About

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

The most important issues that required the involvement and steering of the Legal Affairs department in the last two years have been;

• The M&A which we have completed just couple of weeks ago and I am currently managing for the legal integration of our new company.
• The creation of the data protection layout and inventory of our group companies and registration to the VERBİS system.
• We have paid a particular attention to deliver different trainings to our field employees and managers (over 1000 employees) especially on Data Protection, Ethics and Compliance and Labour Law on a country wide scale..

What have been the major external trends that have impacted your team’s work over the past two years (market developments, changing regulatory environment, political events etc.)?

Definitely the increasing number of our employees, which went from approximately 23000 to 27500. This had the biggest impact on our team, much more contracts to review, more people to train and more files to handle, but of course this is a required difficulty which we are happy to deal.

What will be the main focus for the company in the next 12 months and how do you intend to assist with this?

Growth with discipline will remain to be our company’s main focus for this year as well, integration of our new company will also be playing an important role for us. In order to maintain our legal support at the high standards, we had hired a third company lawyer and become a legal team of four, including myself.

What techniques do you use to provide commercially-focused and optimal business advice to your company? If so, how do you get these across to more junior lawyers in the team?

I emphasise on to my team and to all people that I am in connection with, “if we look from a narrow window we cannot see the wider landscape!” We shall reach to a very good balance of having a commercial mind and yet with discipline and within the acceptable legal risk level.

Does the team use any “legal tech” products and do you find them a helpful management device?

From day to day new legal tech are more often at the scene, however we do need more time to digest and use more accurate way these products. Saying that, I would like to say, not every legal tech on the market are brand new items but it is a real need and lawyers using the technology much more than yesterday.

In what ways do you see the in-house legal role in evolving in your region over the next few years?

In-house legal departments and general counsel roles are absolutely facing with an ultimate evolution, we are having more seat on the management and execution teams or even at the board level almost in every well-structured corporate company and our role is definitely becoming much more important, or vital I must say.

FOCUS ON: The in-house counsel role

I believe, after having 19 years of experience mostly as an in-house lawyer and GC, our role should be a being a business partner with the aim of facilitating the achievement of the company overall strategy with an acceptable level of legal risk and not supporting the business only based on the financial perspective but also from compliance and ethics perspective.