Negligence and violations regarding the protection of personal data impose heavy legal and criminal liabilities on business organizations.

The liabilities and amount of penalty fines due to the violation of the sanction according to the Article 18 of KVKK are as follows:

VERBIS (Data Controllers' Registry Information System) is a registration system where data controllers are obliged to register and declare their personal data processing activities. According to the announcement made by the Turkish Personal Data Protection Authority in November 2019, it is envisaged that the processes for VERBIS registration will be completed by 30th of June 2020. However, due to the pandemic process that affected the whole world, many companies have adopted the principles of working remotely or part-time, which made it difficult to complete the necessary preparations for the registration. Having considered these issues, the Authority stated that they made the necessary arrangements and announced that the obligation to register with VERBIS has been postponed. You can access the extended deadlines via this link.

According to the decision of the Turkish Personal Data Protection Authority ("KVKK") dated 23.06.2020 numbered 2020/482, the deadlines for registration obligation to Data Controllers' Registry Information System ("VERBIS") have been extended.

With the relevant decision, it has been concluded that,

• For natural and legal person data controllers with more than 50 employees annually or a financial balance of more than 25 million TL annually, the deadline for fulfilling VERBIS registration and declaration obligation to Registry to be extended to 30.09.2020,
• For natural and legal person data controllers resident abroad, the deadline for fulfilling VERBIS registration and declaration obligation to Registry to be extended to 30.09.2020,
• For natural and legal person data controllers with less than 50 employees annually and a financial balance of less than 25 million TL annually, and whose main activity is sensitive personal data processing, the deadline for fulfilling VERBIS registration and declaration obligation to Registry to be extended to 31.03.2021,
• For public institutions and organizations the deadline for fulfilling VERBIS registration and declaration obligation to Registry to be extended to 31.03.2021,

According to the Article 16 of KVKK, natural and legal persons who process personal data must register with VERBIS (Data Controllers' Registry Information System) before starting data processing.

In this regard, the deadlines determined by Turkish Data Protection Authority for registration to VERBIS as below.