Türkiye's Competition Board (RK) has imposed an administrative fine of TL 40.1 million ($1.47 million) on a real estate and vehicle sales platform, in addition to several obligations that the site must follow, over violating the Law on the Protection of Competition, according to Anadolu Agency's (AA) reports on Wednesday.
The investigation has been launched into Sahibinden Information Technologies Marketing and Trade Inc., according to the information on the competition watchdog's website.
In the investigation, it was determined that the platform, which was found to be dominant in the real estate sales/rental and vehicle sales platform services market, made it difficult for its corporate members (real estate agents and dealers) in the real estate and vehicle categories to use more than one platform by preventing them from moving their ads to other listing platforms.
In line with the decision, the platform will have to abolish the provisions in the contracts it has signed with its corporate members in the real estate and vehicle categories that prevent the members from transferring their posting data to other platforms.
In addition, the platform will need to provide the infrastructure that will enable advertisers to effectively transfer their data on real estate and vehicle ads to competing platforms and keep their data on these ads up-to-date, without any charge.
In addition to the transfer of data to other platforms, the obligations imposed by RK to the platform also paved the way for those who enter ads from competing platforms to transfer their data to Sahibinden Information Technologies Marketing and Trade Inc.'s website.
The implementation of these compliance measures will be monitored annually by the board for three years from the date of first implementation.
