24.04.2015

To our stakeholders:

I am pleased to confirm that GUN + PARTNERS Law Firm reaffirms its support of the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact in the areas of Human Rights, Labour, Environment and Anti-Corruption.

In this annual Communication on Progress, we describe our actions to continually improve the integration of the Global Compact and its principles into our business strategy, culture and daily operations. We also commit to share this information with our stakeholders using our primary channels of communication.

Sincerely yours,


Mehmet Gün

Founding Partner

Being one of the biggest law firms in Turkey, GUN + PARTNERS takes pride in giving utmost importance to international standards, especially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. We believe that it is important to implement the principles that we are so profoundly stand-up for in our statements and petitions. Therefore, we make sure that all our employees are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.

GUN + PARTNERS has taken the following measures to prevent human rights violations in its Office:
- Implementing the speak-up system in which there are designated speak-up delegators and the lawyers of our firm can speak-up to them everything and anything that they feel is against human rights, labor conditions etc. It can be said that this is a reflection of the right of freedom of expression.
- Convening Common Wisdom Meetings in which every single employee of our firm, despite their seniority and including secretaries and staff, shared his/her view or comments regarding the following 10-year policies and goals of our firm.

The Common Wisdom Meetings has raised awareness to the point that every single employee has the right to be heard and these meetings created a democratic model of business. The meetings have also shown some needs and requirements for our firm and such needs are continuing to be satisfied. The speak-up system was a great success and together with this system, we have prepared and implemented a firm policy with regards to the holidays with pay to make sure that our employees enjoy their "right to respect for private and family life".

Our internal policies cover a range of matters relating to labour. It is absolutely unacceptable to use child labour and discrimination is unacceptable in our firm. In our sector, it is a fact that the daily working hours of lawyers can be long; however we give utmost importance to the separation between work and private life and keeping both at the same level. We know that our firm cannot exist without our lawyers and other employees; therefore we give utmost importance to their social and economical welfare.

In order to abide with UN Labour Principles, we have implemented several different models, systems and activities.
- Provided a discount with a gym, which we have agreed on a yearly basis, for preserving our employees’ health.
- We have hired a Human Resources Manager within the firm.
- We have allocated matters with regards to labour to two of our partners within the firm.
- We have continued to prepare outing events for all employees.
- We have provided occupational health and safety educations to all our employees.
- We have agreed with an occupational doctor to be present at the firm one day a week.
- We have implemented the policy of scholarships within the firm, to the lawyers in their master’s degrees.

Together with all the improvements stated above, we have become the most applied law firm in İstanbul and this shows that we start to be one of the favoured law firms in Turkey. Our employees have stated their positive approach to the implemented systems and activities, and we will continue to implement better systems and organize better projects.

GUN + PARTNERS takes the initiative to protect the global environment and prioritize environmental consideration and awareness. We are committed to meet the standards and comply with any all legislation in this regard. We give utmost priority to recycling and paying the debt we owe to mother nature by any and all means.

We have trained all employees in order to raise their awareness with regards to environment. We have calculated our employees’ entire carbon footprint by hiring a professional team and we determined ways to reduce the overall carbon footprint of our firm. In order to pay back our debt to mother nature, we have reduced our electricity usage and compensated our carbon footprint by financially supporting the Climate Volunteers-Yuntdağ Wind Power Plant. We have recycling points within our office and with the help of the municipality; we give all our recyclable waste to recycle facilities.

Our carbon footprint has been compensated and substantially decreased together with the above-mentioned measures. Since our training program has significantly raised awareness, we plan to increase recurrence of the trainings.

Accountability, efficiency and objectivity are our main principles. Our clients’ success is at the heart of our own success and therefore it is very important to be transparent to our clients. We have a zero-tolerance policy for corruption, bribery and extortion. As we act as the intermediaries of our clients in Turkey and we are subject to relevant advocacy legislations, all of our employees are aware of the risks and sanctions. In the long run, our company goal is to minimize the risk of corruption, bribery and extortion in all areas.

- We have a strict and high-level policy on accountability, therefore and intermediaries of our clients, we sign FCPA and UK Bribery Act declarations showing that GUN + PARTNERS has fully in compliance with the relevant legislation.
- We have implemented a billing system in which we send our statements together with the spreadsheets showing how much time and expense were put into the relevant work/business in the most transparent way.
-We have implemented an expense-reporting system in which it is not possible to show expense without its invoice or other documents in the same nature.
-We have provided a training program to all our employees.

While the current implementation of our anti-corruption policies are valid, when it comes to fighting corruption, we know that taking measures are never enough, unless they are implemented to their core. Therefore and due to the high redundancy in our firm, we plan to repeat these trainings to every new employee of our firm and document the trainings.