Digital Realty’s entry into Türkiye through a new joint venture with Rönesans Infrastructure is more than another data-center announcement. It is a signal that global digital infrastructure capital is beginning to treat Türkiye as a core regional platform for cloud, artificial intelligence and enterprise connectivity, not simply as a large domestic market on Europe’s edge.
A Strategic Data-Center Bet on Türkiye
Digital Realty said on September 14, 2026, that it had formed a strategic joint venture with Rönesans Infrastructure to develop and operate next-generation data centers across Türkiye. The first project is planned as a carrier-neutral campus in Ankara with more than 22 megawatts of IT capacity. According to the company, land, power and permitting have already been secured, early construction has started, and the first facility is scheduled for completion in 2028.
The choice of Ankara is commercially notable. Istanbul remains Türkiye’s financial, commercial and connectivity hub, but Ankara offers proximity to government, public-sector technology demand, defense-related industries, universities and national institutions. Digital Realty also said the joint venture intends to expand into Istanbul, creating a two-city platform that could serve domestic enterprises, public-sector bodies, cloud providers, network operators and international customers seeking lower-latency access to Turkish users.
Digital Realty’s own scale gives the announcement weight. The company describes itself as the world’s largest cloud and carrier-neutral data-center platform, with more than 300 facilities across over 55 metros in more than 30 countries. Rönesans brings a different but complementary profile. In the announcement, Digital Realty described Rönesans Infrastructure as one of Türkiye’s largest investment companies and a top 50 international contractor on Engineering News-Record’s international contractors list.
Dr. Erman Ilıcak, president emeritus of Rönesans Holding, said the group has delivered more than $10 billion of private-sector investment in Türkiye and has worked with international partners including IFC, TotalEnergies, Meridiam, GIC, Samsung and Sojitz. For foreign investors, that matters because data centers are execution-heavy assets. Success depends not only on capital and tenants, but on land assembly, grid access, construction delivery, permitting, tax structuring and long-term operations.
Türkiye’s Digital Demand Is No Longer Theoretical
The joint venture lands in a market where digital demand indicators have been moving in the same direction. The Republic of Türkiye Investment Office reports that the Turkish ICT market reached $36.7 billion in 2024, with more than 11,700 active ICT companies and over 246,000 sector employees. It also says Türkiye has attracted about $21 billion in international ICT investment since the early 2000s.
The U.S. International Trade Administration, in its January 2026 country commercial guide, estimated Türkiye’s e-commerce market at about $93.5 billion in 2025 and projected it could reach $154.9 billion by 2030, implying a 10.6 percent compound annual growth rate. The same guide noted that e-commerce’s share of Türkiye’s GDP rose from 2.7 percent in 2019 to 6.5 percent in 2024.
Data-center market estimates vary by methodology, but they point to expansion. Research and Markets said in March 2026 that Türkiye’s data-center market was valued at $715 million in 2025 and projected to reach $1.79 billion by 2031, with a 16.56 percent CAGR. Mordor Intelligence, using an installed IT-load framework, estimated Türkiye reached 66 megawatts of installed IT load in 2025 and forecast expansion to 140 megawatts by 2030.
These figures help explain why Digital Realty is not entering in isolation. Google Cloud announced in November 2025 that it planned a new Türkiye cloud region as part of a 10-year, $2 billion investment in the country, in collaboration with Turkcell. Google said the region would support demand for cloud services and AI-driven innovation across Türkiye and EMEA. Turkcell CEO Dr. Ali Taha Koç said Turkcell planned to invest $1 billion in data centers and cloud technologies as part of the partnership.
In September 2026, Türkiye’s Investment Office also highlighted Vodafone Türkiye’s partnership with UAE-based EDGNEX Data Centres by DAMAC to build a $100 million, 6-megawatt Tier 3 data center in Izmir. The Investment Office said the facility would be carrier-neutral, earthquake-resistant and connected to submarine cable routes serving Europe, Africa and Asia. The date references in that official item are somewhat unusual, since the page is dated September 2026 while describing completion in 2025, but the broader message is clear: Türkiye’s data-center map is spreading beyond Istanbul.
FDI Strategy Meets Digital Infrastructure
Türkiye’s policy framework is also moving toward technology-intensive foreign direct investment. The Investment Office says Türkiye attracted around $288 billion in FDI between 2003 and 2025, compared with only $15 billion cumulatively before 2002. Its 2024-2028 FDI Strategy is designed to attract quality FDI projects aligned with the country’s economic development goals.
Digital infrastructure fits that policy logic. Data centers support cloud adoption, cybersecurity, fintech, logistics platforms, AI services, government digitalization and export-oriented business services. They are also sticky assets. Once a cloud region, colocation campus or connectivity hub is established, surrounding services often follow, including systems integrators, managed service providers, cybersecurity firms, equipment suppliers and enterprise software teams.
For investors, however, this is not a simple real-estate story. A successful data-center project in Türkiye requires market entry analysis that tests demand by customer type, including hyperscalers, telecom operators, banks, public-sector agencies, content platforms and disaster-recovery users. It also requires company incorporation and corporate structuring decisions, especially when foreign infrastructure funds, local developers, operating companies and construction contractors are all involved.
Investment incentives are another critical area. Türkiye offers incentive mechanisms for priority sectors, R&D, technology development zones and regional investment. The Investment Office’s ICT sector profile notes that government support under Türkiye’s R&D framework can include corporate tax exemptions, VAT exemptions and social security premium support. A data-center investor must determine whether the project qualifies under national, regional or technology-specific schemes, and whether the incentive package fits the planned capital expenditure, import needs and operating model.
Power, Permitting and Resilience Are the Hard Tests
The largest constraint in the global data-center industry is increasingly power. The International Energy Agency’s 2026 work on energy and AI projects that global data-center electricity consumption will roughly double to about 945 terawatt-hours by 2030, growing around 15 percent per year from 2024 to 2030. That growth is more than four times faster than projected electricity-demand growth in other sectors.
Türkiye has advantages, but also execution risks. The Investment Office’s energy sector profile says renewables already account for more than 58 percent of installed capacity, while Türkiye aims to reach 120 gigawatts of combined wind and solar capacity by 2035. BloombergNEF’s 2026 Turkey Transition Factbook said Türkiye had 34.2 gigawatts of solar and 15.8 gigawatts of wind installed, and described the country as a leading solar and wind market in 2025.
For data centers, renewable capacity is only part of the answer. Investors need firm power availability, grid connection timelines, backup generation permits, substation capacity, water and cooling strategy, seismic design, fire systems, fiber diversity and physical security. Digital Realty’s statement that land, power and permitting have already been secured for the Ankara campus is therefore important. It suggests that the joint venture has cleared some of the bottlenecks that often delay data-center projects.
Still, foreign investors following this sector should be cautious about extrapolating from a flagship project. A multinational operator with Rönesans as a partner may secure coordination more efficiently than a first-time investor. For new entrants, government relations and regulatory liaison can become decisive, especially when projects require coordination among municipalities, the Energy Market Regulatory Authority, grid companies, telecom operators, environmental authorities and investment incentive bodies.
Import-export facilitation is also relevant. Data centers depend on imported equipment, including servers, switchgear, transformers, UPS systems, cooling systems, racks, cabling and security equipment. Customs classification, VAT treatment, import documentation, standards compliance and delivery sequencing can affect construction schedules. Project management on the ground becomes a financial control issue, not only an operational convenience.
Data Sovereignty and Compliance Will Shape Demand
Data-center demand in Türkiye is also being shaped by regulation. Data localization is not a single blanket rule across the economy, but banks, telecoms, public-sector bodies and regulated industries face sensitive requirements around data residency, outsourcing, cybersecurity and cross-border transfers.
DLA Piper’s Data Protection Laws of the World guide identifies Law No. 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data as Türkiye’s main data-protection law, noting that it is primarily based on the EU’s older Data Protection Directive. The guide also notes Türkiye’s July 2024 regulation on cross-border personal data transfers. CMS’s 2025 expert guide says the Turkish Data Protection Authority published a January 2025 guide clarifying the framework for personal data transfers abroad, including adequacy decisions, safeguards and standard contractual clauses.
That matters directly for cloud and colocation demand. If Turkish enterprises can host sensitive workloads locally while using international-grade infrastructure, adoption barriers fall. Google Cloud’s 2025 Türkiye announcement explicitly cited data sovereignty, security, low latency and international standards. Garanti BBVA, Turkish Airlines and Yapı Kredi were quoted in Google’s announcement as emphasizing resilience, AI, cybersecurity and performance.
For foreign investors, legal and tax compliance cannot be treated as a back-office matter. Operators and customers need to assess VERBIS registration obligations, cross-border transfer mechanisms, processor-controller contracts, cybersecurity requirements, sector-specific rules and data-retention obligations. Foreign data controllers may need a Turkish representative, according to DLA Piper’s summary of the VERBIS framework. Contract architecture must align commercial service-level agreements with Turkish legal obligations.
What This Means for Foreign Investors
Digital Realty and Rönesans have placed Türkiye more firmly on the regional data-center map. The Ankara campus, planned Istanbul expansion, Google Cloud’s Türkiye region, Turkcell’s cloud investment and Vodafone-EDGNEX’s Izmir project together suggest that Türkiye is moving from scattered capacity toward a more institutional digital-infrastructure market.
For foreign investors, the opportunity is real but operationally demanding. Market entry work should begin with demand mapping by city, sector and tenant type. Incorporation and corporate structuring need to address ownership, construction risk, financing, profit repatriation and possible joint-venture governance. Incentives analysis should test whether the project can access R&D, regional, technology or strategic investment support. Legal and tax compliance must cover data protection, cross-border transfers, telecom interfaces, employment, VAT, customs and corporate taxation.
Government relations will matter because power, permits, zoning, grid access and public-sector demand all sit close to the state. Expo and trade-fair representation can help technology suppliers, engineering firms and cloud-service providers enter the emerging ecosystem around these projects. Import-export support will be central for equipment-heavy buildouts. Project management will determine whether capital expenditure, construction sequencing and commissioning stay aligned.
The broader lesson is that Türkiye’s FDI story is becoming more infrastructure-intensive and more technology-linked. Investors that treat the market only as a consumer base may miss the deeper shift. The emerging prize is a regional operating platform for cloud, AI, connectivity and digital services, but capturing it will require disciplined execution across strategy, structuring, incentives, compliance, regulatory liaison and delivery on the ground.