GDPR Compliance With an Engineering Team in Türkiye
The short answer: possible yes, automatic no. On 13 December 2023 the European Commission determined that Turkish data protection law is not sufficiently aligned with the GDPR — so there is no adequacy decision. Personal data may still be transferred, but only through a Chapter V transfer mechanism. In practice that means an Art. 28 data processing agreement, Standard Contractual Clauses under Art. 46(2)(c), a documented assessment of the risks in the recipient country, and technical measures that genuinely address those risks. Türkiye's 2024 reform of its KVKK introduced its own GDPR-mirroring framework for standard clauses, which makes the construction more robust on both sides.
What gets put in place, contractually and technically
- Art. 28 GDPR data processing agreement with clear instruction binding, sub-processor terms and a deletion concept.
- Standard Contractual Clauses under Art. 46 in their current form, using the correct module for the controller-to-processor relationship.
- A documented transfer risk assessment that actually evaluates government access in the recipient country rather than asserting a conclusion.
- Technical and organisational measures: EU-region hosting and data residency, pseudonymisation, role-based access, logged access, and development against anonymised or synthetic datasets.
How this plays out day to day
- 01The most effective lever is architectural rather than legal: if production data never leaves the EU and the team develops against anonymised datasets, the third-country transfer shrinks to a small, controllable remainder.
- 02Access rights are granted per role and per environment and are logged, so an audit can establish who could reach what and when — which is the point where reviews usually fail.
- 03Contract documents are available in German and run through the Berlin address, so your legal team has a counterpart in the same jurisdiction.
Limits we state openly
- This is not legal advice. Assessing your specific case belongs with your data protection officer or legal team — we supply the documentation and the technical implementation, not the sign-off.
- If your internal policy rules out third-country transfers as a matter of principle, the question is settled and an EU location is the right choice.
- Special categories of data under Art. 9 GDPR — health, biometric or trade union data — raise the bar for the risk assessment considerably and need case-by-case review.
GDPR questions
- No. An Art. 28 DPA governs the controller-processor relationship but does not replace a transfer mechanism. Because there is no adequacy decision for Türkiye, an Art. 46 instrument is mandatory on top — in practice the Standard Contractual Clauses, together with a documented risk assessment.
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