Founding Attorney

Sevgi Erarslan is an attorney registered with the Istanbul Bar and the founder of Erarslan Law Firm, established in Istanbul in 2016. Her work centres on criminal law, data protection and technology law, intellectual property, and commercial contracts and ongoing corporate advice, including matters with a cross-border element.

She graduated with honours from Istanbul University Faculty of Law in 2015 and completed her master's degree in private law at the same university, also with honours. Her 2019 thesis, on the cases in which special categories of personal data may be processed without explicit consent, was published as a book by On İki Levha the same year; a second edition, updated for the rules adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic, followed in 2020.

She holds an Advanced LL.M. from KU Leuven, which she attended on a scholarship and where her thesis examined the EU's 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive and NFTs. She is a PhD candidate in public law at Istanbul University, has passed the doctoral qualifying examination and is researching the EU AI Act and the processing of biometric data.

Alongside private practice, she has worked with non-governmental and international organisations on the legal needs of foreigners, refugees and asylum seekers. As Legal Affairs Regional Officer at the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations (UOSSM) in Ankara, she represented the association in its relief project and advised migrants. Before that, as Legal Counsel in a UNHCR social protection project, she counselled refugees, asylum seekers, unaccompanied children and persons with disabilities. She has taken part as a panellist in UNHCR events held with the Directorate General of Migration Management and the Union of Turkish Bar Associations.

She served on the Executive Board of the Istanbul Bar's Personal Data Protection Commission, where she remains a member, and currently serves on the Bar's Human Rights Commission. In these roles she has spoken at, and helped organise, seminars, workshops and panels on immigration, data protection, AI, intellectual property and digital criminal law. She works in Turkish and English. She speaks English to a very high level and has a basic knowledge of German and French.