Turkey’s Tech Sector is Growing but Global Gaps Persist

Across over 113 technoparks attached to Turkish universities, young programmers are working hard to develop fintech applications, artificial intelligence tools, logistics platforms, and e-commerce services for a domestic market of more than 85 million people increasingly connected through digital services. Turkey’s tech sector is growing highlighting both impressive local innovation and continued challenges on the world stage.

Over the past decade, Turkey’s technology sector has expanded from a relatively limited startup scene into a broad ecosystem that now stretches across software, telecommunications, e-commerce, defense technology, industrial automation, gaming, and digital infrastructure, becoming one of the fastest-growing segments of the Turkish economy.

According to TÜBİSAD’s 2025 ICT sector report, Turkey’s ICT market reached about $36.7 billion in 2024, while ICT exports reached $3.3 billion. The sector’s share of Turkish GDP was estimated at 2.77%, and its share of global ICT markets at only 0.72%, showing both domestic expansion and limited global weight.

ICT exports grew from $1.5 billion in 2020 to $3.3 billion in 2024, an average annual growth rate of about 22%, with software becoming the dominant export category.

Employment also shows the sector’s maturation. TÜBİSAD estimates total ICT employment at 246,000 people in 2024, up 5% from the previous year. Around 194,000 worked in information technologies and 52,000 in communication technologies. Women made up 26% of employees but 46% of managers among surveyed firms, while 63% of employees had university degrees and 70% were classified as R&D personnel. Invest in Türkiye similarly reports that 60% of sector employment assume R&D roles and 70% of workers are younger than 35.

Turkey’s tech economy is strongest where software, consumer platforms, and applied engineering intersect. E-commerce is one of the most visible examples. Turkey’s e-commerce volume reached TL 3.16 trillion in 2024, roughly $90 billion, growing by more than 60% in lira terms and about 15% in dollar terms, according to figures cited from the Ministry of Trade. Retail e-commerce alone was around $17 billion.

By 2025, the U.S. International Trade Administration estimated Turkey’s e-commerce market at about $93.5 billion, projecting it to reach $154.9 billion by 2030 at a 10.6% compound annual growth rate.

Digital adoption gives this market a strong base. Internet use among people aged 16–74 reached 90.9% in 2025, up from 88.8% in 2024, while online shopping rose to 55.7% of individuals, compared with 51.7% the previous year.

Limited R&D capacity

But the innovation picture is mixed. Turkey ranked 43rd in the 2025 Global Innovation Index, down from 37th in 2024 but still much higher than its 51st position in 2020.

WIPO notes that Turkey performs better in innovation outputs than innovation inputs: it ranked 35th in outputs but only 49th in inputs in 2025. In practice, this means Turkey is relatively good at turning limited resources into visible products, designs, brands, and applied technologies, but weaker in the deeper inputs of innovation: research institutions, advanced skills, capital intensity, scientific collaboration, and frontier infrastructure.

R&D spending is rising quickly, but remains below advanced-economy levels. TurkStat data cited in 2025 reports show gross domestic R&D expenditure reached TL 651.8 billion, or about $19.9 billion, in 2024, equal to 1.46% of GDP, up from 1.39% in 2023. R&D personnel reached 310,473 full-time-equivalent workers, with 67.1% employed by corporations and 34.2% women.

This is a major improvement compared with earlier decades, but still far below the OECD average: Turkey’s 1.46% of GDP compares with an OECD-wide R&D ratio of around 2.7% in 2023.

The European Innovation Scoreboard gives a sharper diagnosis. It says Turkey’s R&D intensity rose from 0.8% to 1.4% between 2013 and 2021, then fell to 1.32% in 2022, still far below the EU average of 2.24%. It also identifies serious weaknesses: public R&D spending at only 63.3% of the EU average, venture capital expenditure at only 1.3% of the EU average, IT investment at 18.2% of the EU average, and only 28.3% of individuals having above-basic digital skills.

State incentive investments

Turkish tech has energy, talent, and state ambition, but not yet enough capital depth or institutional research capacity. Its startup ecosystem has produced internationally known successes, especially in gaming and delivery platforms, but funding remains volatile.

KPMG’s Turkish Startup Investments Review reported 121 startup transactions worth $234.6 million in Q3 2025, including acquisitions, with AI, defense tech, health tech, quantum computing, and alternative energy among the most active sectors. That indicates a living ecosystem, but not yet a large-scale venture market comparable to Europe’s leading hubs.

The state is trying to compensate through industrial policy. In July 2024, Turkey launched HIT-30, a $30 billion high-tech investment incentive program aimed at high-tech and green investment. The same policy direction appears in 5G, digital transformation programs, technoparks, defense technology, and efforts to build domestic capacity in batteries, chips, electric vehicles, AI, and advanced manufacturing. The U.S. International Trade Administration projects Turkey’s ICT sector to grow at about 9.3% annually between 2025 and 2030, while noting that 5G implementation is planned from mid-2026 after the spectrum auction process.

Defense technology is perhaps the most politically important part of Turkey’s tech rise. Drones, aerospace systems, command-control software, sensors, electronic warfare, and military platforms have become central to Turkey’s export identity and geopolitical influence. Turkey’s defense exports reached a record $7.1 billion in 2024, according to sector reporting. This has spillover effects into software engineering, electronics, AI-enabled systems, autonomous platforms, composite materials, and advanced manufacturing.

Mixed story

Yet Turkey remains weak in high-tech exports as a share of total manufacturing exports. In 2024, only 5.1% of Turkey’s manufacturing exports consisted of high-tech products, while 40.3% were medium-tech products. The high-tech share remains well below OECD and EU averages of around 15–20%.

The same problem appears in global trade data. World Bank WITS data reported Turkey’s ICT service exports at $4.253 billion in 2023, equal to 12.9% of commercial service exports. Other World Bank-linked data put ICT service exports at about $4.856 billion in 2024. These are respectable figures, but still modest for an economy seeking to become a major technology exporter.

Infrastructure is another mixed story. Turkey has high internet penetration and strong mobile usage, but it has lagged in 5G rollout compared with many OECD countries. OECD data show that by 2024, 5G subscriptions made up 37% of all mobile broadband subscriptions across OECD countries where data were available, with leaders such as Denmark, Hungary, and Korea far ahead.

Turkey’s delayed 5G rollout means its industrial internet, autonomous systems, smart logistics, and advanced mobile applications may develop more slowly unless deployment accelerates after 2026.

The human-capital base is promising but uneven. Turkey has a young population, strong engineering universities, competitive software developers, and a large diaspora of skilled professionals. But the European Innovation Scoreboard’s finding that only 28.3% of individuals have above-basic digital skills is a warning sign.

A modern tech sector does not only need elite engineers; it needs broad digital literacy across SMEs, schools, public administration, logistics, manufacturing, agriculture, and services. Without that diffusion, innovation remains concentrated in islands: Istanbul startups, Ankara defense firms, selected technoparks, and a few export-oriented companies.

Politically, Turkey’s tech sector is tied to a larger national project of reducing dependence on foreign technology, increasing export sophistication, and turning geopolitical autonomy into industrial capacity. This has produced real achievements, especially in drones, e-government, digital payments, gaming, and software exports. But it also carries risks.

State-led tech strategies can mobilize capital and attention, yet they can also favor politically connected firms, overemphasize prestige projects, and neglect open research ecosystems, academic freedom, competition policy, and independent regulation.

Turkey’s tech sector represents a transition economy inside the digital age; no longer merely a consumer of foreign platforms and imported technology, but not yet a producer of globally dominant platforms, chips, AI infrastructure, or high-tech industrial ecosystems.