About This Course

Dear Members of the Koç University Community,

Personal data and personal privacy are among the most important issues in the digital age we live in. Recently, very important legal regulations have been made regarding personal data both locally and internationally. Following the regulations in the European Union, such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), Law on Protection of Personal Data No. 6698 (“Law”) came into force at the national level and the Personal Data Protection Board was established and started its activities in accordance with this Law.

The Personal Data Protection Board may initiate an investigation against all public legal entities and private institutions such as our university by conducting on-site investigations. If violations are detected as a result of these investigations in these public legal entities, disciplinary processes should be carried out against the persons concerned. In the past, investigations were opened by the Personal Data Protection Board in other universities regarding the protection of personal data, and administrative sanctions were taken as a result of these investigations.

Apart from this Law, the protection of personal data is regulated in other important legislative areas such as the Turkish Penal Code. Pursuant to the Turkish Penal Code, in principle, judicial fines and imprisonment are demanded for crimes such as violation of privacy, illegal recording, transfer, dissemination or seizure of personal data. In this sense, we have both corporate and individual responsibilities.

Since personal data is used in some of our scientific projects, we need to pay special attention to these processes. Moreover, the number of students, employees, suppliers, i.e. the stakeholders of our university, and other people, who take part in scientific projects and attend our events, is very high. This requires us to be more careful in matters such as processing, storing and transferring personal data.

In accordance with the Law and secondary legislation, institutions are required to provide personal data training to all their employees. The main purpose of this training is to protect individuals as well as institutions. Within the framework of this obligation, there is a short training video in the link below. It is a legal obligation for all employees to attend the training in question and their participation will be monitored.

IT Directorate