About

Europe’s largest retailer for consumer electronics, Media Markt opened its first location in Turkey in 2007 in Istanbul and has gone from strength to strength expanding across the country with 70 stores in 25 cities averaging more than 150 million visitors. Its legal team, previously recognised in the GC Powerlist: Turkey Teams 2016, continues to achieve great things as a small, tightly knit function with Burcu Sönmezyalçın Döker, director of legal affairs, general counsel and compliance and data protection official, still heading the department. The team consists of two lawyers and a trainee and covers all of the company’s legal and corporate matters with skill and commercial nuance. The team also collectively handles external retainer counsel for all litigation issues, sustainability and awarding committee matters. In the last year the team has been hard at work adopting a numerical and strategic KPI system that aligns with the commercial targets of the company. The implementation of this project in itself allowed the team to completely align itself with the business requirements of the company and turn the achievements of the legal affairs department into tangible and accountable items. Additionally, the team has worked on implementing procedures to comply with new Turkish data protection laws in line with GDPR requirements. Döker identifies the team’s culture as collaborative, saying that it ‘hinges on two words, camaraderie and support. These two words became the benchmark for the department’s internal dealings and it took over three years to come to a point where all members of the team can act in unison regarding any and all challenges that are presented to us each and every day’.