Privacy and data protection notice

1. What we collect

When you contact us

Your name, email address, telephone or WhatsApp number, nationality, the budget range and timescale you indicate, and whatever you choose to tell us about your objectives.

When you use the tools on this site

The website offers several interactive tools — an investment route finder, an application timeline assessment, a property price check, a document checklist and a cost calculator. What you type into these is processed to produce your result.

The document checklist asks about family circumstances, including marital status, previous divorces, the ages of children and whether a child was born outside marriage. We ask you not to enter names, passport numbers or dates of birth, and the tools do not need them.

When you become a client

Identity and address documents, passports, civil status certificates, financial and source-of-funds records, property and title documentation, and correspondence relating to your matter. Some of this falls into categories that KVKK and the GDPR treat as requiring extra protection, and we handle it accordingly.

Automatically

Standard server logs, including IP address, browser type and the pages requested, retained for security and to keep the site working.

2. Why we hold it, and on what basis

Purpose	Legal basis
Answering an enquiry and assessing whether we can act	Steps taken at your request before entering into a contract; our legitimate interest in responding to people who contact us
Providing the result of a tool you have used	Your explicit request; consent where you tick a box
Acting for you on a matter	Performance of our engagement with you
Identity verification and anti–money laundering checks	Compliance with our legal obligations as a Turkish advocate
Keeping records of files and accounts	Legal obligations under Turkish professional, tax and commercial law
Establishing, exercising or defending legal claims	Our legitimate interests and legal obligations

3. Who we share it with

Only where it is necessary, and only what is necessary:

• Public authorities — the Land Registry, the Presidency of Migration Management, the Ministry of Interior, tax authorities and courts, where your matter requires it.
• Professionals working on your file — sworn translators, notaries, licensed valuation firms, and banks handling the transfer and conversion of funds.
• Service providers — our website host, email provider, and the AI service described above, each bound to process data only on our instructions.
• Where the law requires it — including reports we are obliged to make under anti–money laundering legislation. Those obligations override client instructions and, in some cases, we are not permitted to tell you a report has been made.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it with anyone for their own marketing.

4. Transfers outside Türkiye

Some of our service providers, including the AI service and our email and hosting providers, are located outside Türkiye. Where data is transferred abroad we rely on the mechanisms permitted under KVKK Article 9 and, where the GDPR applies, on the safeguards it requires. You can ask us for details of the arrangements applying to a particular provider.

5. How long we keep it

• Enquiries that do not become instructions — deleted within two years of the last contact, unless you ask us to delete them sooner.
• Tool inputs — not stored by us once your result has been produced.
• Client files — retained for the period required by Turkish professional and statutory rules, which is measured in years and in some cases decades. We cannot delete a client file on request where the law requires us to keep it.
• Anti–money laundering records — retained for the statutory period, which runs independently of any request for erasure.

6. Your rights

Under KVKK Article 11, and under the GDPR where it applies, you may ask us to:

• confirm whether we hold data about you, and give you a copy;
• tell you why we hold it and who we have shared it with;
• correct anything inaccurate or incomplete;
• delete it, or restrict what we do with it, where no legal obligation requires us to keep it;
• notify anyone we have shared it with of a correction or deletion;
• object to processing based on our legitimate interests;
• withdraw consent, where consent is what we relied on;
• receive a copy in a portable format, where the GDPR applies.

Write to arda.sardag@icloud.com or to the office address above. We respond within thirty days, and there is no charge unless a request is manifestly excessive.

If you are not satisfied, you may complain to the Turkish Personal Data Protection Authority (KVKK Kurumu). Where the GDPR applies, you may also complain to the supervisory authority in your own country.

7. Confidentiality

Separately from data protection law, everything a client tells us is covered by the professional secrecy obligations of a Turkish advocate. Those duties are stricter than this notice and are not waived by anything written here.

8. Cookies

This site uses only what is necessary to serve the pages and keep them secure. If analytics or other non-essential cookies are added later, this notice will be updated and consent will be requested before they are set.

9. Security

We apply technical and organisational measures appropriate to the sensitivity of what we hold, including access controls and encrypted transmission. No system is perfect, and we do not claim otherwise. If a breach occurs that is likely to put your rights at risk, we will notify you and the relevant authority within the periods the law requires.

10. Changes

Where this notice changes materially we will say so on this page and update the date shown above.