Turkmenistan, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus as observers.

The announcement reveals that the primary objective of the Council is to enable stronger relations and more collaboration between member states. In order to achieve its objective and to boost the competition culture in the region, the Council will create a platform for a more dynamic information flow to easily identify and resolve contemporary competition law issues. Some of the upcoming initiatives will also involve joint research studies, business visits as well as training activities.

The Turkish Competition Authority, which leads the initiative, reported that they expect the establishment of the Competition Council of Turkic States to be part of the final declaration to be published following the Summit of the Heads of Organization of Turkic States, scheduled for 23 November 2023 in Astana Kazakhstan.

As the Council is in developing stage, it would be premature to comment on whether it might eventually evolve into an intergovernmental or regional enforcement authority. However, it is worth noting that this announcement was released after the EU Commission’s Press Release on 17 October 2023 regarding the coordinated dawn raids involving the EU Commission, the Turkish Competition Authority and the UK Competition and Markets Authority in the construction chemicals sector. The timings of these separate announcements suggest that the Turkish Competition Authority is actively engaged in and, when necessary, taking a lead in internationalizing competition law.

This underscores the importance of maintaining a competitive law framework and jurisprudence with an international perspective in the practice of Turkish competition law.