About

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

The most important issues that required the involvement and steering of the Legal Affairs department in the last 2 years have been;

• The creation of the data protection layout and inventory of the company and the completion of the registration to the VERBİS system of the local authority
• The creation of the company’s first customer loyalty program – the Media Markt CLUB
• Handling of all the aspects of the sector wide investigation of the Labour Ministry that was conducted in the retail sector.

Have any particular compliance or data protection matters challenged you in the last 12 months? If yes, can you explain how you overcame the challenge?

The most challenging issue was the preparation and final implementation phase of the data protection law Compliance program. We have devoted countless hours of our available workforce to the Project and finally registered our company with the VERBİS system at least 3 months in advance of the legal deadline.

During this Project, we needed to find a way to overcome the inherent resistance that was inadvertently presented by the old IT systems of the company.  We utilised the support of our company’s top management in sponsoring the Project and with their support we were able to find ways to implement the requirements of the new law into our existing structures. However, garnering top level support for this project was not merely possible by simple means of showing the risks of non-compliance with the law, instead we showed to our board the benefits and commercial possibilities that will be attained by adhering to the new law.

You previously told us about your adoption of a numerical and strategic KPI system that aligns with the commercial targets of the company. How has this assisted you so far and how do you think it will it benefit the company in the next 12 months?

The KPI system has been very crucial in terms of the departments’ alignment with the overall commercial objectives of the company without sacrificing our commitment to the principles of Compliance as the system is designed to push us towards more innovative but risk-averse ways of doing legal work.

I think that the drive that is provided by this system would allow us to accelerate our involvement into the Project streams of the company and provide pre-emptive legal advice to the relevant teams so that they can move forward in a more speedy and risk free manner with their projects.

Considering that you’ve held senior in-house positions for over 15 years now, what techniques do you use to provide commercially-focused and optimal business advice to your company? How do you get these across to more junior lawyers in the team?

I have a “responsibility = freedom” approach with my colleagues in the department and I value autonomy and accountability in all aspects of our work.  This allows all the members of the team, including myself, to think outside the box as much as possible even for daily tasks we perform which benefits the commercial processes of the company greatly, especially in regards to the resolution of consumer claim issues. This way, we push ourselves to find more efficient ways of handling our tasks and enjoy the freedom that it provides.

What do you feel is the best way to get more women into in-house legal leadership positions?

In the Turkish market, in-house corporate roles are already predominantly made up of female lawyers and this something we are actually very proud of. This situation in itself lays the groundwork for women to be more prominent at in-house leadership roles and has a direct effect in getting more women to such roles.

Do you encourage your team to use any “legal tech” products and do you find them a helpful management device?

We do use legal tech applications to a certain extent but the Turkish market is not on the eve of accepting tech solutions to legal matters as of yet. So what we do is utilise common platforms that are dedicated to legislation tracking. We are also trying to implement an IT solution to internal claim Management and effective queuing for more efficient tracking and reporting of legal issues and their financial implications.

FOCUS ON: In-house legal’s role in financial sustainability of the company

Sustainability is fast becoming a major component of any company’s business strategy and it has a lot of different aspects related to many units and functions of a company. One of the more unseen parts of a sustainability effort – albeit being a major part of any ESG rating methodology – is about “financial sustainability” and this requires the organic management of company’s legal risks and liabilities in a sustainable manner. Moreover, Compliance principles share a lot of the markers with the fundamentals of financial sustainability.

All of these developments clearly show that in-house counsel will be in a unique role in the upcoming decade when it comes to the implementation of financial sustainability principles in any given company as legal risk assessment and core compliance work is mostly done and supervised by in-house professionals in many companies around the world.

Accordingly, I believe that in-house counsel should equip themselves with more technical knowledge pertaining to sustainability issues to better position themselves as trusted advisers within their companies.