Concerted Action in Labour Markets and Competition Law

March 2026 | Başaran Law Firm

I. Introduction

Competition authorities have long regulated prices, markets, and mergers. Over the past several years, however, a new area has come onto their radar: agreements between employers that restrict employee mobility, and HR information sharing. In Turkey, the Competition Board has been opening successive investigations and issuing decisions in this field since 2022; on 29 January 2026, a sweeping investigation was launched targeting the banking and fintech sectors.

This article examines the legal framework for competition law violations in labour markets, the Turkish Competition Board's enforcement track record, and the practical compliance steps available to companies.

II. The Practice Everyone Does but Nobody Questions

A familiar scene in Turkish business: the same HR directors meet at sector conferences, discuss pay-rise rates, compare bonus structures, and agree not to approach each other's key employees. These practices are not grounded in written protocols — they are called "gentlemen's agreements" and accepted as the ordinary operation of the sector. The same is true in banking, technology, healthcare, and education alike.

Yet the Competition Board's resolve in the labour market has taken on a new dimension: 13 banks, 4 insurance companies, and 9 fintech firms — 26 undertakings in total, including Garanti BBVA, İşbank, Yapı Kredi, and HSBC — were simultaneously served with investigations on 29 January 2026. It is now unavoidable that this development places the informal arrangements long prevalent in the sector squarely at the centre of legal risk assessment.

III. The Legal Framework: The 2024 Guidelines Put the Rules in Writing

The Guidelines on Competition Violations in Labour Markets published by the Competition Board in November 2024 (Decision No. 24-49/1087-RM(4)) formalised what the sector has long known in practice: Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition applies in full to input markets — the labour markets where workers meet employers — just as it does to output markets.

The Guidelines define three fundamental categories of infringement:

Wage-fixing agreements: Jointly determining wages, pay-rise rates, fringe benefits, severance payments, or working conditions. The Board treats such agreements as equivalent to a price-fixing cartel and characterises them as object infringements; establishing the existence of the agreement or concerted practice is sufficient — no actual effect on competition need be demonstrated.
No-poach agreements: Undertakings agreeing — whether orally, in writing, or by implied understanding — not to hire or make offers to each other's current or former employees. The Guidelines assess these under the same framework as market-sharing cartels.
Exchange of competitively sensitive information: Sharing wage data, pay-rise projections, headcount plans, or bonus structures — even when channelled through a third-party intermediary such as a sector association, independent research firm, or digital platform — may constitute a standalone infringement of Article 4.

All three categories fall within Article 4 of Law No. 4054. Wage-fixing and no-poach agreements are as a rule ineligible for the exemption regime under Article 5 of the Law.

IV. Familiar Territory: The Turkish Competition Board's Track Record

The Guidelines did not emerge from a vacuum. The Board's enforcement record in labour markets has been expanding systematically since the early 2020s.

The landmark first step was the 2022 Private Hospitals decision (22-10/152-62): private healthcare institutions in Samsun and Bursa, together with a sector association, were fined for restricting competition in the labour market and exchanging competitively sensitive information. The decision made clear that no written contract is required to establish an infringement — oral agreements or concerted practices suffice.

The scope widened in the 2023 decision (23-34/649-218): 16 undertakings including LC Waikiki, Türk Telekom, FLO, TAB Gıda, Çiçeksepeti, and Vodafone were fined, while 11 undertakings concluded the investigation through settlement. The fact that undertakings active in retail, technology, telecommunications, and food — entirely different output markets — were brought under the same investigation demonstrated the breadth of the Board's interpretation of "competitor in the labour market."

The banking investigation is the latest link in this chain, but is markedly larger than its predecessors in both scope and sectoral weight.

V. The Hidden Risk: Benchmarking and Information Exchange

Awareness of the legal risk posed by no-poach agreements may be growing. The real surprise in the Guidelines, however, lies elsewhere: the exchange of competitively sensitive HR information.

Sharing wage data, pay-rise projections, benefits structures, or headcount plans between competing undertakings — whether directly or through a sector association or independent research firm — can in itself constitute an infringement of Article 4. The Guidelines are explicit: routing information through an intermediary channel does not eliminate the infringement risk.

The safe harbour is narrow. All five conditions set out in the Guidelines must be satisfied simultaneously: the process must be managed by an independent third party; data sources must be unidentifiable at the individual level; the information must relate to at least three months in the past; data must be collected from at least ten participants; and no single participant's weight in the total dataset may exceed twenty-five percent.

In practice, this means: a sector association's annual pay survey falls outside the safe harbour if it contains data from a small number of members, if sources are identifiable, or if it includes current or forward-looking data. Direct bilateral discussions on current or prospective wages and pay-rise rates carry high risk: such exchanges may be characterised as object infringements, with no analysis of market effects required.

VI. A Global Trend: Turkey Is Not Alone

These enforcement trends are not unique to Turkey. Labour markets have become one of the most active areas of global competition law enforcement over the past decade.

In the United States, the updated Antitrust Guidelines for Business Activities Affecting Workers published by the DOJ and FTC in January 2025 confirmed that wage-fixing and no-poach agreements may be subject to criminal prosecution. In the European Union, the European Commission's Delivery Hero and Glovo decision constituted both the first EU labour market competition investigation and the first no-poach enforcement action in EU history. The Commission found that the two companies had agreed not to hire each other's workers. EU Competition Commissioner Ribera emphasised in connection with that decision that competition rules exist not only to protect prices but also to safeguard a fair labour market. The Competition Board's 2024 Guidelines and the investigations that followed are the direct Turkish counterpart of this global convergence.

VII. What Does Compliance Mean?

The banking investigation is a strong signal that financial services and fintech companies must urgently revisit their HR management practices within the framework of their Competition Compliance Programs. Concrete steps cover the following areas:

Review existing contracts and practices: Identify and remove clauses that restrict employee mobility in employment agreements, headhunter arrangements, and sectoral cooperation documents.
Audit benchmarking programs: Subject sectoral wage surveys to a legal filter to determine whether they meet the five conditions in the Guidelines; restructure any arrangements that carry risk.
Control sector association participation: Scrutinise what data is shared — and how — at association meetings. Even informal "between sessions" wage conversations that are not formal agenda items may give rise to infringement.
Raise senior management awareness: C-level executives and HR directors must internalise that oral discussions conducted under the guise of "gentlemen's agreements" constitute violations of Law No. 4054, and that WhatsApp messages and emails will be used as direct evidence in any dawn raid.
Assess ancillary restraints: No-poach clauses in M&A or joint venture agreements must be carefully tested to determine whether they satisfy the conditions of direct connection, necessity, and proportionality.

VIII. Conclusion: The Board Is Executing a Programme

The 29 January 2026 banking investigation is not an isolated action. Private hospitals, IT and e-commerce, private schools, and now banking and fintech: the Competition Board is scanning labour markets with a systematic sector-by-sector radar. The private school pricing investigation opened on the same day is part of the same pattern — when the Board enters a sector, it investigates it from every angle.

Administrative fines under Law No. 4054 can reach up to ten percent of an undertaking's annual gross turnover. All sectors in which competing undertakings draw on the same talent pool — healthcare, logistics, technology, retail — are potential targets of this scan. Labour markets are no longer competition law's blind spot; they are its most active front.

*This newsletter is prepared solely for informational purposes and does not constitute any legal advice for a specific case or client.