As it is known, the principles of transfer of personal data abroad are regulated in Article 9 of KVKK. According to this regulation, in transfers to countries that are not counted among adequate countries, with a commitment to be signed between the person to whom the transfer will be made and the person who will make the transfer, permission must be obtained from the Board. However, adequate countries have not yet been announced by the Authority and it is likely that it will take time to identify safe countries, as we see from the "Criteria to be Based on Determining Countries with Sufficient Protection" published by the Authority. Since the adequate countries have not yet been announced, although people go for permission from the Board, there are also some difficulties in this process. Considering these difficulties, the Authority announced the Binding Corporate Rules institution and announced the method to facilitate data transfer for multinational group of companies. In this method announced, the process of obtaining permission from the Board will be carried out, as well. However, it should be noted that although a different alternative has been presented by the Authority, the question marks in transferring abroad have still not been eliminated, since the adequate countries have not been announced yet. Besides, as we will explain below, the announcement that the application of the Binding Corporate Rules will be finalized by the Authority in 1 year and this period will likely to be extended for 6-month periods shows that this process will not be short, as well.

New measures have been introduced by the Government due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

In this context, the updates published in the Official Gazette dated 16/04/2020 and numbered 31102 are as follows:

Fund Support

Employees who have not benefit from short-term employment and who have been granted unpaid leave within the framework of the temporary article added to the Unemployment Insurance Law numbered 4447 and the temporary tenth article of the Labor Law numbered 4857 and those who have not been able to benefit from unemployment allowance after 15/3/2020, The Fund will be provided with 39.24 Turkish Lira cash support every day, during the prohibition of termination determined under the temporary article 10 of the Labor Law No. 4857, provided that it does not receive any old age pensions.

You can find the related article below:

ARTICLE 7 - The following temporary article has been added to the Unemployment Insurance Law No. 4447, dated 25/8/1999.

"TEMPORARY ARTICLE 24 - Employment contracts were terminated within the scope of Article 51 after 15/3/2020 with the employees who had a work permit at the date of entry into force of this article, and who could not benefit from the short-time work allowance pursuant to the temporary article 10 of the Law No. 4857. According to the other provisions of the Law, the employees who cannot benefit from the unemployment allowance, as long as they do not have a termination pension from any social security institution and do not exceed the period to be terminated in the temporary 10th article of the Law numbered 4857, until the period of their unpaid leave, 39 24 Turkish Lira cash fee support is provided. No deduction can be made from payments made, except stamp tax.

Covid-19 outbreak has been announced as a pandemic on 11 March 2020 by the World Health Organization, as it affected the globe and our country negatively. Within this scope, several decisions were taken in order to prevent aggrievements.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs’ letter no. 2612, published on 03.04.2020, concludes that in order to prevent associations from aggrievements with submission process of declarations and notifications, related submission periods are to be extended until 1 August 2020, instead of the end of April.

Regarding the force majeure situation announced by Tax Procedural Law General Communiqué No. 518; Internal Circular of Implementation No. 2020/3 has been published in regard to procedures and principles to determine whether the applications are within the scope of force majeure and to form commissions.

• Taxpayers who have income tax liability of commercial, agricultural and professional perspective,
• Taxpayers who are directly affected by Corona virus outbreak and operating within the sectors of; retail including malls, health services, furniture production, iron, steel and metal industry, mining and quarrying, building construction services, industrial kitchen production, automotive production and trade, part and accessory production for automotive industry, vehicle rental, logistics and transport including storage activities, artistic services such as cinemas and theatres, printing services including books, newspapers, magazines and similar printed products’ publishing activities, tour operators and travel agencies including accommodation activities, food and beverage services including restaurants and cafes, textile and garment production and organization services including public relations;
• Taxpayers whose activities have been temporarily suspended as per the precautions taken by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, due to their main field of activities;