On 25 April 2015, Ministry of Customs and Trade of the Republic of Turkey updated Regulation NO 29337 on fiber and labelling in textiles, which was published on the official journal of Turkey and became effective since the publishing date. But the standard will be effective from 1 January 2016 for textiles of nonwoven animal raw materials.

It is prepared according to EU Regulation 1007/2011. The update is more targets at labelling of textiles that may contain nonwoven animal raw materials (such as pearls, leather, leather collar or lace, feature decorations or bone accessories) compared with the previous regulation. Article 13 in the new edition provides for clarity of product labelling for any textiles containing animal raw materials, e.g., indicating “containing nonwoven animal raw materials”.

In addition, the regulation also includes market control and supervision on products and it was implemented by the governmental department according to market supervision and control regulation of Ministry of Customs and Trade of the Republic of Turkey on 12 June 2014. Provided that supplier’s products fail to meet corresponding clauses, a period for rectification will be given. But administrative punishment will be enforced if another failure beyond rectification period.

New standard will regulate the following products:

• Products that contain above 80% fibre by weight;
• Furniture, umbrella and sunshade that contain textile constituent of 80% fibre by weight at least;
• Covering for muti-layer floor topside, bedspread and camping products that contain textile constituent of 80% fibre by weight at least;
• Other products in which textile is acknowledged as its main constituents.

All textiles shall be marked with labels bearing necessary information in Turkish as per the standard. Methods, such as sewing, embroidering, printing, stamping or other techniques that may directly add information on textiles to label on the products, can be adopted. Permanent labels shall be legible for consumers to recognize, discover and read. The label only needs to bear fibre names in Annex 1 thereof to indicate the fibre of textiles. The names in Annex 1 can only be used according to as defined therein.