Balcıoğlu Selçuk Akman Keki Attorney Partnership ("BASEAK"), held “Protection of Personal Data Seminar” on 12 October 2016 in Istanbul, in association with Biznet Bilişim and Gemalto, leading IT companies specializing in the cyber-security area. The Seminar aimed to describe the potential reflections of the Data Protection Act, which became fully effective in the previous weeks in Turkey. Despite the Data Protection Act becoming effective on April 7, 2016, certain provisions of the Law were on a transition period in order to ensure proper compliance with rules and standards newly set by the Law.

The seminar opened with speeches by Galip M. Selçuk (Head of Corporate and M&A Department and Senior Partner of BASEAK) and Ateş Sünbül (Head of PCI DSS and IT Consultancy at Biznet Bilişim). The speakers who took part in the Seminar were Barış Yüksel, Ateş Sünbül, Onur Arıkan, Umut Ataklı, Darius Czuchaj and Erol Doğan.

Barış Yüksel, who is an associate in BASEAK’s Competition and Regulation Department, gave a presentation entitled “Reflections of the New Data Protection Law and its Difficulties” mainly focused on the general principles. Barış presented the general framework of the newly introduced data protection regime in Turkey and the difficulties of the application of the new data protection regime. Following Barış’s presentation, Ateş Sünbül gave a presentation entitled “Are We Ready to Protect Personal Data?” discussing the IT related side of the new regulation and illustrating the practical solutions which are both compatible with the data protection regime and the daily needs of the clients, with examples from his previous experiences.

Onur Arıkan (co-founder of Biznet Bilişim) and Umut Ataklı (Junior Technical Support Specialist at Biznet Bilişim) presented on the topic: “When/Where to Determine and How to Classify Personal Data?” providing insights about the process of determining sensitive personal data. They also demonstrated a brief live demo of a data protection application on a small-sized data set.

Seminar continued with Dariusz Czuchaj, who is a senior associate in Dentons’ Warsaw office. Dariusz’s presentation was entitled “EU Data Protection Rules and the Applications in EU Member States” explaining both the EU Data Protection Directive and the General Data Protection Regulation, which is currently enacted but will not come into force until May 2018. Participants from various industries had the opportunity to gain valuable insights regarding their compliance with the new data protection regime. As the final speaker, Erol Doğan (Pre-Sales Consultant at Gemalto) gave his presentation entitled “New Generation Approaches for Securing the Data” asserting the empirical data and results derived from them regarding data security.

After the presentations, there was a panel discussion led by Şahin Ardıyok, Head of the Competition and Regulation Department and Senior Partner of BASEAK. Şahin and the other participants in the seminar were able to address questions to all of the aforementioned speakers. 

100 attendees, from several sectors, including executives of leading corporations from online shopping websites, call centers, insurance companies, TMT companies, FMCG retail companies, apparel companies, banks and finance companies,  participated inthe seminar.

About Balcıoğlu Selçuk Ardıyok Keki

Balcıoğlu Selçuk Ardıyok Keki Attorney Partnership is an Istanbul-based full service law firm with a team of 130+ lawyers and economists. Our practice focuses on a wide range of areas including real estate, corporate, mergers and acquisitions, banking, project finance, capital markets, competition and anti-trust, employment, litigation and arbitration, telecommunication, regulatory and public law and intellectual property. We represent and advise Turkish and multinational clients, including Fortune 500 companies, in the banking and finance, private equity, real estate, manufacturing, hospitality and leisure, retail, automotive, energy, information technology, life sciences, luxury fashion and beauty, and media sectors.