Significant development of e-commerce in Turkey

The 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 significant autonomous growth.

E-commerce spending in Turkey was 1.85 trillion Turkish liras in 2023, or 53 billion euros at current exchange rates, roughly evenly divided between products and services. The increase in spending in lira was no less than 115%, which does not mean that the importance of e-commerce has doubled in one year; this increase is largely due to rampant inflation, which has risen to 75 percent.

Realistic image

To get a realistic picture of e-commerce development in Turkey, it is better to look at the number of transactions. Last year, the number increased by 22.3 percent to 5.87 billion units. For comparison: in the five largest countries in Western Europe, online spending did not increase or almost did not increase in 2023, Forrester calculated.

The number of transactions increased by over 22%.

Another indicator of above-average online growth in Turkey is the share of online turnover in total consumer spending. Over the past four years, that number has doubled, from 10.1 percent. in 2019 to 20.3 percent last year. The ministry notes that krona contributed significantly to the adoption of Turkish e-commerce, but this growth continued after the pandemic.

Further growth

The Ministry of Commerce expects spending to increase by 84 percent this year. thanks to 6.67 billion transactions. This is 13 percent more than last year. The forecast is higher than the promising European growth averages previously predicted by Forrester and GlobalData.

The growth forecast is stronger than the European average.

There are 559,412 registered e-commerce companies in Turkey. The product categories with the highest turnover are household appliances and household appliances, followed by electronics, and thirdly by clothing, footwear and accessories. The report shows that Turkish people have to wait an average of 46.2 hours for their orders to be delivered.