Software developers work at a gaming software company at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Türkiye, April 30, 2025. (Mustafa Kaya/Handout via Xinhua)
ANKARA, May 1 (Xinhua) -- Türkiye's startup ecosystem is moving into 2025 with promising momentum, with regulatory reform, investor appetite, and government support as key drivers, analysts said recently.
According to a recent report from KPMG, startups in Türkiye completed 331 investment deals in 2024, up from 297 in 2023, while the total transaction value soared more than fivefold, from 497 million to 2.6 billion U.S. dollars.
In the first quarter of 2025, venture capital investment volumes rose 18 percent year-on-year, with fintech, artificial intelligence (AI), software-as-a-service, gaming, and cybersecurity leading the way, it said, forecasting a 10-15 percent increase in transaction volumes for 2025, and a more than 3-billion-U.S. dollar total investment if macroeconomic stability holds in Türkiye.
Meanwhile, a survey conducted last year by the Turkish Industry and Business Association (TUSIAD) found 42 percent of Türkiye's largest corporations invested in or partnered with startups in 2024, up from 22 percent in 2022.
Cloud services exports rose by 38 percent last year, while international revenues from gaming climbed 26 percent, TUSIAD said.
"Türkiye's startup scene is rapidly maturing and becoming more attractive to global investors," Elif Karadag, a venture strategist at Tech Partners in Istanbul, told Xinhua.
Fintech, in particular, remains a strong performer, supported by favourable regulation and a young, tech-savvy population, Karadag said.
"The ambition of Turkish entrepreneurs has shifted; more are building products for international markets from the outset," she said, adding, "Türkiye is keen on positioning itself as a technology bridge between Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East."
Under a national tech plan launched in 2024, Türkiye aims to create 100 unicorns and 100,000 tech enterprises by 2030, and to set up startup support offices across all 81 provinces, the first of which opened in Ankara in March last year.
"We're seeing a more predictable operating environment for startups, especially in fintech and AI," Burak Alpan, an analyst at Next Research in Ankara, told Xinhua.
"This is crucial for building long-term investor trust," he said. ■
