About

Avon operates in Turkey with an in-house team of three lawyers headed by Hande Karakülah, legal director for the Turkey, Africa and Middle East region. Karakülah is also a member of the Avon board of directors and is present for all the strategic decisions of the business. The in-house legal team in Turkey place an importance on transparency and good corporate communication throughout the organisation, having received industry awards for their ability in this area. The team do this thorugh conducting internal communication improvement projects obtaining very positive feedback from their internal clients. Continually looking to improve and develop, the in-house team of Avon is keen to learn and discover new and better ways of providing advice to the company and different departments accomodating to their diverse needs. Only last year an internal feedback survey was conducted with the input of all the company departments, the legal team setting a target to improve their approval rating before the follow up survey, managing to improve satisfaction levels from 65% to 80%. ‘When you say “legal department”, people tend to think of a department that constantly blocks deals and make problems. However in Avon we operate differently and try to find ways to make what they need happen, our priority is a good functioning business’ says Karakülah. The team is also strong in giving special importance to ethics and compliance complying with the new regulations in the appropriate timescales. The team is currently preoccupied with the challenge of several compliance issues with particular relevance to Data Protection Regulation legislation.