The Turkish Competition Board has officially approved Meta Platforms’ strategy to relaunch its microblogging platform, Threads, in Türkiye. In its recent decision, the Board ruled that Meta’s updated data-handling and account creation practices successfully satisfy the binding commitments established to resolve long-standing antitrust concerns. This milestone effectively clears the path for the platform’s return to the Turkish market under a significantly revamped, privacy-conscious architecture.
The regulatory friction began in August 2023 when the Competition Board initiated a preliminary inquiry into Meta. The probe focused on allegations that the tech giant violated domestic competition laws by tying Threads directly to Instagram. As the inquiry deepened, regulators discovered that Meta was seamlessly combining user data between the two apps without explicit, independent consent. This led to a formal investigation in November 2023, which culminated in an interim injunction in February 2024 aimed at blocking cross-platform data merging. Rather than isolating the data structures under those immediate conditions, Meta chose to temporarily suspend Threads operations in Türkiye in April 2024. This move rendered the interim measure moot, though Meta was subsequently hit with administrative fines for the brief period of non-compliance prior to the blackout.
The path to a permanent resolution took shape in late 2024 when Meta submitted a comprehensive package of behavioral remedies. Accepted by the Board as legally binding, these commitments legally obligated Meta to dismantle the mandatory infrastructure linking Instagram and Threads. Under this agreement, any future relaunch of the application required an ecosystem where new users, as well as past users who preserved their accounts during the suspension, could navigate Threads entirely independent of an Instagram profile.
With its latest application to the Competition Authority, Meta demonstrated how these structural changes will look in practice. Moving forward, Turkish users opening Threads will be met with two distinct pathways. They can consciously choose to link the app to their existing Instagram account, or they can opt to build a completely separate profile using only a phone number. For those selecting the independent route, Meta is strictly prohibited from combining or utilizing any personal data harvested from their Instagram profiles. By decoupling user data and eliminating forced account tying, the structural remedy effectively restores user autonomy and aligns Meta’s operations with the fair competition requirements of the Turkish market.
