Country: Turkey
After starting at Domino's as head of legal, Müge realised that the daily workload may prevent a compliance leader to spot important risk items and compliance requires an active outlook that requires more management time from the legal leader. Consequently, she organised her supporting team to allow her to take a more proactive approach. In her opinion, supporting the business with compliance and risk management is a key element, very much like radar systems in a ship that prevents a catastrophe. Besides her work as in-house counsel, she wrote two academic legal papers and submitted them in legal conferences where out of 65 academicians, she was the only person who did not have an academic title. It was an exciting opportunity for her. The topics of the legal papers were related with compliance issues, namely the most favored nation clause from the perspectives of competition law (European Union-Jean Monnet were sponsors for the conference) and comparative advertising (Turkish Consumer Rights Organization and Maltepe University were sponsors for the conference). The second paper was also published as a section of a textbook. In addition, the legal opinion of the Turkish Competition Authority has been changed in line with her legal paper and most favored nation clause was re-defined. Therefore, retail companies have an advantage from this decision as they are free to change their prices on their own websites and do not have to make the same price that is published on an aggregator’s web site. Although it is not possible to measure the effect of her publication on this change of policy, she is very proud as the view of the Turkish Competition Authority is now in line with her suggestions. During 2021, Müge had the opportunity to be a speaker at the Worldwide Sessions of Legal Conferences, mostly in IP Law, E-Commerce and Compliance Law. She is very thankful to Queen Mary, as she learnt IP Transactions and E-Commerce in depth, and she now has a good background in the subjects.
She was honored to be listed as one of Most Powerful Women IP Awards and to be a Finalist for Women in Compliance and Governance Awards this year. Also, she is nominated again for the GC Powerlist-Legal 500 for 2022 (it was closed in 2021 because of pandemic) where she was listed as one of the leading in-house lawyers in 2020. Furthermore, Müge was recently selected as the country representative for Association of Corporate Counsel, where she finds the chance to share her ideas and experience with her colleagues and organises training programs that cover legal and practical issues for in-house counsels. She is very happy to be in this organisation and have a network with European in-house lawyers. Also, she was admitted as a mentor in Marmara University School of Law, where she graduated 15 years ago. She will be very happy to share her experience with students who will graduate in the coming years. She also applied for the 2021-2022 term for a mentee program specialising in the retail sector. This will be very helpful for her as mentors will be CEO or CFO of the biggest companies in Turkey.