COVID-19: New Measures in Working Life and General Assembly Meetings in Turkey

Turkey has recently enacted the Law on Restructuring of Some Receivables and Amendment of Certain Laws numbered 7256 (“Law No. 7256”), which regulates collection of certain public receivables and amends several regulations as a response to Covid-19 pandemic.

Regulations regarding Working Life

Accordingly, various incentives are introduced to including covering long term insurance premiums of employees that used to benefit from unemployment insurance provided that the employee starts to work again within 90 days after unemployment, continues to work  under a service contract for 12 months from the date of employment, and requests to benefit from the incentive.

The President of Turkey is authorized to change the qualification criteria for short term allowance and to extend the application date and the duration of short work allowance provided due to Covid-19 pandemic,  on sectoral basis, separately or as a whole until June 30, 2021.

For workplaces that have applied for short time working allowance prior to July 1, 2020 and benefited from short time working allowance, a premium support of three months had been provided with the Law No. 4447. With the Law No. 7256, the President of Turkey is authorized to extend the mentioned period of three months for premium support for up to six months on sectoral basis, separately or as a whole. Accordingly, after short time working period is over and weekly normal working time starts being applied in a workplace, premiums required to be paid by the employer would be covered by the Unemployment Insurance Fund. This premium support is applicable for employees who would start to work for normal weekly working hours, who had been granted furlough and benefited from the monthly stipend provided under the Law No. 4447.

In addition, as per the Law No. 7256, the extra and undue payments for the period before October 2020, arising from wrong transactions of the employers with respect to short time working applications on the basis of compelling reasons due to the Covid-19 that have not been collected as of November 17, 2020 are canceled. On the other hand, payments that have been collected would not be refunded or reimbursed.

Postponed General Assembly Meetings

With the Law numbered 7246 dated April 16, 2020, general assembly meetings of associations, cooperatives, and agricultural producers’ associations to be convened under the scope of the Law on Associations numbered 5253, the Law on Cooperatives numbered 1163, the Law on Veterinary Services, Plant Health, Food and Feed numbered 5996, and the Law on Agricultural Procedures Association numbered 5200 were postponed until July 31, 2020. As per the Law No. 7256 newly in effect, the relevant ministry is authorized to alter the postponement of those general assembly meetings three times for three-month periods. The mentioned general assembly meetings that are postponed will be held after the postponement period ends.

In addition, general assembly meetings to be convened in 2020 under the scope of the Seed Law numbered 5553 dated October 31, 2006 are postponed until December 31, 2020. The postponed general assembly meetings with this regulation will be held within three months as of the date the postponement ends.

Simge Kılıç, Ezgi Ceren Aydoğmuş