TURKEY Law and Practice Contributed by: Caghan Tansel, TANSEL
other conduct showing active solicitation of Turkish residents. This should be applied cautiously: the CMB may determine additional criteria for when an activity is deemed Türkiye-facing, and the use of Turkish-lan- guage interfaces, local campaigns, referral arrange- ments or Turkey-specific onboarding would materially weaken any reverse-solicitation argument. Marketing Requirements for Digital Assets CMB-authorised CASPs are subject to bespoke advertising, announcement, publication, promotion and disclosure rules. Marketing must be objective and must not be false, misleading or exploit customers’ lack of knowledge or experience. CASPs may not: • promise guaranteed returns or protection from losses; • suggest that customers will always profit; • imply that transactions are risk-free, guaranteed, officially secured or require no expertise; • use unsupported claims that unfairly promote the provider; • refer to specific price targets; or • use sensitive religious, cultural or social themes. Certain promotional campaigns are also prohibited, including high-value reward campaigns, referral-ben- efit schemes, campaigns with unforeseeable costs, or promotions that direct customers towards investing in one or more crypto-assets. These specific CMB rules apply alongside Türkiye’s general advertising regime, which covers consumer-facing commercial advertisements and unfair commercial practices and is designed to prevent misleading advertising and pro- tect consumers. 4.2 White Labelling External firms cannot generally use a white-label structure to sell crypto-asset services into Türkiye merely by relying on another entity’s CMB licence. The Turkish regime licenses the entity that actually provides crypto-asset services to Turkish custom- ers, and the 2025 CMB communiqués regulate CASP establishment, operation, custody, capital adequacy and service provision on an entity-specific basis. A licensed Turkish CASP may use third-party technol- ogy or infrastructure providers, including white-label software, but the licensed CASP must remain the
contracting, customer-facing and responsible regu- lated entity, and must retain control over compliance, custody, AML, outsourcing risk, information systems, records and customer disclosures. If the external firm markets under its own brand, onboards Turkish users, executes or intermediates trades, provides custody/wallet services, or other- wise appears to provide regulated crypto-asset ser- vices in Türkiye, it may itself be treated as carrying out unauthorised CASP activity. The same risk applies to offshore firms targeting Turkish residents through Turkish-language services, local promotion or other Türkiye-facing activity. Türkiye does not have a bespoke DeFi regime and does not expressly prohibit individuals from interact- ing with decentralised protocols on their own initiative. However, the analysis changes if there is an identifi- able person or entity operating a front-end, arranging access, marketing to Turkish residents, holding client assets, executing orders, providing custody, facilitat- ing transfers or otherwise carrying on crypto-asset services as a business. In that case, the activity may fall within the CMB CASP perimeter, which covers order execution, settlement, transfer, custody, initial sale/distribution intermediation, investment advice and other CMB-designated services. The CMB rules also expressly capture peer-to-peer digital market- place operation as platform activity, while offshore services accessed solely on a Turkish user’s own initi- ative and without Türkiye-facing marketing are treated as outside the communiqué’s scope. Can CeFi Firms Utilise DeFi When Providing Products or Services Into Türkiye? A Turkish CeFi platform cannot assume that DeFi may be used freely behind the scenes or as a cus- tomer product. A licensed platform may only conduct authorised activities and must comply with custody, customer-asset segregation, MKK reconciliation, AML/CFT, disclosure, information-systems and risk- management requirements. Some blockchain-native 5. Decentralised Finance 5.1 Ability to Use DeFi Is DeFi Permitted in Türkiye?
667 CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook