Most international brands reach Turkish shoppers through the local marketplaces long before they open a store of their own. This page covers what those marketplaces are like, what you need in place before you can list, and where the work actually sits.
They are not interchangeable. Category strength, shopper expectation and campaign mechanics differ enough that the right starting channel depends on what you sell.
None of this is exotic, but all of it is local. The launches that stall usually stall here, not on the product.
In practice, marketplaces onboard sellers that can issue a Turkish invoice — which usually means a company registered in Turkey with a tax number. Some marketplaces run separate cross-border programmes with different rules, and those rules change. We check the current requirement with the marketplace before you spend anything on a company structure.
Turkey runs a nationwide electronic invoicing system (e-fatura and e-arşiv). Invoices to buyers are issued electronically, and the marketplace expects the invoice to appear against the order. This is an integration, not a manual step, once volume starts.
Product titles, descriptions and attributes have to be in Turkish, and each marketplace has its own category tree and required attribute set. A catalogue exported from another market almost never maps cleanly; the mapping is the work.
Prices are shown to shoppers in Turkish lira and VAT-inclusive. Instalment payments on credit cards are a normal expectation in many categories, not a promotion — a price that ignores that reads as expensive.
Marketplaces work with contracted courier networks at negotiated tariffs, and returns come back through the same network. Delivery speed and the return experience feed directly into seller scoring, which feeds into visibility.
Distance selling in Turkey requires pre-contract information and a distance sales agreement in Turkish, and gives the buyer a statutory right of withdrawal. Personal data is governed by KVKK, Turkey’s data protection law, which is closely aligned with the GDPR.
Every marketplace takes a commission that varies by category, and adds service fees and other deductions on top. Those rates move, so we keep them as maintained tables rather than as sentences in a brochure. The tables are on the Turkish side of this site — the figures are readable in any language:
The calculator is the useful one: commission alone never tells you the margin, because the shipping band, the service fee and the return rate all come out of the same sale.
We are a Turkish team; CEA has been building e-commerce and marketplace integrations for brands selling here since 2015. What that buys you is the local half of the work.
For a standard domestic seller account, yes in practice — the marketplace expects a local invoice and a Turkish tax number. Some marketplaces also run cross-border programmes for foreign sellers, and their requirements differ and change over time. We confirm the current route with the marketplace before recommending a structure.
Each marketplace publishes commission rates by category, and adds its own service fees and deductions on top. Because the rates change, we publish them as maintained tables on the Turkish side of this site rather than repeating figures here.
It depends on the category, not on the size of the marketplace. Reach is highest on Trendyol, but a category where you have no price advantage and forty competing listings is an expensive place to learn. We look at your catalogue against current category competition before recommending an order.
Both are possible. Setup and integration can be a one-off project; listing quality, campaign participation and advertising can continue as a monthly service. The scope is written down either way.
Send us your category and your target price point. We will tell you which channel is worth starting with and what the entry actually costs — before anyone signs anything.
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