The "Pandemic Isolation Tracking Project", which aims to observe the movements of quarantined people and regions, has been announced by the Presidency Of The Republic Of Türkiye; in the announcement, it is stated that the aim of the project is to make analysis to prevent further spread of the epidemic.

In the project, which will be carried out in cooperation with the Ministry of Health, Information Technologies and Communications Authority and all GSM operators, it has been realized that the location information of the individuals will be monitored by GSM operators, which may violate personal data security and privacy.

By publishing an announcement regarding the subject on 09.04.2020, the Personal Data Protection Authority has declared that the processing of the location data by the authorized institutions and organizations in order to prevent further spread of the pandemic will be considered under the exception of the Article 28 of KVKK, as the epidemic disease threatens public safety and public order; in other words, that the Law shall not be applied for this activity.

As you know, the Government has started to implement many measures due to the coronavirus epidemic.

In this context, according to the General Communiqué of the Tax Procedure Law published in the repeated Official Gazette numbered 31078 and dated 24/03/2020, the SSI premiums have been postponed for the below workplaces which are deemed to be a force majeure between 01/04/2020 and 30/06/2020 (including these dates):

Taxpayers with income tax liability in terms of commercial, agricultural and professional earnings.

Directly affected by the corona virus outbreak, and by its core business;

• Retail, including shopping malls,
• Health Service,
• Furniture manufacturing,
• Iron, steel and metal industry,
• Mining and quarrying,
• Building construction services,
• Industrial kitchen manufacture,
• Manufacturing of parts and accessories for automotive manufacturing and trade and automotive industry,
• Rent a car,
• Logistics and transportation, including storage activities,
• Artistic services such as cinema and theater,
• Publishing activities of books, newspapers, magazines and similar printed products, including printing,
• Accommodation activities including tour operators and travel agencies,
• Food and beverage services including restaurant, café,
• Textile and apparel manufacturing and trading,
• Taxpayers operating in the event and organization services sectors, including public relations,
• Belonging to the taxpayers operating in the sectors where the workplaces are decided to be temporarily suspended within the scope of the measures taken by the Ministry of Interior in terms of their main field of activity,

With the Communiqué published in the 31089 numbered Official Gazette on 04/04/2020; the application of Withholding and Premium Service Declaration in the entire Türkiye has been postponed to 01.07.2020.

In addition, new pilot cities have been added and the application dates have been determined as below:

1. For the tax residents in Kırşehir, the application was started to be executed on 01/06/2017
2. For the tax residents in Amasya, Bartın and Çankırı; the application was started to be executed on 01/01/2018
3. For the tax residents in Bursa, Eskişehir and Konya; the application was started to be executed on 01/01/2020 (Except the banks within the scope of Income Tax communique with No: 281)
4. The application for entire Türkiye will be effective as of 01/07/2020 with the declaration period of July / 2020.

Please also find below the important points to consider:

Due to the Covid-19 Coronavirus epidemic, which is on the agenda of the whole world, many companies switched to remote working. However, some companies could not start working remotely, from homes due to lack of technical infrastructure, while some companies switched to remote working in means of working from home without being aware of the systems that they had to set up in their technical systems and without taking the necessary precautions.

Among the guideline of frequently asked questions published by Turkish Personal Data Protection Authority (KVKK) and ICO on the subject, the question "What kind of security measures should be taken to work from home?" has been answered stating that data protection is not a barrier to working from home and that usual security measures should be applied during working remotely, as well.

In the Guidelines for Safe ‘Remote Work’ published by the National Cyber Incidents Response Center within the scope of corona virus outbreak measures, the importance of the measures are described as follows: Defining a time-out for maximum connection time on systems, temporary establishment of the rules defined during remote work, "source IP" restrictions for remote connections where possible, multi-factor authentication and time-based authorization measures for access, ensure that remote access is not permitted for access to any critical systems that should not be defined according to the risk assessment.

So, what aspects should companies take into consideration when working remotely?