Significant ecommerce growth in Turkey

The Turkish Ministry of Commerce reports that online spending in Turkey more than doubled last year. Significant growth is expected again this year. This is largely the result of inflation, but there is also considerable autonomous growth.

Ecommerce spending in Turkey amounted to 1.85 trillion Turkish liras in 2023, or 53 billion euros at the current exchange rate, approximately equally divided between products and services. Spending growth in liras was no less than 115 percent, but that does not mean that the importance of ecommerce has doubled in one year; the growth is largely due to raging inflation, which has risen to 75 percent.

Growth indicators

First, the number of transactions grew by 22.3 percent last year to 5.87 billion units. For comparison, in the five largest Western European countries, online spending did not or hardly increase in 2023, Forrester calculated.

Second, the online turnover share in total consumer spending has doubled in the past four years, from 10.1 percent in 2019 to 20.3 percent last year. Coronavirus gave a significant boost to the adoption of Turkish ecommerce, the ministry notes, but the growth has continued after the pandemic.

For this year, the commerce ministry expects spending growth of 84 percent thanks to 6.67 billion transactions. That is 13 percent more than last year. The forecast is higher than the promising European growth averages that Forrester and GlobalData previously predicted.

In Turkey, 559,412 companies are registered as active in ecommerce. The product categories with the largest turnover are white goods and household appliances, followed by electronics and thirdly clothing, footwear and accessories. On average, Turks have to wait 46.2 hours for an order to be delivered, according to the report.