Facts
Temu made its first sale in Türkiye on 13 May 2024, and sellers based in Türkiye have used the platform since 25 May 2025. Sellers enter a base price, the amount they receive per sale, and the retail price is calculated automatically by adding Temu's service fee and tax. Temu can show sellers a “suggested base price” and flags products priced above it with “new product boost” or “traffic boost” notices; for a time the wording “traffic restriction” was used. Price changes need a stated reason and take effect after Temu's review. A confidential complaint of 4 November 2025 alleged that Temu, through its pricing algorithm, effectively set sellers' prices. The Board opened a preliminary inquiry on 15 January 2026.
Question
Under Article 4 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition, the Board examined Temu's practice of suggesting prices to sellers and raising or limiting a product's visibility depending on whether they followed the suggestion. The first question was whether this amounted to resale price maintenance; the second, whether price discipline enforced through algorithmic tools, with no basis in the contract, could have the effects of a most-favoured-customer (MFN) clause. Sellers interviewed said traffic was restricted for products the algorithm judged overpriced and that they were not told how the suggested price was set. Temu argued that its suggestions were non-binding and that it did not artificially steer traffic for particular products.
Decision
By decision 26-07/197-71 of 26 February 2026 the Board unanimously rejected the complaint, opened no investigation and refused interim measures. As Temu does not supply the goods, there was no typical resale relationship. The suggested prices were below sellers' own, could be contested and changed quickly, so created no minimum or fixed prices. The contracts had no MFN clause, and suggested prices were not indexed directly to a seller's prices on rival platforms. Still, the visibility incentives and penalties could deter sellers from pricing differently across platforms, with effects close to a wide MFN. But Temu ranked fifth by market share, after Trendyol, Hepsiburada, Amazon and N11, far below the 30% block-exemption threshold, so no anticompetitive effect was expected.
Why it matters
The Board accepted that a platform can discipline sellers' prices through its ranking and visibility algorithms even without a written price-parity term. It noted that algorithmic interventions may differ in effect from contractual obligations, so it may be necessary to examine how far the platform can steer its algorithm, how much weight rival prices carry in it and how closely users follow default rankings. The outcome turned on market power. The Board also observed that MFN-like practices by a platform that sellers cannot do without could exclude rivals and raise barriers to entry.
Related stages
During the inquiry, an on-site inspection at Temu's office in Türkiye could not be carried out on 21 January 2026. On 29 January 2026 the Board found that the inspection had been obstructed and that requested information had not been supplied on time. It then fined Temu, on the basis of its 2024 gross revenue, by decision 26-04/115-44 of 3 February 2026 for obstructing the inspection and by decision 26-04/116-45 of 5 February 2026 for the late information; the amounts are redacted in the published texts. The investigation into the automated pricing tools that Trendyol, Hepsiburada and Amazon offered to sellers is covered in a separate entry.