Alibaba to invest more than $1 billion in Türkiye

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., a Chinese e-commerce giant, is set to establish a logistics hub at Türkiye’s Istanbul Airport, as well as a data centre close to the Turkish capital of Ankara.

The company will invest more than $1 billion in Türkiye, according to a report by the country’s Sabah newspaper on Sunday.

"We have a serious investment plan at Istanbul Airport. We can evaluate e-export plans from here to Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. We plan an investment of more than $1 billion," Alibaba’s president Michael Evans told the newspaper in an interview.

According to Sabah, Alibaba was looking to invest in Europe and the Middle East and chose Türkiye due to its strong production capacity.

"There is a great production power in Türkiye, which is the most advantageous country in the world in this sense," Evans was quoted as saying.

"Countries with high technology infrastructure and production power will come to the fore. Since we see that Türkiye is very strong in these two areas, it will definitely be advantageous in the G-20," Evans said.

He added that the company "will carry Türkiye’s production power and export potential to Europe and the Middle East."

The e-commerce giant is also planning to build Türkiye’s biggest data centre in a district called Temelli, near the capital Ankara.

The company's revenue is anticipated to increase as it expands its cloud-based and e-commerce operations in Türkiye.

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Alibaba's support to Trendyol

Trendyol, one of Türkiye’s prevailing e-commerce platforms and the country’s largest startup, is backed by Alibaba.

"The reason we chose Trendyol was that its technology was advanced, and its potential was great," Evans said.

When asked if Alibaba intended to use Trendyol to access the Turkish stock market, Evans said he considered it to be an advantageous move.

"But this has to be decided by Trendyol management. If they want to go public, we will support them. I think this will happen as Trendyol grows," he said.

The president of Trendyol Group, Caglayan Cetin, who also took part in the interview with Sabah, stated that there is no immediate need for the business to raise money by going public.

"We don’t have such a plan in the short term. If we achieve growth targets we want in a short time, then it may be possible within a 3- to 5-year window," Cetin told Sabah.

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