Vice president, general counsel, board member | Anagold Madencilik
Assistant managing director legal, board member of the group of companies | GAMA Enerji
Head of legal | Temsa Skoda Sabancı Ulaşım Araçları A.Ş.
Director of legal affairs, compliance officer and data protection official, member of the company management board and board secretary | Media Markt Turkey
Legal director and head of Akkök ethical eommittee | Akkök Sanayi Yatırım ve Geliştirme
Legal director EMEA and Türkiye. | Celebi Aviation Holding
Chief legal and compliance officer | Koç Sistem Bilgi ve İletişim Hizmetleri A.Ş.
Head of legal affairs department | Metro Properties
Senior lawyer, M&A and transactional affairs | Yilport Holdings
General counsel, senior compliance officer and corporate secretary | Mercedes-Benz Türk
Chief legal counsel and compliance officer | KAZANCI HOLDÄ°NG(AKSA)
Formerly chief legal counsel | TOFAŞ - Türk Otomobil Fabrikası
Country leader and general counsel | 3M Sanayi ve Ticaret
General counsel and chief of staff | Marti Ileri Teknoloji A.Åž.
Chief legal counsel and compliance officer (foreign affairs) | Enka
Legal affairs and investor relations director | Yapitek Yapi Teknolojisi
Legal director Türkiye, Georgia and North Macedonia | TAB GIDA SANAYİ ve TİCARET A.Ş.
Head of legal department -ALJ TR Auto silo | ALJ Holding
Chief legal counsel, assistant general manager, executive board member | Allianz Turkey
Head of legal and corporate compliance officer | Metro Cash & Carry Turkiye
Head of legal and compliance | Zer Merkezi Hizmetler ve Tic. A.Åž.
 Due to the favourable geopolitical location of Türkiye, it is a renowned hotspot for local and foreign investors. Its regulatory and political landscape has also seen recent, rapid evolution and change. Frequent developments are underway to laws regarding real estate, data privacy, citizenship, among others. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic presented a distinctive set of challenges for the country and for companies in Türkiye. General counsel, throughout this period, guided their respective companies with consistent and practical support.
The Legal 500 GC Powerlist: Türkiye 2022 demonstrates an astounding level of legal ability against an arduous, transforming economic background. Driven by resilience, general counsel in Türkiye have assumed a leading role in their companies and navigated unparalleled challenges. It does not come as a surprise that the in-house legal profession is burgeoning in Türkiye, attributable to the taxing undertakings they typically face in their organisations.
‘Inflation rates are on average 30 to 35% and it is increasingly difficult to make new investments in Türkiye’, details one in-house counsel.  Considering the current context of the economy, the need for versatile general counsel within companies in Türkiye has never been more prominent. We often hear about the all-encompassing roles of general counsel in organisations; but in this jurisdiction they have exceeded expectations and met each obstacle their companies faced, with faultless pragmatic guidance. Nevertheless, they were able to perform extraordinarily well in such an uncertain time, intensified by the tough economic aftermath of Covid-19.
Though the market has been impacted by changing legislation and the fluctuation of the Turkish lira, general counsel throughout our research proved their technical and commercial capabilities to match these challenges. Looking forward, there seemed to be a consensus among general counsel to continue ‘managing risks, cooperating with business partners, and adapting to the ever-changing environment and priorities’, as concisely put by one in-house counsel.
The Central Bank of Türkiye also maintains that the economy is on its way to recovery, while the government strongly incentivises foreign investments through several schemes promoting digitalisation, networking opportunities and citizenship acquisition. This publication emphasises the most creative ways successful counsel have extended themselves to meet and anticipate the needs of their companies and teams.
It was certainly a pleasure to speak with the premier general counsel who participated in this edition of the Legal 500 GC Powerlist: Türkiye 2022. They continue to cement their place as an enduring, unassailable in-house community globally. Congratulations to the successful and outstanding counsel who have been integral to their companies’ stability and longevity!
Melissa Yebisi
Research analyst:
GC Powerlist Series
Start of A New Era
Start of the year 2020 has added many new words to our dictionaries. Everybody has learned about PCR tests, wore masks everywhere, learned the implications of a cough and followed the number of infections in their country day by day. While we are leaving the pandemic behind, we must pay a historical tribute to our health workers, who have borne the brunt of this crisis and continue to put themselves in harm’s way in the service of people.
From a business point of view, the last few years have taught us that the conventional is getting outdated. Businesses learned to work effectively online, physical workplaces and international flights left its place to virtual meeting rooms and online webinars. Increasing importance given to sustainability and the digitalization of businesses were driving the world towards such a change for many years but the pandemic was the turning point where theory became reality. The current virtual presence every business was led to establish has paved the way for a brand-new era where the office became where your laptop is.
The new era of virtual meetings, home-office and online collaborations are here and the legal world needs to catch-up. Now more than ever, national and international law firms who have historically stayed rather traditional, required to adapt to this new era through implementing various changes to their own firm culture. Undoubtedly, the first thing that was introduced to a legal professional’s life was online meetings, virtual briefings and even online hearings. These things that were brand new just a couple of years ago, is now the norm for being successful and effective in the legal profession.
Perhaps this swift adaptation to a new virtual era is the main factor that has ensured which business was to gloom and prosper through these tough times. Businesses’ resilience was tested throughout this challenging period, and now while we are leaving this pandemic behind, learning from the past mistakes will be the torch that leads any business to a bright future. But as we know, a business is only as good as its employees, and this year’s Powerlisters have shown that they are willing to carry this torch for their own respective companies. This year’s Powerlisters are not only recognized for their individual legal brilliance, but also their adaptation and their role in influencing their organisations.
These legal professionals in GC Powerlist Turkey that are recognized herein, are visionaries and guides to their respective businesses and they are paving the way to lead their business, their country and the entire world to a new era. They are innovators, willing to motivate greatness, contribute to the change and form a new era where you can conquer the world at the comfort of your own sofa.
This is the ideal that is embedded to the roots of Kılınç Law & Consulting. We have always taken pride in being young, diverse, innovative, dynamic and capable in various jurisdictions which led us to adapt to the new normal smoothly. After we have adapted to this new era, its time to lead the change and be a frontrunner in the legal world, through our quality in service, business-oriented approach and solutions and expert legal service providers who are experienced in providing services in various sectors both nationally and internationally. In this new era, legal expertise is and will always be at the core of what we do but our diverse team comprising of experts in various legal fields offer a wider range of services which essentially means that we will do what is needed by using a wide array of technologic means, everywhere in the world to adapt to the requirements of our clients in every project. This is the Kılınç Law & Consulting vision that will carry the torch for a newer and brighter future.
As Kılınç Law; we believe we have an obligation to carry the legal business, commerce and even the country forward by making clients more effective, the communities stronger and more diverse as a whole. We build strong relationships based on trust, continue to develop through experience and share ambitions of our clients to always aim perfection.
That is why, we are always proud to sponsor GC Powerlist Turkey, since it is the greatest of pleasures to be together with general counsels that share our ambitions and objectives to carry its business and its countries to a new and successful era.
Congratulations to everyone on this year’s Powerlist, who are each powerful decision makers and leaders in their own organizations; and together as the entire Turkish legal community we have the utmost confidence that we will be the ones enabling a better, greener and sustainable future where prosperity, peace and equality rules the world.
In Vienna’s historic cultural centre within shouting distance of the famed opera house, The Legal 500 gathered 150 of the country’s top in-house lawyers for the second GC Summit Austria. Alongside them was an experienced cohort of private practice experts from our event partners – petsche pollak, Baker McKenzie, CERHA HEMPEL, Taylor Wessing and Wolf Theiss – who were on hand to dispense their wisdom via our six sessions covering a multitude of relevant topic areas.
Expertly kicking the summit off was a speaker who always gives an excellent showing, Stefan Wochinz of Vaillant. In his hugely well-received keynote speech, Wochinz spoke about building a rewarding and successful career as a general counsel, and outlined some key themes to be explored in later sessions.
Our first panel discussion followed. In this expansive discussion, Alina Alavi Kia and Roman Heidinger of CERHA HEMPEL provided the audience with a thorough overview of brand protection requirements in Austria and gave a roadmap for successfully shepherding a brand through new technological developments. Among other issues, best practice benchmarks for trademarks, anti-counterfeiting, and licensing in an increasingly digitalised world were discussed in detail.
Next on stage were Simone Petsche-Demmel and Andreas Pollak of petsche pollak Amanda Neil ofHead Group, Nicole Bäck-Knapp of Ecker & Partner and Alice Fremuth-of Nivalion. Featuring a speaker lineup boasting extremely diverse experience and a topic that opened up multiple avenues of conversation, this panel teased out a number of issues that were at the forefront of those in the audience. As new supply chain due diligence requirements began to take hold in Austria across Europe, strategies for ensuring business-as-usual were outlined.
The next session was a particularly enlightening one organised in partnership with Taylor Wessing. Their partners, Andreas Schütz and Axel von dem Bussche were joined by Alexander Sammer of The National Anti-Doping Agency, Dr. Peter Lohberger of Wiener Wohnen Hausbetreuung and Prof. Dr. Clemens Heitzinger, co-director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (CAIML) at TU Wien. With Schütz and von dem Bussche opening by outlining the legal framework, Sammer and Lohberger then provided the perspectives of government and corporate entities respectively. As one of the foremost experts on large language models and machine learning in the country, Heitzinger’s contributions to the discussion were particularly well-received by the audience. As well as giving a background into how GPT and other models work, he gave practical advice on how to utilise them responsibly and to their best effect in an in-house legal department.
Baker McKenzie then brought their expertise to bear on a topic that is growing in importance worldwide: carve-out transactions. Given that carve-outs tendto be more challenging than an acquisition of stand-alone businesses, the panel discussed the key structuring considerations as well as practical and legal issues that must be overcome. Those on stage (Philipp Stanek and Sophie Schubert of Baker McKenzie, Dr Franz Fazekas, of ams OSRAM of Hoerbiger Group of Companies and Klemens Keferboeck of Magna International) also focused on the planning, due diligence, and documentation of carve-out transactions and touched upon selected issues regarding effective integration.
Andrea Gritsch and Florian Kusznier of Wolf Theiss were joined on stage by Victoria Corley of Enery and Dr. Alexander Schall of Unicredit Bank for our final panel session, which took a broad look at M&A issues, focusing on the key challenges which clients and their advisers faced executing deals in the current climate. Both Corley and Dr. Schall provided insights into transactions they have been a part of in their prior careers, giving the audience an exclusive insight into how deals are handled by the in-house side at the strategic level.
Our final session was a wide-ranging presentation on white-collar crime by two of the best in the business: Simone Petsche-Demmel and Andreas Pollak. Based on their extensive experience, they rounded out the summit by outlining some of the cases they have been a part of, and brought attention to some potential pitfalls that in-house counsel should be mindful of.