Marketplace intermediary liability in Turkey: three regimes to read together
By Asım Serdar Yılmaz · Published · Last updated · 2 min read
For years I ran legal and regulatory work for online marketplaces in Turkey, and one question came up more than any other, in a form that sounds far simpler than it is: when a third party sells something on our platform, what are we on the hook for? No single statute holds the answer. Three regimes provide a useful starting map rather than an exhaustive one, because product-specific rules, payments, advertising, data protection and other frameworks may add further layers, and the platform’s role and conduct still have to be mapped in each.
The first is the E-Commerce Law, No. 6563, whose 2022 amendments introduced tiered obligations for electronic commerce intermediary service providers, with additional duties arriving at higher statutory thresholds. The second is the consumer framework under Law No. 6502 and the Distance Contracts Regulation, which allocates duties by role: it does not turn every seller or supplier duty automatically into a platform duty, and it does not leave an intermediary service provider with none either. Pre-contract information, order, payment, refund and complaint processes should be mapped to the function each actor actually performs. The third is the internet content regime under Law No. 5651, where the Constitutional Court annulled Article 9 in its 11 October 2023 decision and the annulment took effect in October 2024. That change is one more reason a platform needs a current, combined map rather than a static reading of one statute.
The volume behind these questions is not small. The Ministry of Trade reported total e-commerce volume in Turkey at 3 trillion lira in 2024, up 61.7 percent on the year (ticaret.gov.tr). More sellers and more listings mean more moments where all three regimes land on a single transaction at once.
The practical work is mapping the applicable layers and roles together. One listing, or one complaint, can raise duties under more than one regime at the same time: a takedown question, a consumer remedy and a record-keeping obligation, side by side. The gaps I have seen were rarely inside the regime someone had read carefully; they sat in the overlap, which is how a process that looks compliant still ends up with one. What closes it is a dull artifact, a current duty map kept per regime and per role, with each duty tied to an owner and a legal basis.
Sources
- Law No. 6563 on the Regulation of Electronic Commerce, Official Gazette 5 November 2014, No. 29166, as amended in 2022
- Ticaret Bakanlığı, Türkiye’de E-Ticaretin Görünümü Raporu (2025)
- Ministry of Trade, Law No. 6502 and implementing regulations, including the Distance Contracts Regulation
- Constitutional Court of Türkiye, annulment of Article 9 of Law No. 5651, 11 October 2023
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