Av. Serkan Kara

Serkan Kara read law at Uludağ University and has been in the legal 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. The entry itself is public on the Istanbul Bar roll, number 53770.

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, a grade that, on the scale the transcript itself describes, 10 to 12 per cent of candidates reach. The transcript is sealed and apostilled.

• Transcript, page 2: the grading table

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 ordinary for him 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 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 identifies its holder, in the CCBE's official languages, as a lawyer admitted in his own country and eases his access to courts and institutions outside it, as the CCBE states on its own page.

He enters a file in the same order every time: the document itself, then the statute or the scientific source it rests on, then every date, figure and register entry measured against its source; the written word comes last. Beside the law he reads medicine, pharmacology, forensic toxicology and social psychology in their primary literature. Where a file rests on a medical report, a medicine's authorised product information or a laboratory result, the published text of that science stands in the pleading beside the statute, so the knowledge a judge will weigh reaches the judge with its source. Official letters and expert reports he reads against the file and the sources they rest on. His articles are written with the same discipline.

The legal position of foreigners in Türkiye has been at the centre of his work since his first years in the profession, and the trust placed in him there is on record with the official missions of four states. The Consulates-General in Istanbul of Kyrgyzstan (20 June 2016), Kazakhstan (11 July 2016), Uzbekistan (9 March 2017) and Ukraine (11 March 2019) appointed Serkan Kara, by general powers of attorney under their seals, to act before the Turkish courts, enforcement offices, ministries and migration authorities. The Kazakh, Uzbek and Kyrgyz instruments add the power to obtain, from public and private institutions, the information and documents concerning the consulate and its nationals. He conducted the consular representations under these genuine powers of attorney, received officially and in person from the consulates general, and he still carries them on from time to time.

• Kyrgyzstan, 20.06.2016
• Kyrgyzstan, sealed page
• Kazakhstan, 11.07.2016, No 471
• Uzbekistan, 09.03.2017
• Uzbekistan, sealed page
• Ukraine, 11.03.2019
• Ukraine, sealed page

The images are the sealed pages of the instruments, which are drawn up in Turkish. The issuing consulate-general, the date and number of each instrument and Serkan Kara's name remain legible; identity numbers, addresses, a telephone number, the names of the signing consuls and every signature, those drawn across a seal included, are blurred in the image itself.

The field side of that trust was the Kumkapı Removal Centre in Istanbul. Serkan Kara worked there alongside the consuls of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, together with the deputy governor serving as Istanbul's Provincial Director of Migration Management. That work laid the ground for an amendment to Law No. 6458 on Foreigners and International Protection, the statute that governs how foreigners enter Türkiye, stay there and are removed from it.

The Russian Foreign Ministry's list of lawyers in Turkey, published in October 2025, carries the office he founded under the name Serka Hukuk Bürosu, with Serkan Kara 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. Today he works on machine learning at code level. He is a member of the Google Developer Program at its Premium tier, and that profile is public: g.dev/serka. He is a member of the Apple Developer Program and the architect of the Serka app. It is a second competence that stands beside the advocacy.

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; with a client he corresponds in the client's own language.

Alongside private practice Serkan Kara serves as Vice President of TÜSODER, the Turkish consumer-rights association, and his commentary on consumer and commercial law has been broadcast by CNN Türk, A Haber, Flash TV, Beykent TV and the DHA news agency. The office he founded in Beşiktaş, Istanbul, is Serka Hukuk Bürosu in Turkish and Serka Law Firm internationally.

The Istanbul Bar link opens on the roll entry itself. Every other record is written with the name of the body that keeps it, its number and its date.

• 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.
• 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.
• Consulates-General in IstanbulGeneral powers of attorney under seal: Kyrgyzstan 20.06.2016, KAT 018/1-462; Kazakhstan 11.07.2016, No 471; Uzbekistan 09.03.2017, No 043/171; Ukraine 11.03.2019. Small images of the seven pages stand in the biography.
• Google Developer ProgramMember at the Premium tier of Google's own developer programme; the profile is public at g.dev/serka. What the tiers are, from Google.
• Russian Ministry of Foreign AffairsThe office he founded 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. The association's board page, archived 14.07.2026.
• Legal commentaryCNN Türk, A Haber, Flash TV, Beykent TV and the DHA news agency, on consumer and commercial law.

What is asked about him before a power of attorney is given.