The Competition Policy of the EU- Telecom Sector and Turkey

The European Union (EU) has always attached great importance to competition since its foundation. The European Union uses competition policy as a tool to create a common market and an internal market under the principle of an open market economy with free competition. As a result of this, the competition policy of the Union has outlawed price-fixing and market-sharing cartels, abuses of dominant positions and anti-competitive mergers. However, the competition policy of the European Union needs to be modernised to enable it to be more effective in practice; to keep up with the changing economic and political environment and to increase the level of competition not only within the Union borders but also in the international economy. However, there are some problems in application of the competition rules to the telecommunications sector.Within this framework, Turkey, seen here as a case study, has been striving to improve her national telecommunications sector''s competitive structure for the sake of its economy and citizens and to be able to compete on an international platform especially with the EU.