Baş | Kaymaz’s founding partner Baran Baş explains how this specialised competition law boutique is recognised by Legal 500 for client satisfaction.

What do you see as the main points that differentiate Baş | Kaymaz from your competitors?

Competition law in Türkiye is becoming increasingly interventionist. To handle this environment, businesses do not need a generic summary of the law, they need a clear-eyed assessment of what they can and cannot do on a Monday morning. Our partner involvement and ability to translate dense regulatory theory into actionable business logic is what truly sets us apart. Being a specialised boutique allows us to be faster, more precise, and considerably more candid in our advice.

Our approach combines technical depth with commercial awareness. We do not advise in the abstract. Every opinion, filing, or compliance programme we deliver is calibrated to the client's sector, business model, and risk profile. This is reflected in the independent client feedback underpinning our recognition in the Legal 500 Client Satisfaction Accolades, across all four evaluated criteria: Lawyer & Team Quality, Billing & Efficiency, Sector Knowledge, and NPS®.

As a principle, we never compromise on the calibre of our work. Every piece of advice we deliver carries the full weight and sharpness of our senior expertise. Our clients, ranging from SMEs to multinational companies and holdings operating across heavily regulated sectors, receive partner-level attention on every matter, with direct access to decision-makers throughout each engagement. This is not a structural aspiration; it is how the firm operates in practice.

In the traditional law firm hierarchy, there is often a significant gap between the partner who secures the mandate and the junior associates who perform the substantive work. We have intentionally moved away from that model. At Baş | Kaymaz, the founding partners remain the primary point of contact and lead drafters on every file. Our clients are receiving the direct expertise of the people they hired, rather than paying for a brand name while receiving the work of someone more junior.

A further distinguishing feature of our practice is the close collaboration we maintain with leading competition law academics. Complex matters, whether a multi-faced investigation or a Phase II merger control review, are studied in depth, with the analytical rigour that an academic perspective brings to bear alongside practical legal judgment. This integration of scholarly insight into live advisory work ensures that our analysis goes beyond established practice and engages with the theoretical underpinnings of the legal questions at stake — an approach that consistently produces sharper, better-reasoned outputs for our clients.

Finally, we operate with transparent and competitive fee arrangements tailored to the specific needs of each matter. In a market where billing practices are often opaque, predictability of cost is something our clients consistently value.

Which practices do you see growing in the next 12 months? What are the drivers behind that?

 We expect the Turkish Competition Authority ("TCA") to maintain, and indeed intensify, its interventionist stance over the next 12 months, continuing a trajectory that has been clearly visible over the past five years.

As evidenced by the TCA's annual reports, enforcement activity has increased across all fronts: the number of investigations opened, on-site inspections conducted, sector inquiries launched, and remedies imposed have each grown considerably. This is not a temporary spike but a structural shift in the TCA’s posture and institutional capacity.

While consumer-facing sectors and digital markets tend to attract the most public attention, all six of the TCA's supervision and enforcement divisions are working vigorously across their assigned sectors. The practical implication for businesses is significant: no sector or market can reasonably expect to fly under the radar. Energy, media, pharmaceuticals, retail, financial technologies, logistics, and construction (to name only a few) have all featured prominently in recent enforcement cycles.

Against this backdrop, we anticipate continued growth in demand across several areas of our practice. Merger control work will remain active, investigation defence and dawn raid preparedness will likewise remain critical, as the TCA has demonstrated both the willingness and the institutional tools to act swiftly. Finally, competition compliance, which is a matter long underestimated by businesses as a precautionary investment, is increasingly being recognised as an operational necessity rather than an optional exercise, and we expect demand in this area to grow accordingly.

What's the main change you've made in the firm that will benefit clients?

The most significant change we have made is the deliberate decision to remain small and specialised at a time when the natural commercial pressure on any growing firm is to diversify and expand headcount. We have resisted that pressure, and our clients are the direct beneficiaries.

In practical terms, this means we have continued to invest in deepening our competition law expertise rather than broadening our general offering. Over the past year, this has taken the form of an expanding publications programme covering Turkish Competition Board decisions, legislative developments, and comparative competition law analysis, which keeps our advisory work analytically sharp and ensures our clients receive advice that reflects the current state of the law, not a generalisation of it.

We have also invested in the structure of our client relationships. Response times, fee predictability, and the directness of communication areas we actively monitor and improve, not incidental features of how we work. The independent client feedback underlying our recognition in the Legal 500 Client Satisfaction Accolades across all four evaluated criteria tells us that this investment is producing measurable results.

Perhaps most importantly, we have been deliberate about ensuring that the quality of work delivered to a long-standing multinational client is indistinguishable from that delivered to an SME engaging us for the first time. Consistency of output, regardless of the size or profile of the mandate, remains the standard against which we hold ourselves.

We have also shifted our operational philosophy toward pre-emptive risk mapping. Traditionally, competition lawyers are called in when a dawn raid has already happened or when a merger filing is imminent. We realized that this reactive model is inherently more expensive and stressful for the client. To combat this, we have developed a far more integrated audit system where we review a client’s internal communications and sales strategies periodically, before the TCA knocks on the door.

Is technology changing the way you interact with your clients, and the services you can provide them?

 In our field, technology is less about AI-written briefs and more about the management of massive data sets. During a merger control filing or a full-scale investigation, the sheer volume of documents the TCA demands is staggering. We have invested in high-end data room and e-discovery tools that allow us to sift through millions of emails and internal memos at a speed that was previously impossible. This doesn't just save time; it ensures that we find the "smoking gun" or the "exculpatory evidence" before the regulator does.

Regarding client interaction, the days of the 20-page formal legal opinion are largely over. Our clients operate in a high-velocity environment. They prefer dynamic, secure project management portals where they can see the status of a filing in real-time. We use technology to strip away the administrative friction. However, we remain firm believers that the most critical part of our job, the high-level strategy and the negotiation with the TCA, is a human skill that cannot be outsourced to a machine. Technology handles the data; we handle the judgment.

Can you give us a practical example of how you have helped a client to add value to their business?

One area where we consistently add value beyond pure legal advice is merger control. When a client is considering an acquisition, the competition law dimension is rarely the only variable in play. Transaction timelines, commercial conditions, and regulatory risk all interact, and the legal advice must account for all of them.

In one recent matter, a client operating in a heavily regulated sector was acquiring a target with activities that triggered the TCA's notification requirement under the technology undertaking exception, a threshold that is frequently misunderstood and underestimated by transacting parties. By identifying the notification requirement at an early stage and managing the filing process with precision, we ensured that the interim period obligations were fully observed and that the transaction received unconditional clearance within the standard review period. The client was able to proceed to closing on schedule, without the regulatory uncertainty that a late or incomplete filing would have created.

In a different context, a client approached us following the initiation of a TCA investigation into its sector. Rather than simply managing the defence, we used the investigation as the starting point for a comprehensive review of the client's commercial practices and contract templates. The outcome was a tailored compliance programme that addressed the specific risk areas identified during the investigation, thus giving the client not only a defence strategy but a forward-looking framework for operating within the bounds of competition law.

Are clients looking for stability and strategic direction from their law firms - where do you see the firm in three years’ time?

Clients are moving away from the vendor model. They do not want a law firm that simply processes paperwork. They rather want a partner who understands the regulatory, political, and economic headwinds shaping the business environment in Türkiye. Stability, in our context, means having a legal team that does not turn over every six months and that carries a deep institutional memory of the client's history, risk profile, and past challenges. Clients look to us for a clear red line on what is permissible, and equally clear guidance on how to outmanoeuvre their competitors within the bounds of the law.

This is precisely the model we have built, and the independent client feedback underpinning our recognition in the Legal 500 Client Satisfaction Accolades across all four evaluated criteria confirms that it is working. Clients are not only satisfied with the technical output; they are recognising the value of the broader advisory relationship.

In three years' time, we see Baş | Kaymaz as the definitive benchmark for boutique excellence in the Turkish competition law market. Our goal is to remain the first port of call for the most complex, high-stakes competition matters in the country; becoming the firm that is known for being in the room when the most consequential decisions are being made. The trajectory we are on, and the recognitions we have received from Legal 500, give us a strong foundation from which to pursue that ambition.

Success for us is not measured by headcount or the breadth of our practice areas. It is measured by the fact that when a multinational faces a competition law crisis in Türkiye, they call us because they know the founding partners will personally handle the matter from day one to resolution.