Turkey’s İYS, operated by TOBB (Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey), is the national platform governing commercial electronic messages including marketing A2P SMS. It was enforced on 4 January 2020 alongside supporting regulations published in the Official Gazette. The platform centrally manages user consent collection, opt-out processing and complaints. It imposes mandatory compliance obligations on all service providers and intermediaries sending commercial A2P messages. Enterprises in breach will be subject to administrative penalties.
The primary rule of the platform is mandatory registration for service providers. Any enterprise or intermediary sending commercial electronic messages must complete registration on the İYS platform prior to commencing operations. Unregistered entities are prohibited from dispatching commercial messages. User consents for receiving commercial messages obtained offline or via other channels must be uploaded to the İYS system within 3 working days; consents not uploaded shall be deemed legally invalid. Before sending each commercial A2P SMS, service providers or SMS aggregators must call the system API to verify the user’s consent status. It is forbidden to deliver messages to users without valid consent. Non-compliant messages will be blocked and the enterprise will receive administrative fines.
Meanwhile, the platform standardizes the user opt-out process. Users may submit opt-out requests to service providers or directly exercise their right to reject commercial messages on the İYS platform. Upon receiving a user’s opt-out request, service providers must also synchronize updates to the İYS system within 3 working days. In addition, service providers and intermediaries must retain records related to commercial messages for 3 years and respond to user complaints forwarded by the system within 15 days.
