In the twentieth century sanctions between countries arose strongly. The solution to the disputes became sacntions instead of war. The United Stated of America resolved quite some conflicts this way.
We've seen states sanctioning other states, this still happens, for example, The United States to Iran. We've also seen states sanctioning companies, such as USA to Huawei. But we have not seen before a country being sanctioned by a company, and evn more so, a big country being santioned by Google. This is the case with Turkey and Google.
Google's Android system doesn't show other search engines besides google itself. This precisely is what Turkey's competition authority dosn't like. Google was fined 93 million lira ($17.4 million) in september 2018, which is, as you might think, pocket money for Google. The probe was triggered by a filling by Russian competitor Yandex.
The problem is that the company was given six months to make changes to restore competition. Restoring competition means that Android must show search engine alternatives to Google. Six months passed and Tyrkey's competition board ruled that changes which Google made in it's contracts with it's business partners in the board's demands were inadequate as they still did not allow changes to the default search engine.
Google made the following announcement to it's Turkish partners: "We've informed our business partners that we will not be able to work with them on new Android phones to be released for the Turkish Market,".
"Consumers will be able to purschare existing device models and will be able to use their devices and applications normally. Google's other services will be unaffected", it said, adding that it was working with the authority to resolve the issue.
This implies that Google's services will keep working in Turkey, but it is a problem for the fabricants that will have to do their own Android version without Google's services preinstalled.
In order to win the pulse, it was reported by Haberturk that Google had shared in it's letter to business partners the contact details of Turkey's trade minister and the head of its competition authority and called on them to exert pressure in order to change the decision.
In Juanary 2019, the competition authority also said it launched an investigation into wether Google broke competition law with algorithms it uses for search and to target advertisements. That probe followed a complaint that Alphabet Inc's Google unir had "abused it's dominant position and made the efforts of other companies difficult", the authority said.
A big company pressing a state
Before the status quo was that a big state, like the United States, pressed other smaller states into doing or avoid doing something. Now we have companies so big that they can put preassure on states that are not small either, turkey has a population of over 80 million citizens. This pulse between Google and Turkey seems to favor the first one. This is the world in the XXI century.
This Google's action remind us of it's decision 10 years ago. Google had it's search engine in China and the authorities pressed to put censorship in searches and spy on citizens. Then Google, rightfully so, decided to get out of the country.
This was a decision way harder than what it is being taken now in Turkey. It was a complete retirement of the country, which meant huge future loses. We applud Google for this, they followed their principles in despite of huge quantities of money, these days actions like that are not the most common among big companies.
Nevertheless it is important to notice that since 2010 has happened a lot and with this decision, Google delivered a message to the rest of the world. The message is 'We can leave if you pretend to censor or manipulate us".
Google now is taking another approach, It has a project with which they pretend to come back to China adjusting to their legislature. This provoked strong internal debate, but the market is too big to not be in. It is expected that google gets back to China in a reasonable time.
It is rather curious that what Turkey is asking for is not something out of proportion, like China's case with their censorship and spy on citizens. But just that Google allows for other default search engines in the Android systems. EU and Russia already asked for it and Google allowed it, as the markets are bigger and leaving would be too costly.
It is note worthy that Turkey has been trying to enter the EU for years now. This would have not happened if Turkey was an EU member already.
Neither there will be problems if USA asks for something, this is because Google is an American company.
Are companies forced to operate in a country?
Companies are required to abide by countries legislations, nevertheless there is no obligation for big companies to make business in a state if they do not want to do so. Google is in it's right to leave if they desire it.