Commercial Electronic Messages and IYS

The Law No. 6563 on the Regulation of Electronic Commerce entered into force on 01.05.2015 and according to this law an approval must be obtained from in order to send commercial electronic messages to recipients. The Regulation on Commercial Communication and Commercial Electronic Messages dated 15.07.2017 (hereinafter referred to as the "Regulation") entered into force in order to regulate obligation to inform recipients regarding commercial communication via electronic communication tools and requirements to be complied when sending commercial electronic messages. With the amendment made to the Regulation on 04.01.2020, the regulations on the Message Management System ("İYS") have found its place in the Turkish legislation.

Message Management System is defined as a system that enables approval for sending commercial electronic message, the exercise of the right to refuse commercial electronic message and the management of complaint process.

Real and legal persons who want to send commercial electronic messages are obligated to register to the Message Management System and it has been stated that commercial electronic messages cannot be sent to recipients if their approval is not uploaded on the Message Management System. According to this regulation, Service providers are obligated to get approval through Message Management System or upload the approvals obtained by other means to the Message Management System within 3 working days.

In the Message Management Systems’ website, there is the announcement of Turkish Ministry of Commerce stating that “It is considered that regardless of being a resident in Turkey, any real or legal person who wishes to send commercial electronic messages must be registered to the Message Management System.” In this regard, the non-resident real or legal person who sends commercial electronic messages to domestic recipients must send an apostilled Certificate of Goodstanding and authorization documents of their authorized personnel to bilgi@iys.org.tr address. The same documents must be sent by mail to the main address of İleti Yönetim Sistemi A.Ş.. Other documents may be requested depending on the application.