KVKK (Kişisel Verilerin Korunması Kanunu) — Law No. 6698 — is Türkiye’s personal data protection regime, enacted on April 7, 2016. The law is administered by the Personal Data Protection Authority (Kişisel Verileri Koruma Kurumu — KVKK) through its decision-making body, the Personal Data Protection Board (Kurul). KVKK is structurally aligned with the European Union’s GDPR, though with material differences in cross-border transfer, lawful-basis architecture, and administrative-fine framework.
The law applies to any natural or legal person — domestic or foreign — that processes personal data of individuals located in Türkiye, regardless of where the controller is established. Companies operating SaaS platforms, mobile applications, e-commerce sites, advertising networks, or any service that receives user data from Türkiye fall within its scope.
Core compliance obligations include: (i) registration of data-processing activities with VERBİS (the controller registry, mandatory for organizations exceeding statutory thresholds); (ii) lawful basis identification under Article 5 (explicit consent or one of seven enumerated bases); (iii) transparent privacy notices satisfying Article 10 disclosure requirements; (iv) appointment of a data protection officer where required; (v) implementation of technical and administrative security measures proportionate to processing risk; (vi) breach notification within 72 hours to the Board and affected data subjects; and (vii) cross-border transfer compliance under Article 9 (substantially rewritten by Law No. 7499 in 2024 to align with GDPR’s SCC/BCR framework).
The Board issues binding decisions through three channels: Kurul Kararları (full decisions), Karar Özetleri (decision summaries), and İlke Kararları (principle decisions of general application). Administrative fines can reach significant amounts — recent decisions have imposed fines exceeding TRY 30 million on single controllers — and the Board has issued material decisions on cookie consent (2022), data breach reporting standards (2024), advertising-driven SMS messaging, biometric-data processing, and employee monitoring.
Vircon Legal advises Turkish and international clients on full-stack KVKK compliance: regulatory mapping, VERBİS registration, privacy notice architecture, data-processing agreement (DPA) negotiation, breach response protocols, cross-border transfer routing, and Board investigation defense. We also maintain a live KVKK Tracker indexing 100+ Board decisions and principle rulings.