Turkey's New Cybersecurity Law: What It Means for SMEs
Who Turkey's new Cybersecurity Law covers, what obligations it introduces, and what it practically means for SMEs. Where to start with compliance.
Turkey’s cybersecurity regulatory landscape just changed fundamentally: Law No. 7545 established the Cybersecurity Presidency (Siber Güvenlik Başkanlığı) and introduced new obligations for institutions and companies that provide services or process data through information systems.
This article is not legal advice — consult a lawyer for the law’s full scope and its specific implications for your company. But for technology decision-makers, understanding why this shift can’t be ignored requires a practical framework.
Who Does the Law Cover?
The scope is broader than it first appears: public institutions, professional bodies with public-institution status, natural and legal persons, and unincorporated organizations that provide services or process data through information systems all fall under the law. That means it’s not just public bodies — a large swath of private-sector companies operating digitally are covered too.
The most directly affected group is businesses in critical infrastructure sectors: energy, finance, transportation, healthcare, and electronic communications. Companies operating in — or providing services to — these sectors face heavier obligations.
What Are the Core Obligations?
The law’s main obligations include:
- Implementing designated security measures: following the policies, strategies, action plans, and guidelines published by the Cybersecurity Presidency.
- Responding to information requests on time: providing requested information, documents, and technical data within the specified timeframe.
- Incident reporting: reporting detected cyberattacks or security vulnerabilities to the Presidency without delay.
- Authorized-supplier requirement: critical infrastructure organizations must procure cybersecurity products and services only from suppliers authorized by the Presidency.
Why the Penalties Deserve Attention
The law provides for both administrative fines and prison sentences. Administrative fines range from 1 million to 100 million Turkish lira; failing to provide information or documents, conducting unauthorized activity, breaching confidentiality obligations, data leaks, and spreading false information each carry separate prison sentences as well.
The scale of these penalties can create a disproportionate risk for SMEs specifically. The law does not yet include concrete soft-landing mechanisms — phased compliance, incentives, or guidance programs — for small and mid-sized businesses, which means most of the compliance burden currently falls on companies’ own initiative.
What Changes in Practice for SMEs?
Even if you’re not in a critical infrastructure sector, you can’t ignore the broader awareness and enforcement environment this law creates. Practical points to address:
Build a data-processing inventory. If you don’t know which systems process which data, or which third-party services can access it, you won’t know what to report when an incident happens.
Define your incident response process. “Who does what, and when, when a security vulnerability is detected” needs a clear answer. This isn’t just a legal requirement — it’s a marker of operational maturity.
Review your supply chain. If you fall under critical infrastructure, verify the authorization status of the vendors supplying your cybersecurity products and services. Even outside that scope, your vendors’ security practices are part of your own risk surface.
Raise board-level awareness. Given the size of the penalties, cybersecurity now belongs on leadership’s agenda, not just IT’s.
Where to Start
Full compliance with the law is complex and generally requires legal counsel. But the first concrete technical step is clear: have your current security posture — asset inventory, access controls, logging, incident response plan — assessed by an outside perspective. That assessment serves both the compliance process and your broader cyber resilience.
Summary
Law No. 7545 moves cybersecurity in Turkey from “nice to have” to “legal obligation.” Even SMEs outside its direct scope have less room to defer security maturity as the enforcement environment tightens.
If you’d like to assess your company’s current security posture and build a prioritized roadmap, a free technical consultation is a good place to start.
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