Author: Mert Karamustafaoğlu
Introduction
Shahmaran, a Mesopotamian myth, is believed to take place in Tarsus. According to the myth, the shah of snakes is the immortal and omniscient "Shahmaran." Shahmaran is described as a beautiful woman living in her cave with her snakes. She lived seven floors below the ground, she had a body of a snake and a human head. A woodcutter was the first to encounter the Shahmaran, the queen of snakes, who lived with her omniscient snakes called Meran. One day, a woodcutter named Camasb, after he got betrayed by his friends, was trapped in a cave he entered to collect honey. After crawling through a hole he saw in the cave, he discovered a beautiful garden. This garden and the cave are where Shahmaran lived.
Shahmaran liked this young woodcutter and let him live with her. Shahmaran, perhaps out of loneliness, fell in love with him. The snakes warned Shahmaran that people are ungrateful, and he would betray her confidence, but Shahmaran did not listen to the snakes. She taught him the secrets she knew, including how to make medicine. However, Camasb missed the family he left behind. Shahmaran allowed the woodcutter to return to his family, as long as he did not tell anyone her whereabouts. However, foreseeing what will happen, Shahmaran told the young woodcutter that one day he would give her away, and that this would be the death of her. Camasb kept his word and did not tell anyone the whereabouts of the cave for years. However, one day the sultan fell ill. The vizier claimed that the cure for this disease was the meat of Shahmaran. Shahmaran's cave was sought all over the country. When the vizier learned that Camasb knew the whereabouts of the cave, he had Camasb tortured for the knowledge. Eventually, Shahmaran was caught in her cave. Before she died, Shahmaran told Camasb: "Boil my head and let the sultan drink it to be saved, let the vizier drink my body, so that he dies, boil my tail and drink it, so that you become a Luqman." Camasb did what he was told; the evil vizier died and the Sultan was saved. Camasb, who knew more about medicine than anyone, became immortal and came to be known as Luqman, only to live with his guilt forever.
The Shahmaran legend contains important elements of humanity in many aspects. Perhaps its most important message is that knowledge does not always bring good to its holder. Similarly, many findings of the Competition Authority’s E-market Place Platforms Industry Review and its Preliminary Report reveal that the commercial data obtained by the aforementioned platforms raise competitive concerns to a large extent. So, at the end of this review, many things will radically change for these undertakings and we will see brand new approaches, especially regarding data-driven competitive concerns.
This article will further examine the competitive concerns raised in my previous article on this subject.
1. Fundamental Findings of Competition Issues
The main purpose of the report is to examine the competitive concerns that arise in practice and cannot be addressed with basic competition law instruments. In particular, due to the structural characteristics of the market, the market power of incumbent undertakings enables them to easily monopolize.
The aforementioned section of the Report begins by stating a fundamental difficulty. Specifically, there are concerns arising from platforms that are difficult to address with traditional competition law instruments. Traditional instruments are not suitable for the operation of the platforms, and the characteristics of the relevant market provide monopoly power to incumbent undertakings. In this context, the Report examined competitive concerns under three headings.
