Turkey Data Centers Locations 2025

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Overview

Data centers in Turkey have experienced significant growth in recent years, paralleling the country’s rapid digital transformation. As of mid-2023, there were approximately 75 data centers operating across Turkey, with 8 new facilities under construction and 30 more in the planning stage. Geographically, these centers are concentrated in major hubs—primarily Istanbul and Ankara—followed by cities like İzmir, Bursa, and Kocaeli (see map below).

Additionally, regional cities such as Gaziantep, Konya, Trabzon and others host data centers, ensuring a nationwide spread. The vast majority of Turkish data centers are built to at least Tier III standards for high availability, and a few critical facilities have achieved Tier IV for the highest level of fault tolerance. Driving this expansion is the surging demand for cloud services, big data, 5G infrastructure, and enterprise digitalization, all of which require robust local hosting.

In fact, operators note that with innovations like 5G, IoT, and smart cities, the need for modern data centers is growing rapidly.

From an energy and sustainability perspective, Turkey’s data center industry is increasingly focused on efficiency and resilience. For example, one of the largest facilities in Istanbul (Esenyurt) operates with a 30 MVA power infrastructure (approximately 30 MW) and features green building design elements. Likewise, Turkcell’s newly opened European Data Center in Tekirdağ (2021) spans 37,277 m² with 7,238 m² of white space, holds a LEED Gold certification, and is engineered to withstand up to magnitude 9.0 earthquakes. That facility also integrates renewable energy via 1,200 m² of solar panels on site. Turkish operators are mindful of the rising power consumption of data centers, pursuing measures like dual power feeds, waste heat reutilization, and on-site generation to enhance sustainability. With global trends calling for greener operations, new Turkish data centers tend to incorporate energy-efficient designs and components.

In terms of ownership and operation, Turkey’s data centers can be categorized by sector: telecommunications companies, financial institutions, government (public sector), and independent colocation/cloud providers. Below, we analyze the key players and facilities in each category, detailing their location, capacity, certifications, client profile, and infrastructure features.

Major Data Center Operators and Facilities

Telecommunications Sector Data Centers: Some of Turkey’s largest data centers are operated by telecom companies, namely Türk Telekom, Turkcell, and Vodafone. These facilities support the operators’ own network services as well as offer hosting and cloud solutions to enterprise customers. For instance, Türk Telekom’s Istanbul Esenyurt Data Center—opened in 2018—is one of the country’s biggest, built with a 27,000 m² footprint and 10,400 m² of white space. It was a ₺130 million investment featuring a 30 MVA power capacity, 22 server rooms (each housing ~203 racks), totaling about 4,466 rack capacity.

The Esenyurt facility is Tier III certified for design and is positioned strategically (notably, it is the closest major data center to Istanbul’s new airport). It offers fully redundant fiber connectivity (3 separate paths) and serves as Türk Telekom’s primary hub for cloud and hosting services, providing colocation, virtual servers, storage, backup, and cybersecurity services from a single campus.

In addition to Esenyurt, Türk Telekom operates data centers in Istanbul Gayrettepe and Ankara Ümitköy; collectively these three have 12,700 m² of white space and are secured with international certifications. All TT facilities feature 24/7 monitoring, biometric access control, redundant UPS and diesel generators, and robust fiber connectivity to ensure carrier-grade reliability.

Another major operator, Turkcell, has made significant investments in new data centers. Turkcell’s Gebze Data Center in Kocaeli (near Istanbul) is among the largest, with a total area of 33,000 m² and about 10,000 m² white space (20 halls of 500 m² each). It boasts 30 MW of power capacity supported by 25 diesel generators of 2,500 kVA each. Security is state-of-the-art, including retina scan access, 146 cameras, and 6,400 sensors throughout the facility.

Turkcell Gebze was designed from scratch as a Tier III certified data center and earned a LEED Gold rating for green building. In terms of physical resilience, it is built on 312 seismic isolators and can withstand earthquakes up to magnitude 9.0. Turkcell also opened a new Ankara Data Center in 2019 (~12,000 m² facility, 10 MW capacity) and a data center in İzmir (Menderes, ~10 MW) – both constructed to Tier III standards. In 2021, Turkcell inaugurated its European Data Center in Kapaklı, Tekirdağ (to serve the European side), which involved a $295 million investment. That facility offers 7,238 m² of white space within 37,277 m² total area, is Uptime Tier III and LEED Gold certified, uses on-site solar panels, and is engineered with similar seismic resilience as Gebze.

With this, Turkcell has established four modern data centers (Gebze, European/Tekirdağ, Ankara, İzmir) totaling around 64 MW of IT load capacity. These telco data centers not only host the operators’ mobile/fixed network infrastructure but also provide enterprise colocation, cloud computing, storage/backup, and managed services to external customers.

Vodafone Turkey operates a large data center in Istanbul as well. The Vodafone Istanbul Data Center (located in Esenyurt) was launched around 2017 with 10 MW of fully built-out power and 9,000 m² of white space.

It is Tier III certified for both design and constructed facility, and complies with ISO 27001 (information security) and PCI-DSS standards, also boasting a LEED-certified efficient design. Vodafone’s facility has on-site security staff 24/7 and uses redundant N+1 backup generators and UPS systems to guarantee uptime. It is a purpose-built building with a sole-tenant model (dedicated to Vodafone’s use), housing critical telecom network systems as well as offering enterprise cloud, hosting and managed services to businesses. In summary, the telecom-operated data centers are privately owned (Türk Telekom being partially state-owned but run as a commercial entity) and serve both the telecom sector needs and a broad range of enterprise customers, with an emphasis on high availability (multiple power feeds, generator farms, redundant cooling) and connectivity (multiple carriers and internet exchanges on-site).

Finance Sector Data Centers: Banks and financial institutions in Turkey have invested heavily in their own high-security data centers due to regulatory requirements and the need for maximal data protection. Many leading banks have built facilities certified to Tier III or even Tier IV levels. For example, Garanti BBVA’s Pendik Data Center in Istanbul is one of the few Tier IV certified sites in the country. It has received Tier IV Certification of Constructed Facility along with a Gold Operational Sustainability rating, indicating top-tier reliability.

Similarly, İşbank (Türkiye İş Bankası) completed its Atlas Data Center project in Istanbul with Tier IV design and facility certifications, aiming for unparalleled uptime for the bank’s operations. Akbank built a data center in Kocaeli (Gebze area) that achieved Tier III Certification for both design and constructed facility. Halkbank’s “Tomurcuk – Rosebud” Data Center in Kocaeli is also Tier III certified. State-owned Ziraat Bank recently established a large data center in Istanbul (Esenyurt) which has multiple Tier III certifications (design, provisional, constructed facility) and even a Tier III Gold operational sustainability award. Yapı Kredi Bank’s new data center in Çayırova (Kocaeli) likewise holds Tier III design and facility certificates.

In the participation (Islamic) banking realm, Türkiye Finans operates a Tier III certified data center in Istanbul (Kartal).

These bank-owned data centers are typically dedicated, private facilities that host only the bank’s and its subsidiaries’ systems; they are not open to third-party tenants. They often implement dual-site redundancy (a primary DC in one city and a secondary DC for disaster recovery in another).

Many Turkish banks keep a primary data center in Istanbul and a secondary in Ankara or a different region to ensure geographic resilience. For instance, Kredi Kayıt Bürosu (KKB) – the Credit Bureau owned by a consortium of banks – established the Anadolu Data Center in Ankara as a shared facility for financial data. The KKB Anadolu Data Center sits on a 43,000 m² campus (Anatolian Organized Industrial Zone) and opened Phase 1 with 1,000 racks capacity in late 2016, planning to expand to 3,000 racks with Phase 2. It features about 24,000 m² of indoor space and is built to Tier IV standards (design & facility certified). The power design is fully 2N redundant and active-active, supplied via two separate medium-voltage feeds and backed by redundant UPS plants.

Financial sector data centers focus on serving banking and financial services workloads and are engineered with extremely robust measures: 2N or 2N+1 redundancy on all critical systems, stringent physical security (biometric access, 24/7 guarded premises, surveillance), and advanced fire suppression (e.g. inert gas systems). They often have restricted access; unlike colocation centers, these are not multi-tenant facilities. The rationale is to ensure compliance with data privacy and banking regulations. Thanks to these investments, Turkey’s banking infrastructure includes some of the most resilient data centers in the region. For instance, Garanti BBVA and İşbank’s Tier IV facilities are on par with the world’s best in terms of uptime and fault tolerance. The banks also implement real-time replication between sites and comprehensive disaster recovery drills to safeguard critical financial data.

Public Sector Data Centers: Government agencies in Turkey have also been developing their data center capabilities to support e-government services, national security, and internal IT systems. The objective is to keep government data within the country and under strict control. Many ministries and public institutions have built dedicated data centers or outsourced their construction to specialized firms. For example, the Ministry of Trade (Customs and Trade) obtained Tier III Design Certification for its data center in Ankara. The national emergency management agency AFAD built a disaster recovery data center (TAVEM) in Ankara with Tier III design certification.

The Ministry of Health’s data center at the Ankara City Hospital campus was designed to Tier II standards. Municipal governments are also investing: Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) has a data center in Başakşehir that achieved Tier III design and facility certification, and an earlier city management center data center project received a Tier IV design award. Bursa Metropolitan Municipality similarly built a data center with Tier III design certification.

Public sector data centers are owned by government entities and often operated by either the agencies’ internal IT departments or state-owned companies. They host critical public sector applications, such as e-government portals, municipal services (smart city systems, traffic management, etc.), and sensitive citizen data. Accordingly, they are treated as critical national infrastructure with high security and resiliency. For example, site selection for these facilities considered factors like distance from earthquake fault lines and ease of securing perimeters.

The Istanbul municipality chose a site outside high-risk earthquake zones and implemented strong physical security and DDoS protection to ensure the safety of city data. Additionally, large infrastructure projects in Turkey often include their own data centers – for instance, the new Istanbul Airport (İGA) operates a Tier III certified data center on-site to support airport IT systems. Government officials have emphasized the importance of expanding domestic data center capacity for data sovereignty and privacy; the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure noted that domestic data centers are “indispensable for the privacy of the data of our country and citizens”. This policy perspective drives continuous investment in public sector IT infrastructure.

Private Colocation and Cloud Providers: Outside of telcos and single-user enterprise facilities, Turkey has a number of independent data center operators offering colocation, cloud, and hosting services.

These companies typically run carrier-neutral, multi-tenant data centers, providing space, power, and connectivity to a variety of clients. Equinix, a global colocation giant, is present in Istanbul (after acquiring local player Zenium’s facilities). Equinix operates at least two sites (known as IL2 and IL5/IL4) in the Dudullu Organised Industrial Zone of Istanbul, with a combined footprint of a few thousand square meters of white space. Equinix’s Istanbul data center is a key interconnection point, linking Turkey to international networks; through Equinix’s global exchange, customers in Istanbul gain direct connectivity to hubs in Europe, Middle East, and beyond.

The Equinix facilities in Turkey are built to the company’s rigorous standards (roughly Tier III equivalent), offering 100% SLA uptime guarantees and advanced security including DDoS mitigation and 24/7 on-site engineers.

Another notable facility is NGN’s Star of Bosphorus Data Center in Istanbul (Tuzla district). This is advertised as Turkey’s first carrier-neutral commercial data center of its scale. Opened in 2017, Star of Bosphorus is Uptime Tier III certified for design and construction.

It features approximately 5,000 m² of white space with capacity for over 2,000 standard racks, supported by a 16 MW total power infrastructure. The center was built on a 24,000 m² campus and employs cutting-edge power distribution and cooling solutions (ABB/Hitachi Energy systems, etc.) to ensure reliability. As a carrier-neutral hub, it hosts equipment from multiple telecom carriers, cloud providers, CDNs, and enterprises, serving as an important internet gateway for Turkey and the region.

The design includes multi-layer physical security, and the facility can provide services to a wide range of clients needing high-density colocation and cloud connectivity.

Local colocation providers such as Radore and Teknotel (Telehouse Istanbul) have been serving the Turkish market for years. Radore operates a data center in Istanbul’s Levent business district, with around 2,500 m² of white space (total facility ~3,020 m²) and capacity for roughly 10,000 servers. It has infrastructure equivalent to Tier III standards (though not Uptime-certified), including fully redundant power and cooling systems, and multiple 10 Gbps redundant internet uplinks.

Radore is known for its flexible solutions and customer-centric services, offering managed hosting and cloud alongside colocation.

Uniquely, Radore also introduced an additional Tier II+ suite in 2016 for clients with lower redundancy needs, making it a facility that can cater to different tiers of service simultaneously. Radore’s power setup, for example, includes 2+1 generator redundancy (3×1100 kVA) and 4+1 UPS modules (total 500 kVA) for its Tier II+ section, while its main halls operate at Tier III+ levels. Teknotel partnered with global Telehouse to establish Telehouse Istanbul, one of the first carrier-neutral data centers in Turkey (opened 2011). Located in Kozyatağı on the Asian side of Istanbul (with an extension on the European side later on), Telehouse Istanbul offers about 2,000 m² of white space and is built to Tier III standards. It provides access to multiple carriers and international connectivity, leveraging Teknotel’s fiber network.

Telehouse Istanbul has features like N+1 backup generators (48 hours fuel autonomy) and 2N UPS, with standard rack power around 4–5 kW and options for higher density. These independent data centers primarily serve IT service providers, SMEs, content companies, and cloud providers looking for local infrastructure. Multi-tenant facilities like these emphasize flexible colocation options (from single U slots to private cages and suites), strong security (24/7 guarded premises, CCTV, fire suppression), and high connectivity (direct peering with local internet exchanges, multiple ISP links).

Beyond Istanbul, independent data centers exist in other provinces as well. DGN Teknoloji in Bursa, for example, runs two separate data center halls in its own building, with ISO 27001 certification and a fully redundant infrastructure for local hosting needs. Netinternet in Denizli built a modern data center (operational since ~2018) to serve cloud and hosting customers in the Aegean region.

In Konya, an operator known as PenDC offers colocation services (competing with DGN for regional clients in Central Anatolia), and new international investors like Edgnex (DAMAC) have announced plans for a Tier III, 13,500 m² data center in Izmir to tap into Turkey’s growing demand. Additionally, telecom carriers’ enterprise arms such as İşNet, DorukNet, Comnet and others operate mid-sized data centers that cater to ISPs and businesses. These facilities are privately owned and target a wide array of sectors, from e-commerce and media to government contracts.

The multi-tenant model demands rigorous service level agreements (SLAs), typically offering 99.99% or higher uptime, and comprehensive support. As a result, they incorporate features like dual power feeds, N+1 or 2N redundancy for critical equipment, advanced cooling systems (often with free cooling for efficiency), and on-site technical support teams available 24/7.

Map of Data Centers in Turkey

The map above shows the geographical distribution of major data center locations in Turkey. It illustrates the clustering of facilities in key provinces. Istanbul, with around 39 identified data centers, is by far the primary hub; within Istanbul, notable clusters include the Levent-Maslak business district (European side), Tuzla area (far east of the city, Asian side), and the Ümraniye-Dudullu Organised Industrial Zone (Asian side). Ankara (the capital) is the second-largest hub with about a dozen data centers, many of which serve government and banking needs. Izmir and Bursa also feature multiple facilities (around 9 and 6 respectively), catering to the Aegean and southern Marmara regions. Kocaeli (specifically Gebze) and Tekirdağ (Çorlu/Kapaklı) host very large telecom data centers that serve the greater Istanbul metro area. Other dots on the map in Antalya, Gaziantep, Konya, Trabzon, Samsun, Kayseri, etc., represent either regional telco data centers or private facilities supporting local demand (often by internet service providers or hosting companies).

This distribution reflects a strategy of concentrating large, high-density data centers in economic centers while also ensuring some regional presence for redundancy and lower latency to end-users in those areas. For example, a content delivery network might keep its primary servers in Istanbul but also have edge caches in Ankara or Izmir data centers to serve users faster. Moreover, having multiple geographic locations is vital for disaster recovery; many Turkish businesses use an Istanbul facility paired with an Ankara or Izmir facility as a DR site to mitigate risks like earthquakes or power grid issues localized to one region. Indeed, seismic considerations influence where data centers are built. New Istanbul facilities tend to be located on the city’s outskirts, away from the high-risk earthquake zone near the Marmara Sea, and often employ advanced engineering (like base isolators) to cope with seismic activity. Similarly, data centers in Ankara or central Anatolia are situated in stable areas to the extent possible.

Overall, the map underscores Istanbul’s role as a data center nexus not just for Turkey but potentially for connecting Europe, Asia and the Middle East (thanks to its strategic location), while also highlighting that nearly every region of Turkey now has some level of local data center infrastructure.

Comparative Table of Data Centers

The following table provides a side-by-side comparison of representative data centers across Turkey, including key details such as location, power capacity, Tier/certification level, ownership type, client focus, operational features, and construction. It encompasses facilities from different sectors (telecom, finance, public, and private colocation) using publicly available data. This comparison offers insight into the capabilities and specializations of each facility.

Note: In the table above, “–” indicates information not publicly available for that field. Many bank and government data centers do not disclose detailed specs like exact power in MW, so entries are qualitative (e.g. “2N power” or “private use”). Tier levels refer to Uptime Institute’s certification where applicable. ISO 27001 denotes information security management certification, and LEED refers to eco-friendly building certification.

Conclusion

The mapping and analysis of Turkey’s data centers demonstrate that the country’s digital infrastructure capacity is expanding rapidly and keeping pace with global standards. Players across different domains — public sector, private telecom, finance, and specialized colocation providers — are all investing in state-of-the-art facilities to meet the rising demand for data processing and storage.

The prevalence of Tier III designs (and even some Tier IV) indicates a strong emphasis on uptime and reliability in the Turkish market. These data centers not only retain domestic data onshore (enhancing data sovereignty), but given Turkey’s strategic location bridging continents, they also poise the country to become a regional data and cloud hub. Indeed, the entry of international operators (like Equinix and Telehouse) and the expansion plans of local companies suggest that Turkey could emerge as a key connectivity and cloud servicing point for the broader region.

At the same time, energy supply and sustainability remain important considerations. Data centers are energy-intensive, and Turkish operators are adopting measures to improve efficiency and use cleaner energy sources. Many new facilities feature energy-efficient designs, renewable energy integration (e.g. solar panels at Turkcell’s European DC), and even explore waste-heat recovery, aligning with global trends for greener IT infrastructure. Turkcell’s and Türk Telekom’s newest centers obtaining LEED certifications exemplify this eco-conscious shift.

In conclusion, the data center landscape in Turkey is dynamic and on an upward trajectory, underpinned by strong demand for reliable and secure digital services. The included map and comparison table provide a snapshot of the current state (as of 2024-2025), and further growth is on the horizon.

Ongoing investments from both government and private sectors aim to ensure that Turkey’s data remains safely hosted within the country and that the nation can serve as a digital bridge between Europe and Asia. With continued focus on high standards, security, and sustainability, Turkey’s data center ecosystem is expected to expand and evolve, cementing its role in the global digital economy.

More information about data centers in Turkey; info@ozmconsultancy.com