About

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

he establishment of Aviva SA Sigorta Aracılığı [which has] more than 400 employees, as well as a sales mobility project that involves selling insurance and pension products with a digital signature via tablets, creating a paperless sale experience for customers and users.

How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

Be very close with business partners. Allocate time for deepening relationships with them, especially through socialising. Communication is crucial for success nowadays.

What “legal tech” products do you currently utilise, and do you foresee implementing more of these in the near future?

We use a back office programme for all lawsuits, consumer complaints and contracts. The legal team, business units of the company and all external consultants/lawyers are using this same programme. This platform enables us to monitor all legal disputes and contracts burden on the company instantly, and any time allows us to have a detailed report about current situation.

In terms of contracts, drafting and negotiating contracts is not solely the legal function’s responsibility anymore. Now, groups of people from different functions should work together to create an adequate contract. For example in the finance sector we generally require input from the following functions; data protection and information security, anti-money laundering, procurement, tax and finance and surely related business unit who requested the contract. Each sector may require different input from different roles/functions, however the function’s responsibility of having or establishing clear and healthy record-keeping carries on, thus the programme enables us to see, all opinion and sign-offs of each function with log records/exact time and date. The programme also alerts business units and the legal function before dates of renewal or end date of contracts.

In the context of lawsuits, it is clear that consumer protection rules and therefore consumer awareness is growing. This trend creates growing numbers of consumer related requests via consumer arbitration committee and consumer courts. The operational burden of these cases consume great time and money. At this point, legal tech creates important value via saving great time and money.

We are closely monitoring developments in legal technologies, and eager to implement value creating products.

Have any new laws, regulations or judicial decisions greatly impacted your company’s business or your legal practice?

The Presidential Decree No.47 dated 18 October 2019, Establishment of the Insurance and Private Pension Regulation and Audit Authority

FOCUS ON: Uncertainty

As of June 2018, the governmental system of Turkey shifted to Turkish-style presidential system from a long-standing parliamentary democracy. The system change affected the whole administrative system in Turkey including the appointment and working principles of ministers, annulment of undersecretaries as well as appointment procedures of bureaucrats. The President is entitled to appoint vice presidents, ministers, deputy ministers and bureaucrats via decrees.

After the Presidential oath in July 2018, the President took office and thereafter reshaped the administrative system with the Presidential decrees. These decrees changed the structures and proceedings of state bodies and governmental institutions.

Obviously, these changes affected all of Turkey including businesses, this piece is not aiming to discuss the way of changes and current consequences, instead of that we shall be focus on the position of general counsel and suggesting some approaches in an era of alteration and uncertainty.

Understand the new administrative system

First, general counsel should comprehend main elements of the new system – which is not as easy as it seen. For instance; power distribution of the Parliament and President is not clear in many areas as well as reshaping the authority boundaries between ministries could create conflicts in certain areas.

Another obstacles for general counsel is that a complete new system does not exist yet. The new system develops after many arguments and amendments, and counsel should focus on the Presidential decrees and administrative legislations more than ever until the new system falls into place. There are many new institutions and supervisory boards, who may well be important policy makers, so general counsel should have profound knowledge on these new bodies.

There are certain actions that may help general counsel tackle this uncertainty, such as getting a view of external counsel, especially those specialised in administrative law. You can also map your company’s businesses, liabilities or relations with state or governmental bodies, and all operational licences should be checked as per the legislation in force, all contractual relations with governmental bodies should be checked and newly established bodies should be taken into consideration.

Other tips include preparation of a plan for any necessary actions that you have determined, and it would be very beneficial to have related departments input in the study. Further tips include:

• Inform and educate your company board and senior management about governmental system changes, ensure that they all well aware of status quo, and the possible risks that may affect the company’s businesses.
• submit and discuss mapping and any plans with management, ensuring that your company has a valid approach for the current uncertainty.
• Update public contact procedures as per the company’s approach, if there is not any existing procedure, prepare one as soon as possible. Another important step is to determine posts or names for representing your company, each regulatory visit should be documented and kept within the legal function.
• Connections with your company’s main regulators are key, requesting clarification of regulations is always an acceptable approach.
• Use associations and lobbying channels to involve the preparation of legislation or request clarification of legislation, if required.

A final tip would involve less interpretation, and more certainty. A general counsel is a powerful person and from time to time companies need their interpretation to use in business as usual, this is because of lack of legislation, or uncertain regulations, however building a business or legal decision based on an interpretation may not be the best way in the era of uncertainty.

In conclusion, I believe that this transition period is temporary, however the consequences may be quite intense. Therefore a general counsel should be more proactive than usual in this period.