About

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

Turkish data protection law has been a hot topic since its inception in 2016 and subsequent development in the following years. I have been one of the leaders of our data privacy compliance programme at Domino’s and worked closely with our external counsel for establishing necessary legal documents such as data privacy notices and consents. We have also completed data privacy training programs for the relevant management level employees at our head office. Data privacy is an especially challenging compliance area since it directly affects how a food retail company like Domino’s deals with electronic communication with customers as well as the analysis of data for better sales.

Another highlight was our initiative for better and more hands-on trademark protection for our brands based on my recommendations. After I have started my tenure, I have introduced a new trademark office I have previously worked with and we have started to defend our brands more aggressively by strictly following trademark applications with a centralized program. Also, upon my suggestions, we have applied for a “well-known” trademark application for Domino’s in Turkey that allows stronger protection for our brand. As a food retailer, our trademarks are key assets and I believe this initiative helped the company to preserve them. Also during this two years, our registered trademark applications increased quickly, and the number of our registered trademarks are now above 100.

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

Domino’s Turkey is the third company where I’ve worked as an in-house counsel. My first action was to set one-on-one meetings with my business partners. This meant I had a chance to more deeply understand their needs and commercial targets before starting to work with them. Managing business partners’ interests and guiding them while they take calculated risks is a challenging and rewarding part of an in-house counsel’s job. If you do this right, they will respect you when you draw necessary red lines and may in fact support you [doing this].

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

We started using a contract management programme to reduce paperwork, decrease repeat work by the legal department and increase the quality of our documentation. As a result of implementing this system, the relevant departments in the company can find pre-set contracts I have prepared along with my notes and may execute a contract by filling in the blanks. After this, I organize a short meeting with the relevant department to proceed rapidly to understand the contractual matters in which we are strict or flexible and assist accordingly. I also installed the necessary corporate documents which should be taken from the counterparty and the system does not accept new contracts without these documents.

I am also working on a FAQ section to avoid repeat legal work. In addition, we are now discussing the possibility to detect any changes made after the negotiations are over. This will be useful especially in case we work with a new company where we do not have an established relationship.

Other technology we are working with our IT department on is to create a keyword system to prevent our employees from using profane language.

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

The most important regulation impacting our company recently is the Turkish data protection law. A good number of secondary regulation and guidelines have been published this year and the Turkish Data Protection Authority has also increased the level of enforcement.  Companies also need to register to  the Data Contollers’ Registry before the end of 2019. As discussed above, this law is especially challenging because it affects how you interact with your customers. Another unique challenge of the Turkish market is that data privacy concepts are very new to Turkish companies and they may be hard pressed to comply with rules that a many of them cannot make any sense of.

A second important regulation is the presidential decree introducing a new ban on foreign currency transactions between Turkish residents. This affected at most our lease agreements. There has been numerous changes of this decree which put us in a position to re-negotiate with landlords to ensure compliance.

What do you feel are the most effective techniques for getting the most out of external counsel, in terms of how to instruct them?

The most important and effective technique is to be the only bridge between the business partners and external counsel.  Our department is the sole first contact point with external counsel. By this way, we can eliminate any unnecessary or repeat legal questions to external counsel, which may have translated into increased legal fees for our company.

Secondly, I believe external counsel should be guided to understand the client as well as a seasoned in-house legal counsel. This would require investment from both sides but the benefits are extraordinary. As a simple example, we have included our external legal team to our company orientation programme which includes working at a pizza restaurant for a few days, seeing first-hand the working environment they will be advising about.

FOCUS ON: Comparative advertising

Despite the fact the comparative advertising is permitted in Turkey, a key activity is prohibited. Companies cannot reveal their competitors’ name during the advertising. This unfortunately defeats the purpose of comparative advertising.

In relation to this point The Commercial Advertising and Unfair Commercial Applications Regulation entered into force in 2015. This regulation permitted the use of competitors’ tradename and trademark if they meet certain requirements: The comparison must be made between goods or services that meet the same requirements or are intended for the same purpose, the comparison must be truthful and honest, the advertiser must not denigrate or discredit its competitor’s business and the advertiser must not take unfair advantage of the reputation of its competitor. Unfortunately, this Article was postponed twice and cancelled in 2019 without taking effect.

Nevertheless, some companies do refer their competitors without mentioning directly their tradenames or trademarks. By this way, the average consumer can easily understand the name of the competitor.

NOMINATOR QUOTE

‘She is a very professional attorney in her field. She finds urgent solutions to problems and works in a solutions-oriented [way].We have been working with Çetinkaya [and] communicating and working closely with her on a daily basis. Therefore, we can confidently say that she is an experienced legal counsel especially in the food retail sector, efficient and always “to-the-point”.

As she is Domino’s Turkey’s head of legal, she is challenged with so many daily legal matters, however, despite her significant workload, she never fails to follow-up legal work outsourced to us and cares for every legal matter in depth.

In light of the above, I personally want to express that she is one of the most valuable legal counsel in Turkey and therefore she should be considered for the GC Powerlist.’