Digital Realty’s new joint venture with Rönesans Infrastructure marks one of the clearest signs yet that Türkiye is moving from a peripheral cloud market to a contested digital-infrastructure destination, as global data-center operators, hyperscale cloud providers and Turkish policymakers converge around the same thesis: local compute capacity is becoming a strategic investment asset.
A Strategic Entry Into Türkiye’s Data-Center Market
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 companies said the first project will be a carrier-neutral data-center campus in Ankara with more than 22 megawatts of IT capacity. Land, power and permitting have already been secured, construction has begun, and the first facility is scheduled for completion in 2028, according to Digital Realty’s statement.
For foreign direct investment, the location matters. Ankara is not Türkiye’s largest commercial city, but it is the administrative center of government, defense, public-sector technology procurement and regulated-sector decision-making. Digital Realty also said the joint venture intends to expand into Istanbul, Türkiye’s main financial and connectivity hub. That two-city strategy suggests a platform approach rather than a single real-estate investment.
Digital Realty is entering with scale. In its own investor disclosures, the company describes itself as the world’s largest cloud and carrier-neutral data-center platform, with more than 300 facilities across more than 55 metros and over 30 countries. Its second-quarter 2026 results showed total revenue of $1.9 billion, up 29 percent from a year earlier, and adjusted EBITDA of $978 million, according to the company’s July earnings release. Those numbers place the Türkiye move inside a broader global capital cycle, where data-center operators are racing to secure land, electricity, customers and regulatory positioning before demand outpaces supply.
Rönesans brings the local execution layer. Digital Realty’s announcement said Rönesans Infrastructure has more than 30 years of international experience, relationships with institutions including IFC, EBRD and DEG, and a broader workforce exceeding 40,000 people including subcontractors. Dr. Erman Ilıcak, president emeritus of Rönesans Holding, said the group had delivered more than $10 billion of private-sector investment in Türkiye and sees digital infrastructure as critical to competitiveness.
Why Türkiye Is Becoming More Relevant to Cloud and AI Investors
The Digital Realty deal follows a series of cloud announcements that have changed the perception of Türkiye’s digital market. Google Cloud announced in November 2025 that it planned to bring a new Google Cloud region to Türkiye as part of a 10-year, $2 billion investment. The project is being developed with Turkcell, whose chief executive Ali Taha Koç said Turkcell planned to invest $1 billion in data centers and cloud technologies.
Amazon Web Services followed with the general availability of an AWS Local Zone in Istanbul in May 2026. AWS said the Istanbul Local Zone brings compute, networking and local storage capabilities to Türkiye, helping customers store and process data in-country while reducing latency. AWS also noted that the launch made Amazon S3 and EBS Local Snapshots available in an EMEA Local Zone for the first time.
These moves are commercially logical. Türkiye has a population of more than 85 million, a large banking and payments sector, a developed telecoms market, strong e-commerce adoption, and geographic proximity to Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia. For cloud providers, latency and data residency are no longer technical afterthoughts. They influence where enterprises can run workloads, where banks can store sensitive data, and where public-sector platforms can be modernized.
Market estimates vary, but the direction is clear. Mordor Intelligence estimated that Türkiye’s installed IT load reached 66 megawatts in 2025 and forecast expansion to 140 megawatts by 2030. ResearchAndMarkets, in a March 2026 release, projected the Turkish data-center market to rise from $715 million in 2025 to $1.79 billion by 2031. Forecasts differ because analysts use different definitions of capacity, colocation revenue and cloud infrastructure, but they all point to a market entering a higher-growth phase.
Government Policy Is Pulling Data Centers Into Industrial Strategy
Türkiye’s policymakers are increasingly treating data centers as part of national industrial policy. Industry and Technology Minister Mehmet Fatih Kacır said in September 2026, according to Anadolu Agency, that Türkiye aims to expand data-center capacity to 1 gigawatt by 2030 and mobilize at least $10 billion in private-sector investment for cloud technologies and digital infrastructure.
That ambition sits inside Türkiye’s broader high-technology investment agenda. The official HIT-30 program identifies data centers among strategic technology investment areas, while the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye Investment and Finance Office describes project-based incentives as tailor-made packages for large-scale, high-impact strategic projects. For investors, the policy signal is important, but the practical question is how eligibility, site selection, power allocation, equipment imports, tax treatment and local compliance will be handled in practice.
Türkiye’s wider FDI strategy also provides context. The Investment and Finance Office reports that Türkiye attracted around $288 billion of FDI between 2003 and 2025 and that the number of companies with international capital reached 86,926 by mid-2025. Its 2024-2028 FDI strategy targets an increase in Türkiye’s share of global FDI to 1.5 percent and its share of Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and North Africa inflows to 12 percent by 2028.
A Digital Realty and Rönesans platform aligns closely with that agenda because it is not simply a construction project. It is a piece of enabling infrastructure for banks, software firms, cloud providers, AI developers, telecoms operators and public-sector digitalization. That makes government relations, incentives strategy and regulatory liaison central to execution.
The Hard Constraint: Power, Grid Access and Sustainability
For data-center investors, electricity is now as strategic as land. Digital Realty’s announcement that power has already been secured for the Ankara campus is therefore a material detail. Across global markets, grid connection delays have become one of the main bottlenecks in data-center development, especially for AI-ready capacity.
Türkiye is trying to address the power side of the equation. Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said in September 2026, according to Anadolu Agency, that Türkiye plans approximately $108 billion in power generation and transmission investment by 2035 as it targets 120 gigawatts of installed wind and solar capacity. The International Energy Agency’s policy database also notes Türkiye’s 2035 renewable roadmap, including about $28 billion of transmission-grid investment, 14,700 kilometers of HVDC lines, around 15,000 kilometers of AC lines and higher cross-border interconnection capacity.
The challenge is timing. The International Energy Agency has warned that planning, permitting and completing grid infrastructure can take five to 15 years, while data centers can be built in one to three years. That mismatch is a major risk for foreign investors entering the sector. A data-center project may have customers and financing but still face delays if substation capacity, redundant feeds, renewable procurement, cooling infrastructure or environmental approvals lag behind.
Sustainability will also shape bankability. BloombergNEF said in May 2026 that global data-center capacity reached 84 gigawatts in 2025 and consumed around 500 terawatt-hours of electricity, equal to 1.9 percent of global demand. As AI workloads grow, investors in Türkiye will need to show credible power sourcing, efficiency standards and resilience planning. This affects project management, import-export planning for equipment, and long-term compliance with both Turkish rules and international lenders’ environmental standards.
Regulation, Data Residency and Market Entry Complexity
The commercial opportunity is strengthened by data-residency demand, but that same demand creates legal complexity. The U.S. International Trade Administration’s January 2026 Türkiye digital economy guide said several barriers affect digital trade, including data localization requirements, regulatory controls and technology-market access issues. For cloud and data-center operators, those are not abstract policy points. They shape facility design, customer contracts, data-flow architecture and risk allocation.
Türkiye’s Personal Data Protection Law, known as KVKK, has also evolved. DLA Piper’s data-protection review notes that Türkiye’s Regulation on the Procedures and Principles on Cross-Border Personal Data Transfers was published in the Official Gazette on July 10, 2024. Legal analyses by Erdem & Erdem and other Turkish practitioners say the new framework provides mechanisms such as adequacy decisions, standard contracts and binding corporate rules, while standard contractual clauses must be notified to the authority within five business days after signature.
For foreign investors, the key point is that Türkiye is not a plug-and-play jurisdiction. A cloud or data-center investment may require a local company structure, sector-specific licensing analysis, employment compliance, construction and environmental permitting, cybersecurity controls, tax planning, customs treatment for imported servers and cooling equipment, and ongoing engagement with ministries, municipalities, energy authorities and data-protection regulators.
That is where the FDI advisory layer becomes operational rather than cosmetic. Market entry strategy determines whether an investor should enter through a joint venture, acquisition, greenfield project or local partnership. Incorporation and corporate structuring affect control, financing, tax exposure and profit repatriation. Investment incentives work requires mapping national, regional and project-based support. Legal and tax compliance governs construction, operations, customer contracts and data processing. Government relations matter because grid capacity, permits and incentive negotiations often require coordinated public-sector engagement.
What This Means for Foreign Investors
Digital Realty’s Türkiye entry should be read as a signal that the country’s digital-infrastructure market is becoming more investable, but also more competitive and more complex. The most attractive opportunities will not go simply to firms with capital. They will go to investors that can secure power, structure local partnerships, qualify for incentives, satisfy data-residency requirements, and execute construction and operations on realistic timelines.
For international companies evaluating Türkiye, the practical advisory agenda is clear. Market entry work should compare Ankara, Istanbul and secondary locations by power availability, fiber routes, customer demand, seismic risk, cooling conditions and regulatory exposure. Incorporation and corporate structuring should define the local entity, shareholder rights, financing channels and governance. Investment incentives analysis should test eligibility under strategic, regional and project-based programs before capex decisions are locked in.
Legal and tax compliance must cover KVKK, cross-border data transfers, customer contracting, construction permits, employment rules, customs and VAT treatment for imported equipment. Government relations and regulatory liaison are central where energy connections, municipal permissions and national technology-policy priorities intersect. Import-export facilitation becomes relevant for servers, switchgear, cooling systems and high-value components. Project management is necessary to coordinate contractors, utilities, regulators, lenders and anchor customers through a multi-year build.
The Digital Realty and Rönesans joint venture does not guarantee that Türkiye will become a regional hyperscale hub. It does, however, raise the benchmark. For foreign investors, Türkiye is moving from a market to watch into a market where execution capability, local knowledge and regulatory navigation will determine who captures the next wave of cloud and AI infrastructure demand.