The Regulation on Commercial Communication and Electronic Commerce (“Regulation”) was amended and establishment of the Commercial Electronic Message Management System (the “MMS”) has been announced. The MMS have published further details by updating Frequently Asked Questions section (“FAQ”) located on its website (iys.org.tr). Please note that these answers and information shall not be considered as a regulation itself which is published by the Ministry, but rather an informative guideline for the practice of the MMS.

Pre- Application Date

Initiation of pre-application term was announced as January 15, 2020. However, with recent updated on FAQ section, start of the pre-application term is set out as “in a short while”. Service providers will be able to submit their pre-applications via iys.org.tr, once the system starts to operate.

Uploading the Approvals and the Information

The Regulation does not expressly set out the uploading method for Commercial Communication Consents (“Consent”). However, this matter has also been clarified under FAQs. Pursuant to the information stated under related section, service providers may upload Consents either one by one or as a bulk or via technical integration. Also, it is stated that CRM programs which are commonly used in the market practice, shall be technically integrated with the system within the scope of “value added services which will be provided by the MMS”

The information required to upload within Consents are also set out under the FAQ. With this regard, Consents should include following information:

• Recipient’s communication address
• Kind of the Consent (approval/refusal)
• Consent date
• Communication channel (call/message/e-mail)
• Source of the permission (signed approval form, website etc.)

Additionally, FAQ expressly sets out that the recipient’s other personal data such as name, surname, identity number shall not be demanded, received and stored by the MMS.

Conclusion

Chambers of Commerce announce updates on the MMS time to time. However, in order not to overlook updates such as change of pre-application term, the announcements and FAQ on the MMS website should be monitored closely.