Focus on: My career

Mr. Safak joined Turkish Airlines in 2016, at a time when Turkish Airlines was expanding its fleet and global operations dramatically as a result of a long-term strategy change. Facing challenges of increased cross-border activities amidst global geographical and political instability, Mr. Safak took an active role in founding both Compliance and Corporate / M&A departments in the Turkish Airlines Legal Department.

As of today, Mr. Safak is the head of Turkish Airlines’ Compliance and M&A/ Corporate teams. His responsibilities include managing global strategy, sanctions and export controls risk exposure and M&A / Joint Venture initiatives of Turkish Airlines and its affiliates / subsidiaries.

Leading two departments, Mr. Safak has legal work experience on multiple fronts. In relation to compliance department, he oversees compliance-related matters and international aviation regulations, including the development and implementation of compliance regimes of Turkish Airlines in all countries. He also provides legal and business strategic advice to the board and senior management of other Turkish Airlines departments with regard to applicable sanctions, export regulations, trade restrictions, financial restrictions and other internationally applicable regulations.

In relation to transactional and M&A/ Corporate department, he leads a broad range of aviation related transactions, including various corporate transactions, M&A and strategic alliances, corporate governance, marketing transactions, and aircraft transactions.  Public projects include a $500 million+ equity investment in a cross-border joint venture with a leading catering services company in order to provide catering services to Turkish Airlines and potential third-party customers, the launch of a new airline joint venture in Albania, multiple strategic partnerships for business synergy, and projects with various providers such as Pratt & Whitney, Airbus, Boeing Company and CFM.

Mr. Safak also takes a proactive role in mentoring attorneys at Turkish Airlines. While acknowledging the importance of enhancing legal skills, Mr. Safak believes that actively improving general skills and personality traits such as effective communication, openness, conscientiousness and critical thinking is significantly more important than the knowledge and memorisation of black letter law. He encourages his team members to focus on developing interpersonal skills as much as legal skills to become better lawyers. For Mr. Safak, in an age where the access to legal information is unlimited as a result of the Information Age and digital transformation, what matters the most to be an excellent legal professional is being a good issue spotter, critical thinker and effective communicator. Thus, he believes that an attorney who wants to have a life characterised by competence and productivity must be able to (i) spot legal issues in a flawless manner, (ii) find the relevant information to solve the legal issue and (iii) organise and communicate their thoughts effectively and concisely with the clients.