TURKEY: New Data Protection Bill in Turkey


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Monday, April 06, 2009
As part of the process for becoming a member of the European Union, Turkey has introduced a Bill on the protection of personal. The whole package includes proposals on governing state secrets and transparency.
The main provisions of the Bill could be summarised as follows:

Sensitive data: The Bill imposes strict conditions on the processing of these data as well as for handling police and criminal records.

Individuals Rights'''''''''''''''' and fair and lawful processing: Rights of access, modification and deletion are included. The Bill allows for data to be collected in situations where the individual has provided consent, to meet legal obligations, or the information collected is in the public interest.

Retention: Data should be anonymised or destroyed when no legal provisions for the retention exist.

Confidentiality:: Must be guaranteed by law if personal information is going to be collected

Data Transfers: It follows the Data Protection Directive general rule of allowing transfers only to countries with and adequate level of data protection

Penalties and fines: It introduces jail sentences for collecting personal data in breach of the law as well as for disclosing it illegally to third parties. Fines can be imposed, ranging from YTL 1,000 to YTL 10,000

An autonomous data protection authority is also foreseen by the Bill with the power to act independently from the government.

By the Data Protection Report
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