Abcoo Law Firm > Istanbul, Turkey > Firm Profile

Diversity

As Abcoo Law Firm we strongly believe in diversity, equity and inclusion and that it is our only way forward. While the understanding and promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion being drastically increasing among society, we are delighted and proud to say that we have been embracing our differences and diversities from day one.

Our main goal is to provide and maintain a safe working environment internally, since we believe that the best work comes from people that are happy, strongly connected to one another and feeling safe and sound. The relationship between colleagues are to be built around respect, love and trust and of course, acceptance. We believe we do make our best endeavours to avoid a stressful work environment, since we all know nothing good ever comes from that kind of environment. Commitment to diversity means acceptance of different point of views brought by individuals coming from different genders, sexual orientation, ethnic roots, religion and political stance, and that brings colour and uniqueness to environment.

We take our pride to say that over 60% of our team members are women. On associate level this ratio rises above 72% and on senior associate level it is 100%. We support women led businesses by not only providing legal consultancy to them but also promoting small businesses empowered by women. We choose to refrain from providing legal services to projects which we believe is hazardous for what we stand for, from fundamental human rights to environment, and encourage others to do so. It is safe to say that we, as Abcoo Law Firm, are aware of the ongoing issues regarding the inequity and discrimination not only in corporate life but also in daily life. Especially, people with different sexual orientations, marital status, ethnic origins, nationalities, religious beliefs and political stances and people with disabilities are being targeted and marginalized. We believe we do our best to eliminate such alienation and discrimination towards anyone who faces them.

It is for sure we have achieved to provide a safe workplace which feels like home and its members feel like family to one another. This reflects on our work and it is well-known that our relationships with our clients are long-lasting. We have built an entire system of acceptance and understanding. We have established that mind-set both internally and externally and, indeed, we will continue to use our best endeavours to spread this awareness.

Client testimonials

CLIENT: Ömer Egesel – Country Manager
COMPANY/FIRM: Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company
TESTIMONIAL: “We, as a company, have been working with ABCOO since their inception. The key reason for us to work with ABCOO is their shared expertise particularly in the real estate sector, back up and additional help when needed and their customer focused, diligent approach in the engagements. The team’s hands-on approach and the responsive style in handling the matters are their main strengths. Though they still provide high quality services and target to exceed the expectations. Also, as we have experienced, their professional network in the market enables them to deliver the most effective results when required.”

CLIENT: Ufuk Özkan – Finance Director
COMPANY/FIRM: ELCA Kozmetik Limited Şirketi, an Estee Lauder Companies Affiliate
TESTIMONIAL: “As Estee Lauder Companies Turkey Affiliate, we are very happy to have a legal partner like ABCOO, who understands our needs even before we ask them and highlight all risks and opportunities with very comprehensive analysis. They have a very wide network in Turkish legal landscape and they leverage it to provide support for us. Every member of their team, from partners to junior associates, are always very reachable and flexible to work with. They are very detail-oriented and they provide point executive summaries to save ELC Turkey Executives’ time. They always deliver their tasks before deadlines and follow them up very strictly.”

CLIENT: Sidar Şahin – Founder & CEO. Peak Games
COMPANY/FIRM: Peak Games
TESTIMONIAL: “We have been working with Abcoo for years now, and it has always been a real pleasure to work with them. Especially in the acquisition of Peak Games by Zynga Inc, we have achieved one of the most world-shaking acquisition transaction through their guidance and assistance. Their tireless efforts enabled us to achieve successful conclusion to this marathon. We thoroughly commend them both on their professionalism and friendship, without which the transaction would have foundered numerous times. Over this period, it was a privilege to enjoy their professionalism, expertise and friendship.”

CLIENT: Grisette Almann – General Manager-312 Vista
COMPANY/FIRM: Dolphin Gayrimenkul ve Yatırım Geliştirme Ltd. Şti.
TESTIMONIAL: “I am pleased to highly recommend ABCOO Law Firm to be considered as part of your prestigious organization.  ABCOO is my “go-to” for all legal business matters.  From preparing and drafting all tenant and vendor contracts to giving counsel when I am in most need. ABCOO is the consummate professional and the attorneys assigned to our company do not waste valuable time responding to 312 Vista’s business needs. I write with pride, that as our attorneys, I am confident when making business decisions because ABCOO has the interpersonal skills needed to make their clients feel confident.  They offer adroit advice in a timely and urgent manor, which in business is of utter importance.”

CLIENT: Osman Emrah Şahin – H&M Expansion l Real Estate l Strategy
COMPANY/FIRM: H&M HENNES&MAURITZ TEKSTİL LİMİTED ŞİRKETİ
TESTIMONIAL: “Abcoo is a very well-known law firm and we are working with them for 10 years as they provide legal services in keeping with our corporate culture and values. Their key features are mainly their unique expertise in the retail sector, their ability to take initiatives and most importantly, their ability of working in a pro-active way so as to provide us with swift responses and solutions. We, as H&M, are feeling happy to work with Abcoo’s experienced team, not only in the field of lease but also in other fields including but not limited to union, payroll, HR and logistics.”

International capabilities

Abcoo Law Firm provides wide range of legal services to domestic and international businesses. Our client portfolio consists of approximately 60% international and 40% local businesses. Besides, we also assist several individual foreign and local clients. We shape our services as per our clients’ requirements and requests from A to Z, and amongst those, mostly we offer assistance on matters such as purchase of real estates, mergers and acquisitions, corporate and commercial transactions, litigation and arbitration.

Our understanding has always been to provide top notch legal services to our clients worldwide, and assist our clients in small or large-scaled business transactions around the globe. In this respect, we provide our services and for our Turkish individual and corporate clients in case they enter into partnerships or are involved in transactions of acquisitions in different business areas especially in Europe and United States in order to broaden their catalogue of investments, expand on a global scale and increase competitive capacity. While our clients underwent above mentioned changes, we represented them both directly and indirectly with the collaboration of other foreign law firms when necessary, with respect to their business projects and legal enquires.

Our firm has been working with several international companies some of them being;

• Several Qatar based real estate investment companies’ various projects in Turkey,
• Europe based global manufacturing companies,
• Globally well-known companies from entertainment industry,
• Turkey leg of the largest and the most well-known vendor of computer software in the world,
• United States based globally well-known cosmetic companies etc.

In addition to the above, we took part in a widely well-known, one-of-a-kind acquisition of Peak Oyun Yazılım ve Pazarlama A.Ş. by Zynga Inc. and advised the founder and the CEO of Peak Games, Sidar Şahin during the process which then led Peak to become Turkey’s first “unicorn”. Needless to say that this transaction really is a significant bullet point not only for our law firm’s achievements but also for the legal market overall as well.

Besides the legal assistance we provide to our clients in their billions of dollar investments in real estate sector, we also provide legal assistance for our clients with dispute resolution, arbitration and M&A aspects of their international transactions. As an emerging hot-topic, we also assist our clients for the data compliance matters, and draft data protection, privacy and cyber-security related policies and restructure agreements in line with the data protection regulations for domestic and international companies seeing that the protection of data is becoming more and more important and strict with new regulations each day.

Our department is also known for its close and long-lasting relationships with the clients. We believe this derives from our “value-added” approach and our understanding of our clients’ needs and necessities of the surrounding business environment along with the tailor-made and solution-based legal services that we provide to our local and international clients. Most of our oldest clients are global companies which require assistance on an international level so that we have been representing those for any transaction they encounter around the globe.