On-Site Inspection (Dawn Raid) Preparation Guide

What Is an On-Site Inspection?

An on-site inspection is the examination by case handlers appointed by the Turkish Competition Board of a company’s books, documents and electronic data at its premises, the copying of that material and requests for oral or written explanations from employees. Its legal basis is Article 15 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition. Inspections usually start unannounced, early in the morning, which is why they are commonly called “dawn raids”.

An amendment made by Law No. 7246 in 2020 expressly authorised case handlers to examine and take copies of all data kept in physical and electronic form and in information systems. In the same year the Board published its Guidelines on the Examination of Digital Data during On-site Inspections. Under the Guidelines, servers, computers, phones, external storage devices, backups and cloud services all fall within the scope of an inspection.

The constitutionality of on-site inspections carried out without a court order is debated. In 2023 the Constitutional Court found, in an individual application, that such an inspection had violated the inviolability of the domicile, but the Board continues its practice. The right approach in practice is not to obstruct the inspection but to have objections recorded in the inspection report.

Before an Inspection: Preparation

In an on-site inspection, the biggest risk for a company is often not the competition infringement itself but the mistakes made during the inspection. Most of these mistakes can be prevented with preparation:

• Response team: Decide who in legal, IT and management will be informed, who your external counsel is and who will step in if they cannot be reached. Keep phone numbers up to date.
• Reception instructions: Instruct reception and security staff in writing to let case handlers in without delay, to be courteous and to notify the team immediately.
• IT: Decide in advance who is authorised to give case handlers access to servers, the e-mail system and the devices of employees working outside the office. Failing to provide technical support may in itself be an infringement.
• Device and messaging policy: Determine which devices and applications may be used for business communications. Personal phones used for work and disappearing messages are the most frequent sources of problems during inspections.
• Training and mock dawn raids: Give short training to high-risk departments such as sales and procurement. The best way to see whether your preparation actually works is an unannounced mock dawn raid.

Inspection Day: The First Minutes

1. Let the case handlers in. Do not make them wait for your lawyer. The inspection may start without waiting for counsel, and keeping case handlers waiting may be treated as hindering the inspection.
2. Read the authorisation document. Case handlers present an authorisation document stating the subject matter and purpose of the inspection. Ask for a copy and note which market and conduct the inspection concerns. You need this to monitor whether the case handlers stay within that scope.
3. Call your lawyer and internal team. Call counsel as the inspection begins and gather the internal team designated in advance.
4. Announce a no-deletion instruction. Make it clear that, from the moment employees are informed that the inspection has started, no data may be deleted, no device may be switched off and no one may message others about the inspection.
5. Assign a shadow to each case handler. The shadow notes the documents the case handler reviews and copies.

During the Inspection

• Digital review: Case handlers search using keywords and copy the data they consider relevant. Under the Guidelines, copies are made in two sets and one is left with the company. Keep your own list of the data copied.
• Personal phones: Case handlers may carry out a quick review of a personal phone to determine whether it contains business data. Refusing this is in itself grounds for a fine. Devices found to be used solely for personal purposes are not examined.
• Correspondence with lawyers: Correspondence with an independent lawyer made in the exercise of the right of defence is protected. This protection does not apply automatically, however; request protection for the relevant documents during the inspection and explain why.
• Oral questions: Case handlers may ask employees for explanations. Employees should not guess on matters they do not know; where necessary, they should say that the information will be provided later in writing. Providing false or misleading information is also fined separately.

What You Must Never Do

• Deleting data: Any data deleted after the inspection has started is an infringement. The Board imposes fines even where the deleted content is personal or is recovered by technical means. In 2025 a retail company was fined TRY 1.3 billion because an employee deleted messages during an inspection.
• Refusing or delaying access: Refusing access to a room, a cabinet, a computer or a phone, or “forgetting” a password, amounts to obstructing the inspection.
• Relying on a disappearing-messages defence: The Authority can determine technically whether messages were deleted manually or by a disappearing-messages feature.
• Alerting third parties: Informing competitors, dealers or a trade association about the inspection creates a separate risk of infringement.

After the Inspection

The inspection ends with a report. Read the report carefully before signing it and record any findings you disagree with and your objections as annotations. Check that you have received the copy set left with the company and that it matches your own list.

Then review the copied documents with your lawyer and prepare for a possible investigation. If the inspection concerns a suspected cartel, quickly assess whether a leniency application would benefit the company; timing is decisive in the leniency programme. Manage communications with employees and, where necessary, with business partners and the press through a single channel.

Sanctions

Obstructing or hindering an on-site inspection is fined regardless of whether a competition infringement is found. The company is fined five per thousand of its annual gross revenue. After the period granted by the Board expires, a periodic fine of five per ten thousand of gross revenue may also be imposed for each day the inspection is obstructed. The Board issued more than 50 decisions imposing fines on this ground in 2023 and 2024.