Chief legal counsel and head of contracts | Havelsan Hava Elektronik Sanayi ve Ticaret
Yavuz Selim Günay
Chief legal counsel and head of contracts | Havelsan Hava Elektronik Sanayi ve Ticaret
HAVELSAN is a leading defense and IT company not only in Turkey but also worldwide.
As HAVELSAN Legal and Contracts Department, we not only manage headquarters but also its local and foreign subsidiaries’ legal processes closely. HAVELSAN is a global player in defense and IT sectors, and our contribution is very important for the business. In the next 12 months, we have three important focus for the Company. First, we will lead and manage contract drafting and negotiations all over the world. Second, HAVELSAN acquired shares of three Turkish companies, and incorporated two subsidiaries in Qatar and Oman in 2019. We expect continuity of this investment trend during 2020. Therefore, we will allocate more time on investments of the Company. Finally, legal compliance will be our top priority during 2020 especially regarding competition law, international sanctions, and data protection.
I strongly believe that understanding the needs of business and having a business-oriented mind is crucial for the success of an in-house lawyer. An in-house lawyer position is not only a legal position as the business needs you to understand their needs and find appropriate solutions.
HAVELSAN is the producer of the National Judicial Information System that is the most widely used legal-tech product in Turkey. With the help of this, we achieved considerable success in digital transformation of the law department. We utilize some important databases and libraries for legal sources and compliance check. We also have our internal litigation, arbitration and documentation management software.
We are currently working on an artificial intelligence based software for our needs that will make legal research and legal drafting smarter, more comprehensive and easier. For this project, we work with an AI company and we get in-house support from the company.
Currently, international sanctions is a very important subject for defense companies in Turkey. We are working on understanding the new developments on this issue and being in full compliance with them. Moreover, following GDPR and Turkish Data Protection Law, data protection and other IT procedures have a vital impact on us.
Mostly we prefer to hire external counsels for implementation of local laws and regulations for legal issues of foreign subsidiaries. We select two or three external counsels from Legal 500 lists, make research on these companies and finally, we try to schedule a meeting before instructing external counsels. By this technique, we worked in cooperation with approximately 10 law firms from different jurisdictions.
Mediation is an ADR mechanism that is very useful for commercial disputes. In a mediation process, parties request a third person(s) to assist them for reaching an amicable settlement. Like arbitration, mediation offers parties fast and less costly dispute resolution which has equal distance to parties independent from states’ interference.
Inexistence of an effective enforcement mechanism was the reason behind mediation’s unpopularity. New York Convention, one of the most successful conventions, ensures recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards in 161 states. However, in consideration of the lack of enforcement mechanism of settlement agreements, mediation may be a useless attempt of parties that cannot be pursued. Accordingly, meditation was not the first choice of lawyers when preparing the dispute resolution clause of a contract at the first place or when faced with a dispute afterwards. Eventually, United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (“Convention”) is signed on August 2019 by 46 states. Although EU Member States, Russia and some other important countries are not parties to the Convention yet, some of the most important trade partners of Turkey, such as the US, China, Qatar, and South Korea have signed the Convention.
The Convention aims to facilitate international trade and to promote the use of mediation for the resolution of international commercial disputes. Convention ensures that a settlement reached by parties becomes binding and enforceable. Clearly, the Convention provides an efficient and uniformed framework for the enforcement of settlement agreements resulting from the mediation. Meanwhile, enforcement mechanism introduced in the Convention is also included into the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Mediation and International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (2018).
It is worth to clarify that while mediation seems like a competitor of arbitration, even the most preferred arbitration centers such as ICC and LCIA offers mediation mechanisms under their institutional framework. Moreover, there is no obstacle on designing dispute resolution mechanisms as combinations of both arbitration and mediation. Accordingly, the Convention makes alternative dispute resolutions more effective for international commercial disputes. Besides, under Turkish law, parties are under obligation to apply mandatory mediation for commercial disputes, and the Convention will make this mandatory mediation more functional and effective.
As a result, as an in-house lawyer in a company which has numerous international commercial contracts, I strongly believe that the enforcement mechanism introduced by Convention for settlement agreements will contribute to the design of dispute resolution clauses of our contracts and the practice of the mediation will increase gradually.
Yavuz Selim Günay is a highly talented legal counsel pursuing his Phd studies as well as acting as the head legal counsel for a well-regarded company. He has become the trusted highly regarded legal counsel to the company and the board of directors. As per the high confidentiality needs of the defence industry, Günay is acting with high diligence and integrity in terms of his scope of responsibilities. He is very much experienced in compliance and sanctions matters which allows him to stand out in the league of corporate counsel.
