About

Tani, a technology company, operates within the Koç Group, Turkey’s largest industrial and services group. Aslı Şahinkaya was the first in-house counsel to join Tani, and ‘the major change for the company was having a lawyer who works with them every day in almost every project and understands the business needs. As a technology and data services firm, it’s really hard for a standard lawyer to adapt to the projects of Tani. It has many innovative products under its product base’. Tani, with its background of 13 years and customer records over 44 million, runs the first and biggest coalition loyalty programme, Paro, which consists of companies from 23 different sectors together with consumers at 7,500 touch points. Şahinkaya is the head of legal for both this programme and other products of Tani, constituting data consents, deciding how to archive these consents, advising on how to process the data and how to form the database structure. Working in an area that is not yet regulated in Turkey, her job is an everyday challenge. ‘My biggest challenge is not having the data protection regulations in effect in Turkey, but having to act as if they existed. It is hard to convince the marketing departments on practices not based on a regulation that is in effect. Furthermore, as there is no regulation in place, I need to search and analyse the related regulations in place in Europe and other countries’. Şahinkaya often works with internal Tani consultants to give opinion on forthcoming laws regarding data privacy and permission based marketing. ‘Being involved at the ground-level of regulation and legislation is an accomplishment for any in-house lawyer’ she comments.