Türkiye Since 2019: The Seven-Year Transformation HNWI Investors Underestimate

Abstract

This paper documents the structural transformation of the Turkish economy between 2019 and 2026 across six domains: self-sufficiency in the defence industry, capital formation in infrastructure, the technology and digital-services ecosystem, tourism and soft power, discipline in manufacturing and export, and the investment-incentive framework. The paper argues that Western financial media coverage of Türkiye remains anchored to the macroeconomic concerns of the 2018–2021 period and has not adequately updated for the structural changes that occurred subsequently. For high-net-worth individual (HNWI) families considering Türkiye as a residency, investment, or citizenship jurisdiction, the data underlying the decision of 2026 is materially different from the data underlying the anchor of 2019 on which most external assessments still rest. The paper draws on primary materials of the Cumhurbaşkanlığı Yatırım Ofisi, the Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu, the Savunma Sanayii Başkanlığı (SSB), the Türkiye İhracatçılar Meclisi (TİM), and official ministry publications.

1. The 2019 Anchor Problem

External assessments of Türkiye, particularly those produced by Western financial institutions and policy publications, tend to rest upon a macroeconomic frame that crystallized between 2018 and 2021. That frame emphasizes currency volatility, inflation, and political uncertainty. It is not an inaccurate frame for the period it describes; it is, however, increasingly disconnected from the structural developments of the subsequent five years.

The present paper does not argue that the concerns of the 2018–2021 frame have been resolved. Inflation remains elevated relative to the averages of the OECD, and currency policy continues to be debated within the economic policymaking institutions of Türkiye. The paper argues instead that these familiar concerns occupy a smaller share of the relevant analytical picture in 2026 than they did in 2019, because the picture itself has grown to include developments that did not exist, or were merely nascent, in 2019. The six domains that follow describe those developments.

2. Defence Industry Self-Sufficiency

In 2019, the Turkish defence sector imported the majority of its principal weapons systems. By 2026, that trajectory has materially reversed. The Bayraktar TB2 and Bayraktar Akıncı unmanned aerial systems, produced by Baykar Defence, have been operationally deployed by more than thirty foreign militaries and have shifted the industrial logic of unmanned warfare globally. The MİLGEM (Milli Gemi) corvette programme has produced platforms that operate in the Turkish Navy and that have been exported to Pakistan and to Ukraine. The Hürjet supersonic trainer, the Anka unmanned platform, the Atak helicopter, and the surface-to-air missile systems produced under the SİPER programme each represent an indigenous Turkish capability that did not exist at comparable scale in 2019.

The fifth-generation fighter programme designated KAAN, developed by Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), conducted its first flight in 2024, with serial production publicly projected for the late 2020s. The Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, the first in Türkiye, began operations in stages from 2024 and is expected to provide approximately ten percent of the country's electricity at full operation.

The transformation of the defence sector is not merely industrial. The Savunma Sanayii Başkanlığı (Presidency of Defence Industries) reports defence-export figures rising materially each year, with exports in 2025 representing several times the level of 2019. The strategic implication for HNWI considerations is that Türkiye in 2026 is a defence-industrial state in a manner in which it was not in 2019, with the supply-chain depth, the engineering-talent base, and the export relationships that follow from that position.

3. Infrastructure Capital Formation

The period from 2019 to 2026 brought the mature-economy infrastructure of Türkiye to a level competitive with the average of the OECD, and in certain respects exceeding it.

İstanbul Havalimanı (Istanbul Airport), inaugurated in 2018 and operating at scale by 2019, has by 2026 come to be ranked consistently among the busiest international hubs in the world by passenger traffic, and its design capacity supports onward growth without rebuilding. Combined with Sabiha Gökçen Airport on the Asian side of Istanbul, the city operates two major international hubs serving approximately one hundred million passengers in aggregate.

The 1915 Çanakkale Bridge, opened in 2022, is the longest suspension bridge in the world by mid-span and connects the Asian and European shores of the Dardanelles. The bridge integrates with the expanded national highway network and with the high-speed rail system that now connects Istanbul, Ankara, Konya, Eskişehir, and other major centres at speeds and frequencies consistent with European peers.

The Marmaray rail tunnel, operational since 2013 in its initial phase and fully integrated by 2019, provides rail connectivity beneath the Bosphorus between Asia and Europe. The Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge and the Eurasia Tunnel complete a multi-modal Bosphorus crossing capacity that did not exist a decade earlier.

Energy infrastructure of similar scale includes the TurkStream natural gas pipeline, operational since 2020, and the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), operational since 2018 and contributing materially to European energy security after 2022. The Sakarya gas field in the Black Sea, discovered in 2020 and entering production in 2023, has contributed to the reduction of Türkiye's dependence on energy imports.

The investment volume underlying these projects, drawn from a combination of the state budget, public-private partnerships, and international financing, represents a sustained capital formation that has compounded over the seven-year period.

4. The Technology and Digital-Services Ecosystem

The Turkish technology ecosystem of 2019 was characterized by significant depth of talent and by several notable companies, but by limited global reach. By 2026, the ecosystem has produced multiple companies of international scale and recognition.

Trendyol, the electronic-commerce platform majority-owned by the Alibaba Group since 2018, has expanded across the region and operates at a valuation of several billion dollars. Getir, the rapid-delivery platform founded in Istanbul, raised funding at a valuation exceeding thirteen billion United States dollars in 2022 before consolidating to its core Turkish market in 2024, and the company's operational model has been studied as a category-defining example of urban logistics. Peak Games, the mobile-gaming company founded in Istanbul, was acquired by Zynga in 2020 for 1.8 billion United States dollars in what remains one of the largest gaming-sector acquisitions of an emerging-market company. Insider, the marketing-technology platform headquartered in Istanbul with global operations, achieved a valuation above one billion dollars and has expanded into developed-market client bases.

Beyond these notable examples, the broader Turkish software-export sector, the cybersecurity ecosystem anchored around STM and several private firms, the financial-technology cluster centred in Istanbul, and the gaming and media-production industries have together produced an ecosystem materially larger than its baseline of 2019. The Cumhurbaşkanlığı Yatırım Ofisi reports steadily rising figures for foreign direct investment in the technology sector, for software exports, and for venture-capital activity.

5. Tourism and Soft Power

Türkiye welcomed approximately forty-five million international visitors in 2019. By 2024 that figure had passed sixty million, and the figures for 2025 are higher still. Türkiye now stands among the five most visited international tourism destinations in the world by visitor arrivals, according to the Türkiye Turizm Tanıtım ve Geliştirme Ajansı (TGA) and the corroborating data of the United Nations World Tourism Organization.

The implications extend beyond tourism revenue. International visitor flows of this scale produce informal cultural diplomacy, professional connections, demand for real estate, and educational interest, each of which compounds over time. The Turkish soft-power position in cinema, where Turkish television series serve as cultural exports to more than one hundred and fifty countries, in publishing, in religious-scholarly traditions, and in restored Ottoman heritage architecture has expanded in parallel with the tourism numbers.

For the purposes of HNWI assessment, tourism volume is not directly relevant to investment. It is, however, a leading indicator of the country's external accessibility, of its perceived stability, and of its cultural permeability, and each of these bears upon the longer-term thesis for residency and citizenship.

6. Manufacturing and Export Discipline

The exports of Türkiye rose from approximately one hundred and eighty billion United States dollars in 2019 to more than two hundred and sixty billion in 2024, with the figures for 2025 and 2026 continuing the trajectory according to the reporting of the Türkiye İhracatçılar Meclisi (TİM). The composition of exports has shifted toward segments of higher added value. The automotive sector, anchored by the manufacturing operations of Ford Otosan, Tofaş (Fiat), Toyota, Renault, and Hyundai, has remained the largest single export category. The white-goods manufacturers Arçelik (Beko) and Vestel have expanded their positions in the European market. The defence sector has become a meaningful export category, as discussed above, while pharmaceutical and medical-device exports have grown and software and digital services have entered the export accounts formally.

The investment-incentive framework that anchors this manufacturing depth operates through five categories of investment-incentive certificate administered by the T.C. Sanayi ve Teknoloji Bakanlığı (Ministry of Industry and Technology). Each category confers a defined combination of tax exemptions, customs-duty exemptions, support for social-security contributions, interest-rate support, and the allocation of land without charge. Free zones, organized industrial zones, and technology development zones provide additional structural support to operations oriented toward export and technology.

The legislative direction since late 2025 has signalled an expansion of these incentives, most notably in the announcement of a corporate-tax exemption of one hundred percent applicable to export-derived income for qualifying manufacturers. The exact statutory form of this complete exemption is, as of the publication of this paper, undergoing the legislative process, and the direction itself is documented in the official communications of the Cumhurbaşkanlığı Yatırım Ofisi and of the relevant ministries. Separately, Law No. 7582, published in the Resmî Gazete of 4 June 2026, No. 33270, has already introduced, in its Article 8, a reduced corporate-tax rate for manufacturers registered in the industrial registry upon their production income, with effect from 2027, which confirms that the incentive direction has begun to take statutory form.

7. The Investment-Incentive Framework

Beyond the export-tax direction, the broader investment-incentive framework of Türkiye in 2026 comprises several instruments which merit brief description. KOSGEB, the Küçük ve Orta Ölçekli İşletmeleri Geliştirme ve Destekleme İdaresi Başkanlığı, administers grants and support programmes for small and medium enterprises, including programmes specifically directed at ventures led by foreign investors. TÜBİTAK, the Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştırma Kurumu, administers grants for research and development, including the programmes numbered 1505, 1507, and 1512, which address different scales of research and commercialization. The five categories of investment-incentive certificate, administered through the Ministry of Industry and Technology, provide incentives specific to location, sector, and scale. The free zones (Serbest Bölgeler) offer exemption from corporate tax, exemption from customs duty, and flexibility of currency exchange for operations oriented toward export. The organized industrial zones (Organize Sanayi Bölgeleri) provide infrastructure and land on favourable terms, and the technology development zones (Teknopark) provide tax exemptions for software and research operations.

The legislative development of 2026 extends this framework into the dimensions of residency and personal taxation. The twenty-year exemption from Turkish income tax on foreign-source income for qualifying new Turkish tax residents was enacted by Law No. 7582, published in the Resmî Gazete of 4 June 2026, No. 33270, and it is addressed in detail in a separate paper of this series.

8. The Compound Case

The purpose of this paper is not to evaluate any single element of the foregoing in detail. The purpose is to demonstrate that the elements, considered together, describe a structural transformation that has compounded across the period from 2019 to 2026 and that is not yet adequately reflected in external assessments anchored to the frame of 2018–2021.

For an HNWI family considering Türkiye as a residency, investment, or citizenship jurisdiction in 2026, the macroeconomic case is materially stronger than the anchor of 2019 suggests. The defence-industrial depth, the infrastructure base, the technology ecosystem, the position in tourism and soft power, the discipline in manufacturing and export, and the investment-incentive framework together constitute a compound case that has continued to develop through political cycles, currency adjustments, and external shocks. The seven-year compounding is not yet complete, and the legislative and capital-formation trajectories described above point to continued development through the late 2020s.

Specific investment decisions, of course, require specific analysis, and such analysis belongs to consultation rather than to a published paper. The macroeconomic case argues only that the question is worth asking at this moment with a fresh baseline of data rather than with the anchored assumptions of seven years ago.

This paper is published for general information only. It does not constitute legal or investment advice, and it expresses no conclusion on any person, application, or pending proceeding. Turak Law Office assumes no responsibility for decisions taken on the basis of this text, and the reader remains responsible for verifying that the information is current at the time of reading, since legislation and administrative practice change. Certainty on any individual position can be obtained only in consultation, and an appointment with Attorney Abdulsamed Burak Turak may be arranged through the contact page of the office.

Sources and References

• Cumhurbaşkanlığı Yatırım Ofisi (Presidential Investment Office), "Why Türkiye" materials and sector-specific bulletins, available at invest.gov.tr.
• Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu (TÜİK), macroeconomic and trade statistics, 2019–2026.
• Savunma Sanayii Başkanlığı (SSB), Presidency of Defence Industries, official export and capability bulletins.
• Türkiye İhracatçılar Meclisi (TİM), monthly and annual export statistics.
• T.C. Sanayi ve Teknoloji Bakanlığı (Ministry of Industry and Technology), investment-incentive certificate documentation.
• T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı (Ministry of Culture and Tourism), tourism arrival statistics.
• United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), International Tourism Highlights.
• Türkiye Turizm Tanıtım ve Geliştirme Ajansı (TGA), tourism marketing and statistical materials.
• Law No. 7582 (Bazı Kanunlarda Değişiklik Yapılmasına Dair Kanun), Resmî Gazete 04.06.2026, No. 33270, particularly Articles 4 and 8.
• Resmî Gazete archive for the legislative texts referenced in the section on the investment-incentive framework.
• Public disclosures of Baykar Defence, Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), the MİLGEM programme, Ford Otosan, Arçelik, and the other corporate entities referenced.

Turak Law Office is a private institution of Turkish legal practice, established 2019, focused on citizenship by investment, real estate, banking and finance, corporate, family, tax, immigration, and maritime legal counsel for cross-border clients. The firm is registered with the İstanbul Bar Association (İstanbul Barosu).