The Announcement of the Personal Data Protection Authority, dated 07.17.2020, on “Requests for Subtracting from the Index the Results of the People’s Name and Surname searches made on the Search Engines”

The Board decided, with 06.23.2020 dated and 2020/481 numbered decision:

• that person has a right of request to make the results about themselves unreachable for others and to the erasure of their personal data from the database index
• search engines are determined as a data controller because they determine the purposes and ways of processing the data of third parties, depending on Article 3 of the Law.
• It has been determined that the activities of the operator of the search engine should be considered as personal data processing within the scope of Article 3 of the Law.
• it has to be requested the search engine operator to be removed the data related from the search engine index (in other words, prevent the data from being accessible by third parties); the operator must fulfill the requirement of this request based on the procedures and periods specified in the provisions of the Personal Data Protection Law regarding the right to apply and complain; determined that if the search engine refuses the application or does not respond within the time, the person will have the right to complain the search engine to the Board.
• it will evaluate each request specific to the incident; however, stated that as basic criteria will be the comparison of the fundamental rights and freedoms of the person and the interests that the public would obtain from the information in question, and that the decision would be made by determining the weight of the competing interests.
• in addition to the right of complaint to the Board, the persons also have the right to apply directly to the judiciary.

This regulation makes us think that the Right to be Forgotten, which is regulated in Article 17 of the European Union General Data Protection Code but wasn’t mentioned in the Law, has entered our legislation.

The Right to be Forgotten is the right to request to erase personal data such as information, photographs, documents, etc. about the data subject. The base of the Right to be Forgotten is to give people the right to live honorably, develop their personality freely, and act on their personal data freely.

According to this regulation, data about a person’s private lives, which are not desired to be known, cannot be reached via electronic communication devices.

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