ALIBABA Group Holding announced plans to invest US$2 billion in Turkey after a meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The head of the Chinese giant, Michael Evans, made the announcement after the meeting in Istanbul on Friday (Sep 15), according to a statement from its Turkish unit Trendyol. He indicated that the company has “confidence in Turkey’s sound economic fundamentals” and has already invested US$1.4 billion in the country through Trendyol, Turkey’s biggest e-commerce marketplace.

Evans expressed support for Trendyol’s international expansion plans and underscored that Turkey has the potential to become one of the leading e-export countries, according to the statement. He didn’t provide detailed information about the investment calender, saying the plan is for “the coming period.” Trendyol Group President Caglayan Cetin also attended the meeting.

Evans elaborated on the creation of a world-class data centre and a logistics centre in Ankara, as well as a market-leading export operations centre at Istanbul Airport.

Trendyol reached a valuation of US$16.5 billion in 2021, raising funds from investors including SoftBank Group, General Atlantic, Qatar Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi sovereign fund ADQ. Trendyol said Alibaba has 76.1 per cent stake in the e-commerce operator.

Turkey launched an antitrust probe into Trendyol in 2021. In July, Turkey’s top court upheld a law tightening regulation on e-commerce companies in a blow to the company.

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The Constitutional Court said that the law, which restricts companies’ advertising spending and use of customer data if their sales exceed given thresholds, was in line with the constitution, rejecting an objection by the main opposition party.

The ruling was meant to help smaller e-commerce firms to compete after rapid growth of the market since the pandemic. Later in July Turkey’s Antitrust Board fined Trendyol 61.3 million liras (S$3.1 million), saying it used third-party vendors’ data to give its own retail operations an unfair advantage.

Turkey’s total e-commerce volume rose 109 per cent last year to over 800 billion liras, with almost a fifth of all shopping done online, Trade Ministry data show. BLOOMBERG