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Av. Serkan Kara

Istanbul Bar attorney, roll 53770

Av. Serkan Kara

Attorney at law. Trained and admitted in Turkish and continental civil law, United States law read at the University of Cologne.

In practice since 2015, on matters where at least two legal systems have to agree at once. Investment migration and citizenship is the oldest specialism here; technology companies are the second.

The work goes out under two names: Serka Law Firm internationally, Serka Hukuk Bürosu in Turkish.

  • Vice President, TÜSODER
  • Google Developer Program, Premium
  • Russian MFA attorney directory, Oct 2025
  • Cornell LII lawyer directory
  • Uludağ University, Faculty of Law
  • University of Cologne, CUSL 2012–2013
  • 53770Istanbul Bar roll number
  • 121348Union of Turkish Bar Associations
  • 2015In practice since
  • CCBEEuropean lawyer's identity card

Areas of practice

The first two are where the practice concentrates. The rest are the matters that arrive attached to them: a citizenship file brings a title deed and a residence permit, a technology deal brings an arbitration clause and, later, a foreign judgment that still has to be enforced somewhere.

  • Investment migration and citizenship

    Citizenship and residence by investment, in Türkiye and in the programmes run by other states, from the Caribbean to Europe. The substance of that work, and every figure that belongs to it, sits on the two practice sites.

  • Technology companies

    Global technology groups, and the giants among them, are the second focus of this practice and the field it knows best: licensing and commercial structures, cross-border corporate work, data and platform questions, and the disputes and arbitrations that follow. A file here is opened at the level it lives at: the architecture, the data flows, the machine learning pipeline, the deployment history, the access records and the platform's own terms.

  • Cross-border commercial disputes and arbitration

    Contract structuring for international parties and institutional arbitration, with a defence coordinated to hold in more than one forum.

  • Company law and foreign capital

    Incorporation, share transfers, shareholder agreements and foreign capital work, including branch and liaison office structures.

  • Recognition and enforcement

    Recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments and arbitral awards: the step that turns a win obtained in one country into a recovery in another.

  • Immigration and residence permits

    Short-term, family and work residence permits, and the applications and renewals that sit around them.

  • Deportation and entry bans

    Appeals against removal decisions and applications to lift entry-ban codes.

  • Real estate and land registry

    Title history, liens, attachments, mortgages and zoning defects identified before the money moves, and the transfer itself carried through the land registry.

  • Family law and succession

    Divorce, custody, maintenance, inheritance and certificates of succession, including the matters that carry a foreign element.

  • Consumer law

    Claims before the consumer arbitration committees and the consumer courts, alongside the public-interest programme of TÜSODER.

What can be checked, and where

The Istanbul Bar link opens on the entry itself. Where a register only accepts a number typed into its own form, the number to type is beside the link.

  • Istanbul BarRoll number 53770. Traineeship before the courts from 17 March 2015 to 17 September 2015, then with an advocate from 18 September 2015 to 18 March 2016, a full year of it. Entered on the roll by board decision of 28 April 2016. The Istanbul Bar roll entry for 53770 opens on the record itself.
  • Union of Turkish Bar AssociationsRegister number 121348. The Avukatlık Ruhsatnamesi, the Turkish certificate of advocacy, is dated 2 June 2016. The national roll searches on the bar registration number: open the Union of Turkish Bar Associations lawyer search, choose Istanbul and enter 53770.
  • CCBEHolder of the CCBE Lawyer's Professional Identity Card. A national bar issues it, so the roll entry above is the record standing behind it. What the CCBE card is, from the CCBE.
  • University of CologneUnited States law programme (CUSL) at the Faculty of Law, on Erasmus, 2012–2013, two subjects graded vollbefriedigend. The transcript is sealed and apostilled. The CUSL programme at the Faculty of Law.
  • Uludağ UniversityFaculty of Law. The Turkish and continental civil law half of the training, and the degree on which the bar admission rests.
  • Google Developer ProgramMember at the Premium tier of Google's own developer programme. What the tiers are, from Google.
  • Russian Ministry of Foreign AffairsThe bureau is listed in the ministry's list of lawyers in Turkey, October 2025, as Serka Hukuk Bürosu, with Av. Serkan Kara named inside the entry. The list is informational and is not a recommendation.
  • Cornell Law SchoolListed in the lawyer directory of the Legal Information Institute.
  • TÜSODERVice President of the Turkish consumer-rights association.
  • Legal commentaryCNN Türk, A Haber, Flash TV, Beykent TV and the DHA news agency, on consumer and commercial law.

Biography

Serkan Kara read law at Uludağ University and has been in the profession since 2015. The traineeship ran before the courts from 17 March 2015 to 17 September 2015 and then with an advocate from 18 September 2015 to 18 March 2016, a full year of it. The board of the Istanbul Bar Association entered him on the roll on 28 April 2016 under registration 53770, the Avukatlık Ruhsatnamesi is dated 2 June 2016, and the Union of Turkish Bar Associations carries him under register number 121348.

Serkan Kara commands both of the great legal families, and that is a matter of record rather than of self-description. Turkish and continental civil law is the tradition he was trained and admitted in. Anglo-American common law he read at the Faculty of Law of the University of Cologne, on Erasmus in 2012 and 2013, on the CUSL programme in United States law: US family law, business law, legal negotiations and American legal terminology, two of them graded vollbefriedigend, which on the German scale is roughly the top ten to twelve per cent. The transcript is sealed and apostilled. Almost no lawyer reaches this level.

Comparative training is not decoration in this work. The same contractual clause carries different consequences under continental civil law and under Anglo-American common law, and a foreign client's exposure usually sits precisely in that gap. Reading both systems is what makes a file opened in one country predictable to a board sitting in another, and it is why cross-border work is treated here as ordinary rather than exceptional.

The CCBE Lawyer's Professional Identity Card is the instrument by which the European legal profession identifies a lawyer outside his own jurisdiction, and Serkan Kara holds one. It was created in 1978, it is issued by the national bar in the CCBE's own name after that bar has verified that the applicant is a lawyer currently authorised and registered with it, and it is recognised by the European Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance. It is what makes him a recognised European lawyer and not only a Turkish one.

The Russian Foreign Ministry's list of lawyers in Turkey, published in October 2025, carries the bureau under the name Serka Hukuk Bürosu with the advocate named inside the entry. The ministry compiled it from information the listed lawyers supplied themselves, so it records presence and not endorsement, and it is cited here on that footing. Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute carries him in its own lawyer directory. He holds a ten-year United States B1/B2 visa.

Serkan Kara has worked hands-on with software and hardware since the age of eleven, in the MS-DOS era, and never left it, so the technical half of this biography begins earlier than the legal half. He is a member of the Google Developer Program at its Premium tier, and that profile is public: g.dev/serka.

A technology matter usually turns on a technical fact before it turns on a legal one: how a model pipeline was assembled, where its training data came from, which processor holds what and under whose law, what a platform's own terms already bind the client to. Those facts are established here by reading the system itself, so the technical answer and the legal one arrive in the same document.

English has been at native level since the age of seven, which is why an English contract is read rather than translated. German came from years spent in Germany. Turkish is the language of every filing that goes before a Turkish court. Past that, the office corresponds with a client in the client's own language, wherever in the world that client is.

Alongside private practice Serkan Kara serves as Vice President of TÜSODER, the Turkish consumer-rights association, which is where the consumer work on this page comes from. He founded the practice, which runs as Serka Hukuk Bürosu in Turkish and as Serka Law Firm internationally.

What gets asked, and the answer

The questions that arrive before anything is signed, in roughly the order they arrive.

There are other lawyers with this name. Which one are you?

The one carried on the Istanbul Bar roll at number 53770, entered there by decision of the Bar's board on 28 April 2016, holding the Avukatlık Ruhsatnamesi of 2 June 2016, and registered with the Union of Turkish Bar Associations under 121348. The Bar's own certificate of 1 December 2025 records that no disciplinary proceedings stand against him, and its activity certificate of 24 March 2026 carries the registered law office in Beşiktaş. A name is not an identifier and a roll number is, so open the Istanbul Bar roll entry for 53770 and read that before you read anything else on this page. The rest of the record, and the register behind each piece of it, is set out in what can be checked, and where.

Can you act for me if I never come to Türkiye?

Yes, and most files run exactly that way. A power of attorney is executed either at a Turkish consulate in your own country, on an appointment booked in advance, or before a notary where you live and then apostilled. The office writes the draft that the officer will retype into their own instrument, with the powers named for your matter instead of a general form, and hands it over as text the officer can copy from rather than key in by eye, which is where a consular power of attorney usually loses a day. The Turkish consular notarial page sets out what a vekaletname appointment requires, and the Hague Conference Apostille Section is where you check whether your own country issues one.

My matter is not in Türkiye. Can you still take it?

The file is taken where the exposure is, not where the office sits. Where a local admission is required to appear, locally admitted counsel is instructed and supervised, while the file, the strategy and the correspondence stay here: one point of contact, one scope and one fee, instead of a chain of firms each quoting separately. Recognition and enforcement of the resulting judgment or award in the next state stays inside the same file instead of becoming a fresh instruction, and that is where a chain of separate firms usually costs a second retainer.

What language will my file be run in?

Yours, in writing, for the whole of it. The advice, the correspondence and the account of what a filing actually commits you to all reach you in your own language, not as a summary in somebody else's. A document that has to go before a court or an authority is drawn in the language that body requires, and you are told, in your own language and clause by clause, what it says before you sign it.

Who actually does the work on my file?

Av. Serkan Kara. The person who reads the papers is the person who writes the filing, signs it and answers your message, and nothing is handed to somebody else once the engagement is signed. That is a deliberate limit on how many matters run at once, not a claim about capacity. If you want to establish who that is before you send anything at all, the number is 53770 and the Istanbul Bar register settles it on its own.

How are your fees agreed?

In writing, before any work starts. The engagement names the scope and one all-inclusive figure for that scope, so the fee does not move because the work turned out to take longer; if the scope itself changes, that is a written change agreed in advance, never an invoice that arrives afterwards. Official third-party costs sit outside the figure and are stated as sitting outside it: apostille and consular legalisation, international courier on your own documents, and state and registry fees. Those are paid to the institution that levies them, and the office adds nothing on top.

What does it take to start, and in what order?

Send the facts and whatever documents you already hold. A written scope and fee comes back on that basis, and you sign it. The power of attorney and the gathering of the remaining documents then run alongside the engagement rather than in front of it, and that order is not a courtesy: the consular appointment is usually the longest single item in the chain, so putting it first stalls everything behind it. Nothing is asked of you before there is something written in front of you to look at.

Will you act against a Turkish party for a foreign client?

Yes. The duty runs to the client, and no ground on which an advocate must refuse a matter turns on the nationality of the other side. What does decide it is conflict, and that check runs before the scope is written rather than after: it asks whether this office has already acted for, or given an opinion to, a party whose interest is opposed to yours in the same matter. Avukatlık Kanunu No. 1136, art. 38 lists the situations in which an advocate is obliged to refuse, and that is one of them. If the check comes back against you, you are told at the first message and not after you have paid.

Is what I send you protected before I have engaged you?

Article 36 of Avukatlık Kanunu No. 1136 prohibits advocates from disclosing matters entrusted to them or learnt by reason of the advocacy, and extends the same prohibition to what is learnt through duties in the organs of the Union of Turkish Bar Associations and the bars. Under the same article an advocate may give evidence about those matters only with the consent of the person whose matter it is, may decline to give it even with that consent, and, by a sentence added in 2001, incurs no civil or criminal liability for declining. That is the statute, and it is linked so you can read it rather than take it on trust. The office's own practice does not wait for an engagement: what arrives at first contact is treated as confidential from the moment it arrives, whether or not an engagement follows, and it is discussed with nobody outside the office. Article 39 of the same law answers what happens to the file afterwards, and it has two halves: documents entrusted to an advocate are kept for three years from the end of the retainer, and where the client has been notified in writing to collect them the obligation ends three months after the date of that notice. The second half is the one a summary usually drops. The office keeps its own side of that simple: you are written to before a file is returned or closed, so you are never left guessing where your documents are.

What do you actually do for technology companies?

Contracts and intellectual property: licences, distribution, platform and SaaS terms, and the assignment and protection of what gets built. Data and platform compliance. Company formation and foreign capital: a Turkish company, a branch, a liaison office, share transfers. Disputes: cross-border commercial claims, institutional arbitration, and recognition and enforcement of a foreign judgment. The dated example already running is the representative duty. Law No. 7578, published in the Resmi Gazete of 1 May 2026, issue 33240, inserted a new EK MADDE 5 into Law No. 5651: a foreign-sourced game platform whose daily access from Türkiye exceeds one hundred thousand must designate a representative in Türkiye, notify the Authority, and publish that representative's identity and contact details on its own site in an easily visible and directly accessible form. The administrative fine for a second violation rises to thirty million Turkish lira, and by art. 27 of the same law the article takes effect six months after publication, which is 1 November 2026; the rewritten social-network regime above ten million daily accesses commences on the same day. Read it yourself: Law No. 7578 in the Resmi Gazete, the consolidated text of Law No. 5651, and for the industrial property side Law No. 6769. Whether a platform sits above the threshold is its own access figure and is not asserted for it here; the part worth examining first is how that figure is counted, because the counting method is usually where the exposure actually sits.

Two names, one lawyer

  • Serka Law Firm

    The international practice: citizenship and investment files, technology companies, cross-border disputes, foreign investors and companies, correspondence in the client's own language.

    Serka Law Firm, the international practice

  • Serka Hukuk Bürosu

    The same practice, conducted in Turkish: litigation, enforcement and advisory work before the Turkish courts and authorities. This is the name under which the office appears in the Russian MFA attorney directory of October 2025.

    Serka Hukuk Bürosu, the same practice in Turkish