Original Research Article

Big Data & Society

July–December: 1–14
New geographies of platform capitalism: © The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
The case of digital monopolization in sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/20539517221124585
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Melih Yeşilbağ 1

Abstract
The rise of digital platforms is growingly acknowledged as a pivotal characteristic of contemporary capitalism. A subset of
the literature on digital platforms scrutinized the political economy of platform companies, their data-driven business
models along with the economic, social, and political consequences of platformization. Yet, this strand has been over-
whelmingly interested in Big Tech companies in the United States and China. In this article, I aim to expand the geograph-
ical span of this emerging literature by scrutinizing platformization dynamics in Turkey, a middle-income country that has
not been systematically examined so far along these lines. To this end, I present an assessment on the overall platform
landscape in Turkey by focusing on three highlight digital platforms (Trendyol, Hepsiburada, and Getir). My analysis on
the trajectory of these three platforms indicates the following. First, these platforms have exhibited meteoric growth
rates and have risen among the most valuable companies in Turkey in a tremendously short period of time. Second,
their aggressive growth strategies based on data extraction and network externalities have led to a strong monopolization
drive. Third, they have rapidly expanded into adjacent business areas, transforming themselves into infrastructural com-
ponents of the domestic economy, with profound impacts on production, trade, and labor relations. Fourth, they remain
dependent on the infrastructure laid by Big Techs. These findings suggest that platformization is rapidly transforming eco-
nomic landscapes other than the United States and China as well, yet in an uneven and dependent form, underlining the
need to broaden the geographical focus of the concerned literature.

Keywords
Digital platforms, Turkey, platform capitalism, monopolization, platformization, big data

Introduction From production and commerce to socialization and polit-

The remarkable rise of the digital economy is increasingly
recognized as a key feature of contemporary capitalism. It
is indeed impossible to ignore the encompassing dominance
over the global economy by digital platforms. The last two
decades witnessed the astonishing metamorphosis of a
handful of Silicon Valley startups into digital empires that
hold enormous power over flows of information, goods,
and services across the globe. Translating their core asset,
namely big data, into extremely profitable business
models, these platforms have rapidly climbed up to the
apex of the global economy (Birch et al., 2021). Their
meteoric growth in scale is accompanied by a similar
expansion in scope as well. Going well beyond merely
being an emerging industry in itself, they now constitute
“the infrastructural core” of the world economy in an era
of full-speed digital transformation (Van Dijck et al.,
2018: 12), with far-reaching consequences for society.
ical mobilization, from governance and finance to urban
development and labor relations, it is hard to imagine a
domain that has not been subject to the multifaceted impli-
cations of digital platforms (Beraldo and Milan, 2019;
Dazzi, 2019; Hendrikse et al., 2021; Kitchin, 2014;
Zuboff, 2019). These fundamental transformations have
led scholars to coin terms such as platform capitalism, to
describe the pivotal characteristics of our times (Kenney
and Zysman, 2016; Langley and Leyshon, 2017; Srnicek,
2017; Steinberg, 2021). The emerging literature on
1
Sociology Department, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey
Corresponding author:
Melih Yeşilbağ , Sociology Department, Ankara University, Dil ve Tarih-
Coğ rafya Fakültesi, Sıhhiye, Ankara 06100, Turkey.
Email: myesilbag@ankara.edu.tr

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2 Big Data & Society
platformization and platform capitalism has become a flour-
ishing research field attracting attention from a wide range
of disciplines including political economy, science and
technology studies along with media and communication
studies.
A crucial subset of this emerging field has focused on the
novel accumulation dynamics that emerge along with the
ongoing digital transformation of the world economy.
Scholarly works that analyze the political economy of
digital platforms now constitute a crucial research agenda
in the field of the political economy of contemporary capit-
alism (Birch et al., 2021; Hendrikse et al., 2021; Klinge
et al., 2022; Rikap and Lundvall, 2020; Sadowski, 2019).
In this vein, the emerging literature has brought forward a
number of issues such as the specific business models of
digital platforms, the role of big data and artificial intelli-
gence practices in their growth strategies, their relations
with financial institutions, their policies to evade tax and
escape regulation along with competition and monopoliza-
tion dynamics in platform markets.
The fact that the top five rankings of the S&P 500 index
got occupied by five digital platforms (Google, Apple,
Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, commonly abbreviated as
GAFAM) as of 2019 is the most emblematic indicator testi-
fying their spectacular rise. Furthermore, their combined
market capitalization makes about 25% of the whole list
(Birch et al., 2021: 3). This is indeed a phenomenon with
rare precedents not only in recent times, but in the history
of capitalism in general (Kenney and Zysman, 2020). In
this vein, the Big Tech boom is resembled to the “the
gilded age” which was marked by a powerful monopoliza-
tion drive led by a handful of “robber barons.” It is note-
worthy that the corona pandemic only exacerbated these
trends while the “Big Tech barons” of our times, like Jeff
Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, achieved record wealth
gains in a situation of economic turmoil and distress
(Hendrikse et al., 2021: 4). While GAFAM situates the
center of gravity of platformization firmly in the US,
China emerges as the second highlight geography with
Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent (often abbreviated as BAT)
closely following the lead of GAFAM in terms of user
base, revenue, and market capitalization (Davis and Xiao,
2021: 104; Jia and Winseck, 2018). Consequently, schol-
arly works have focused on these two geographies as the
primary landscapes of platformization.
Given the sheer scale of the United States and Chinese
companies, this focus is quite understandable. However, it
leaves out important dynamics elsewhere. This is also
partly true for the broader literature. There is a growing
body of works that explore the impact of digital transform-
ation and platformization on the Global South, especially
through the global value chains literature (Dolan and
Roll, 2013; Koskinen et al., 2019; Kwet, 2019; Taylor
and Broeders, 2015). In this respect, several works have
noted how platform capitalism should be conceptualized
primarily as a global phenomenon since it rests on cheap
labor in East Asia and extraction of rare minerals in
places like Sub-Saharan Africa (Blakeley, 2021;
Oyedemi, 2019). In this vein, Global South is mostly attrib-
uted a complementary role in the overall digital transform-
ation. The actual dynamics of platformization within the
Global South (other than China) remains vastly underex-
plored (Wu and Gereffi, 2018).
Starting from this observation, I aim to shed light on the
impacts of digital transformation beyond the US and
Chinese cases. My central question, in this respect, is
whether the accumulation patterns affiliated with platformi-
zation pertain to other national contexts as well? Can we
observe a rise of digital platforms with similar characteris-
tics to American and Chinese platform giants? If yes, what
are the commonalities and differences concerning the
dynamics of this process? Who are the driving actors and
how are they transforming the economic landscape? How
can we construe their entanglements with American and
Chinese Big Techs? What is the role of the state and the
institutional setting? What are the consequences for compe-
tition/monopolization dynamics? Finally, what are the
implications concerning the literature on the dynamics of
platformization on a global scale?
In this paper, I seek to answer these questions by present-
ing evidence from Turkey, a middle-income country, to the
best of my knowledge, which has not been the subject of a
systematic inquiry along these lines. To this end, I specific-
ally focus on three leading digital platform companies from
Turkey—Trendyol, Hepsiburada, and Getir—all of which
have exhibited exorbitant growth rates in recent years and
joined the ranks of the most valuable companies in
Turkey during the COVID-19 pandemic. My main argu-
ment can be summarized as follows. The trajectory of
these three firms characterized by data-driven business
models, aggressive growth dynamics, monopolization strat-
egies, and infrastructural expansion demonstrate that plat-
formization is rapidly transforming the Turkish corporate
scene. Along with meteoric growth rates and deepening
monopolization in domestic markets, however, Turkish
platforms remain dependent on the infrastructure laid by
Big Techs. Thus, platformization of the economy proceeds
in places other than the United States and China as well, yet
in an uneven and dependent form.
My findings are the outcomes of a document analysis
that made use of a variety of sources including official sta-
tistics, industry reports, and media coverage. Financial
account analysis is a crucial source in recent studies on
digital platforms. Yet, in this respect, there are certain lim-
itations for the Turkish case. Detailed data on the balance
sheets of Trendyol and Getir are not available, since they
are private firms. Hepsiburada’s initial public offering in
NASDAQ in July 2021, however, makes it possible to
access financial accounts going back to 2018. Given
these, I sought to put the available data into perspective
Yeşilbağ
with overall trends for the nonfinancial firms in the Turkish
Stock Exchange. The data on the financial structure of the
firms operating in the Turkish Stock Exchange was
obtained through the Refinitiv Eikon database. Following
Orhangazi (2019), I employed a data cleaning process to
filter out financial firms using the SIC (standard industrial
classification) code indicator and to obtain trends for
several relevant indicators.
In the following, I first review the literature on the polit-
ical economy of platformization and highlight the key
issues within this strand, which I then scrutinize for the
case of Turkey. This is followed by a profile analysis of
the three companies. In the penultimate section, I discuss
the regulatory and institutional dimensions of the platform
landscape in Turkey before summarizing my findings in
the conclusion along with the implications for the overall
literature
Theoretical underpinnings: The political
economic dynamics of platformization
The phenomenal ascent of digital platforms has recently
begun to be recognized as a pivotal dynamic of contempor-
ary capitalism and to attract growing scholarly attention.
Explorations on the factors that led to this spectacular
rise, on the other hand, are quite varied. Generally speaking,
neoclassical economists tend to explain it by the rather
autonomous dynamics of technological breakthroughs
(Cole et al., 2021). Typically exhibiting an explicit fascin-
ation with the techno-libertarian ideology of the Silicon
Valley entrepreneurs, these accounts argue that a series of
innovations in internet technologies simply led to new pro-
ducts and new markets for these products. In the self-
perception of these entrepreneurs, these innovations “aim
to make the world a better place” by connecting users
worldwide, (Fernandez et al., 2020: 6) “removing market
frictions” and “reducing transaction costs” (Evans and
Schmalensee, 2016). The transformation of what were
once mere startups into platform magnates at the top of
the world economy, the narrative goes, is solid proof of
the dynamism of capitalist competition. This is often
coupled with celebratory remarks for the political implica-
tions of platformization for encouraging labor participation
and boosting democracy (Davis, 2016; Heeks, 2017).
A closer and critical look, however, suggests otherwise.
In this vein, several scholars note the role of financial insti-
tutions for the rise of platform companies. Winseck (2011),
for instance, demonstrates that the telecoms, internet, and
media industries were the pivotal frontiers of the corporate
financialization drive in the Atlantic world. Srnicek (2017)
highlights the role of low-interest policies as a response to
the financial crash in the Global North for accelerating plat-
formization. Blakeley (2021), on the other hand, posits that
crucial leaps of Big Tech have been rendered possible in a
situation marked by the availability of cheap credit looking
3
for profitable outlets, as in the aftermath of the dotcom crisis
and at a larger scale that of the 2008 crisis. Similarly,
Hendrikse et al. (2021: 4) note the extremely generous mon-
etary climate of the post-2008 world, where “Big Tech
companies became a safe haven for investors.” Thus, far
from being a spontaneous development, the rise of digital
platforms was strongly facilitated in an environment
where investors considered platforms as “the next big
thing” and poured massive amounts of liquidity into their
business (Langley and Leyhson, 2017). Studies that
analyze the balance sheets of platforms indicate that these
firms are utilizing financial leverage at levels significantly
higher than the median nonfinancial firm (Fernandez
et al., 2020).
The business models of digital platforms constitute
another major debate within the literature. It is true that
there are significant differences in the products, services,
and activities of digital platforms. While Apple mainly gen-
erates profits through electronics hardware production and
Microsoft through software production, Google makes
money through ads and by selling its vast data flows
acquired by its search engine which it offers to the public
for free. Amazon and Alibaba, on the other hand, are in
principle online retailers making money out of commissions
from customers and sellers. These differences notwithstand-
ing the evolution of digital platforms share certain charac-
teristics that allow us to come up with a stylized model.
In this regard, datafication emerges as one of the crucial
features of digital platforms (Sadowski, 2019). In the age of
platform capitalism, big data emerges as the prime resource
to be utilized by platforms for training machine learning
algorithms, improving predictive capacity; and thereby to
be transformed into value through targeted advertising, cus-
tomer profiling, and selling to third parties (Van Dijck et al.,
2018; Beauvisage and Mellet, 2020). Thus, platforms
operate with a “data imperative” (Fourcade and Healy,
2016: 14) “to collect as much data as possible, from as
many sources, by any means possible” (Sadowski, 2019:
7). Contrary to the claims of neoclassical accounts, the
dominance over endless flows of user data lends first
comers enormous market advantage by amplifying
“network effects” and “economies of scope,” consequently
entrenching their market position to the detriment of new
entrants (Santesteban and Longpre, 2020: 485). That is
also why platforms are typically programmed to “get
users hooked,” in order to maximize user engagement and
therefore data collection (Hendrikse et al., 2021: 63). As a
consequence of these traits, Big Techs typically pursue an
aggressive growth strategy to achieve a “winner-take-all”
market dominance as quickly as possible and once this is
realized, to eliminate or absorb potential rivals through
M&As (Klinge et al., 2022). An implication of this strategy
is what is described as “the new patient capital” phenom-
enon (Rahman and Thelen, 2019). Unlike the short-termism
of the financialized corporations in the 1990s, today’s tech
4 Big Data & Society
investors follow a distinct route in which the short term is
sacrificed for prospective revenue streams that could be
guaranteed when a certain level of market dominance is
achieved (Hendrikse et al., 2021: 6).
This takes us to another related issue concerning the rise
of digital platforms that is the dynamics of competition and
monopolization. The current market structure of the plat-
form economy exhibits clear monopolistic or oligopolistic
trends. For instance, Google has an absolute dominance
in the search engine scene with over 86% share as of
2021, while its navigation service Google Maps has a
79% share in the market. Amazon, on the other hand, con-
trols more than 49% of the US e-commerce sales (Kenney
and Zysman, 2020: 60). Google and Facebook’s combined
share in the digital ad markets in the United States amounts
to no less than 97% (Orhangazi, 2019: 11).
A noteworthy implication of the drive is the issue of dif-
ferentiation among digital platforms in terms of scale and
scope. As Van Dijck et al. (2017: 12–22) observe, “the plat-
form ecosystem” is far from being “a level playing field.” In
their seminal study, the authors make a crucial distinction
between “infrastructural platforms” and “sectoral plat-
forms.” While the former includes only a handful of com-
panies that constitute the heart of the digital economy, the
latter refers to platforms that are specialized in a single
sector such as transportation (Uber), hospitality (Airbnb)
or education (Coursera) and operate on the infrastructure
laid by the former group. Sectoral platforms are, thus,
dependent on the infrastructural platforms which have
turned into “obligatory passage points” (Bassens and Van
Meeteren, 2015) in the ecosystem. In fact, the notion of
Big Techs that emerged as a journalistic term and then
made its way into scholarly writing refer to nothing but
infrastructural platforms. As Hendrikse et al. (2021: 66)
put it, “Big Tech is at the center of a new sociotechnical
system, functioning as its core operating system, subjecting
the rest of the world to its inclusive control drift and
rent-seeking logics.” How this dynamic of differentiation
among platforms plays out in contexts other than the
United States and China is a crucial issue that I address in
this paper.
The trajectory of a few digital platforms into Big Techs
in a relatively short time is an interesting issue in itself.
Their evolution has followed an ever-expanding trajectory
through which they proliferated their business activities
beyond their core area. In this regard, Amazon is the most
emblematic case. Starting its journey as an online book-
seller, the company transformed itself into a digital giant
whose activities span a wide spectrum including e-retail,
online grocery store (Amazon Grocery Store), cloud and
web services (Amazon Web Services), electronics hardware
producer (Kindle Tablet), social media services (acquisition
of Twitch), TV and movie producer (Amazon Prime),
payment systems, logistics, and fashion design, along
with brick-and-mortar retail (Boyer, 2021: 10; Kenney
and Zysman, 2020; Van Dijck et al., 2017: 169). A
similar trend is at work for the other Big Techs as well.
Besides its main area of search engine, Google has affiliates
in smart home technologies, autonomous vehicle produc-
tion, Internet of things, as well as web and cloud services.
The unchecked power of Big Techs has recently begun
to cause concern in the public opinion and to catch the
attention of regulators at national or supranational levels.
A series of lawsuits in the United States, the EU, and else-
where have sought to challenge digital giants on the
grounds of a number of issues such as data privacy, tax-
ation, and competition dynamics (Santesteban and
Longpre, 2020). The US Congressional Investigation of
Competition in Digital Markets in 2020 (US Senate
Congressional House Committee on the Judiciary, 2020),
for instance, warned that high concentration rates and ten-
dencies for monopolization in the US platform markets
were a threat to competition. Yet, more often than not,
charges against digital giants hit a dead end due to a
number of reasons. First, the current structure of competi-
tion laws that is mostly focused on “consumer welfare”
(the absence or existence of unfair price hikes stemming
from monopolization) is incompatible for dealing with plat-
forms that typically provide services to customers free of
charge (Blakeley, 2021; Birch et al., 2021; Van Dijck
et al., 2018). Second, regulatory bodies are not prepared
to grasp the opaque mechanisms hidden in “the black
box” of the algorithms employed by platforms (Brevini
and Pasquale, 2020; Hendrikse et al., 2021). Third, in the
absence of a concerted effort at a global level, national
authorities remain essentially toothless to prevent
common offshoring practices for tax evasion (Bryan
et al., 2017; Fernandez and Hendrikse, 2020). Fourth,
digital platforms have already acquired tremendous eco-
nomic and political power and gained a sort of status “too
big to break up” (Roderick, 2014). Fifth, states are becom-
ing more reliant on collaboration with platforms concerning
security issues and emergencies as in the COVID-19 pan-
demic (Rikap, 2020: 21). That said, however, recent years
demonstrate a growing consciousness and will by public
authorities against the unchecked power of platforms, the
consequences of which remain to be seen.
The commonalities and differences between the American
and Chinese Big Techs constitute another theme of the extant
literature (Wu and Gereffi, 2018). In that regard, the political
economic and institutional environment of the two Big Tech
booms come to the front as key explanatory variables that
lead to different paths. While the US tech boom emerged
as a response to a crisis situation “after a long downturn”
(Srnicek, 2017) in a deregulated setting, the Chinese boom
occurred in a context of an economic upturn marked by
China’s unrivaled growth rates and on a terrain in which
the hand of the state is remarkably visible (Davis and
Xiao, 2021). As a corollary, the techno-libertarian logic of
the US Big Techs is typically juxtaposed against the
Yeşilbağ
techno-statist logic of Chinese Big Techs (Gruin, 2019;
Plantin and De Seta, 2019). On the other hand, several
studies showed how the Chinese boom has also been
heavily reliant on investments from the United States and
thus subject to the same dynamics of financialization and
commercialism as their western counterparts (Fuchs, 2016;
Jia and Winseck, 2018; Zhang, 2020). Similarly, selective
strategic alliances between Big Techs and the US state, for
instance concerning policing (Ferguson, 2017), also demon-
strate the limits of talking about a libertarian, deregulated
setting as a distinct feature of the US platform landscape.
A more important point is that most of the existing litera-
ture focuses solely on the US and Chinese cases. Given the
sheer scale of these firms, this is quite understandable. This
spotlight, however, leaves out emergent dynamics concern-
ing platformization in the rest of the world. Home-grown
platforms in other parts of the world have only recently
begun to attract scholarly attention, yet the number of
studies that have analyzed the emergent digital platform
landscapes in places other than the United States and
China remains limited.1
Here, I aim to shed light on the process of platformiza-
tion in Turkey, a middle-income country, which, to the
best of my knowledge, has not been scrutinized along
these lines in a systematic manner. In doing so, I seek to
demonstrate that platformization is not a process limited
to the United States and China, but that it operates at a
global level, in an uneven form, and with significant eco-
nomic, social, and political implications.
The Turkish case: Digital transformation,
e-commerce, and platformization of the
economy
Since platform economies presuppose an infrastructure, it
makes sense to start with certain fundamentals concerning
digital transformation. While Turkey’s first connection to
the internet dates back to 1993, the user base began to
expand only in the second half of the 1990s. Broadband
subscription and personal computer ownership, however,
remained limited in comparison to Global North throughout
the 2000s. Similar to China (Davis and Xiao, 2021), internet
access was made available to wider segments of the popu-
lation only through the spread of smartphones. As of
January 2021, Turkey had an internet penetration rate of
77.7% (65.8 million people), ranking above the world
average (59.5%) but below the EU average (84%). Social
media penetration, on the other hand, rose from 63.7% in
2020 to 70.8% in 2021, well above the world average of
53.6% (Hootsuite, 2021). Rapid growth in digital penetra-
tion in recent years along with the availability of room for
further growth due to the still unsaturated characteristics
and the relatively large and young population dynamics
render Turkey a promising market for digital services.
5
Digital monopolies can sprout in a variety of business
areas (social media, hardware, search engines, e-commerce).
In most of these areas, there are no Turkish equivalents.
There have been some government-supported attempts to
popularize “local and national” search engines, messaging
apps, or social media sites, but their reach has been highly
limited. Thus, in these domains, the Turkish market is
firmly dominated by Big Techs. There is a different story,
however, concerning the realm of e-commerce. In this
domain, there is a rapidly growing market that has generated
a number of “home-grown” platforms along with accumula-
tion dynamics similar to the overall trends of platformization.
The history of e-commerce dates back to the early 2000s
when a number of existing retail firms began to offer digital
services along with the emergence of the first e-market-
places. The industry followed a steady but rather slow
growth for about a decade before picking up speed in par-
allel to the increasing availability of smartphones. As of
2021, Turkey had an e-commerce penetration rate2 of
48%, ranked 39th in the world, below Argentina (58%)
and Brazil (54%) and above India (46%) and Russia
(45%) (Statista, 2021: 11). The total revenue of the
Turkish e-commerce market rose by 43% from 7.9 billion
$ in 2019 to 11.3 billion in 2020, with a rampant annual
growth rate of 43%. Similarly dramatic increase is visible
in other related indicators as well. Over the same year,
the ratio of e-commerce to total commerce jumped from
9.8% to 15.7%, while the share of e-commerce in total
GDP rose from 2.7% to 4.1%. Furthermore, the number
of firms that are involved in e-commerce rose from
68,000 to 257,000 (E-Ticaret Bilgi Platformu, 2021). This
suggests that the Covid-19 pandemic contributed signifi-
cantly to these trends. Yet, it should be noted that the
overall growth rate of Turkey positively deviates from
global trends. In terms of CAGR (compound annual
growth rate), while the global average is 6.3%, Turkey
(14.6%) is the fastest-growing retail e-commerce market
in the world (Statista, 2021).
E-marketplaces, firms that operate entirely online and
offer a variety of products in different categories, are the
most important category in the realm of e-commerce.
Two of the companies portrayed below belong to this cat-
egory. In 2019, there were 306 active e-marketplaces oper-
ating in Turkey (Deloitte, 2020). Yet, despite this relatively
large number, the market is dominated by just a handful of
companies, a phenomenon that has been intensifying in
recent years. Until 2018, there was a rather balanced distri-
bution of market share among top players. Hepsiburada was
the market leader with the four other firms following closely
behind. After 2018, however, the picture began to change
dramatically. While Hepsiburada managed to maintain a
significant market share, Trendyol rose as the new decisive
market leader, thanks to an aggressive growth strategy.
From 2018 to 2020, the market share of top two firms
rose from 56.1% to 70.1%, reflecting a rapid intensification
6 Big Data & Society
of market concentration over the course of just 2 years
(Turkish Competition Authority, 2021). As of the end of
2020, Trendyol had an unrivaled dominance in the
market, accounting for a massive share of 50.7% in net
sales. While Hepsiburada accounted for 19.4%, the
closest follower, Çiçeksepeti, had merely a share of 5.7%
(Statista, 2021). According to a recent survey, 61.9% of
consumers have Trendyol app and 39.9% Hepsiburada
app on their mobile phones while 37.5% of sellers regard
Trendyol and %17.9 Hepsiburada as their “indispensable
business partner” (Turkish Competition Authority, 2021:
76, 92). The market is thus showing clear signs of an oli-
gopolistic concentration pattern.
Company profiles
Hepsiburada
Hepsiburada (literal meaning: everything is here) was
founded in 2000 by Hanzade Doğ an as a firm under the
Doğ an group, a decades-old conglomerate best known for
its operations in the media industry. Since then, it has
been among the leading firms in the e-retail business.
Until 2015, Hepsiburada followed a model known as the
Direct Sales Model, in which the firm bought items from
suppliers on a wholesale basis and then sold these to consu-
mers. In 2015, the firm also began to operate a marketplace
model, in which registered merchants sell their products dir-
ectly to consumers through the Hepsiburada site, thus trans-
forming itself into a hybrid platform. As of September
2021, 70% of the Gross Merchandise Value of the
company came from the marketplace (Hepsiburada, 2021).
In recent years, the platform expanded its operations by
founding associate firms in adjacent areas. It now operates its
own logistics firm (HepsiLojistik), last mile delivery service
(HepsiJet), payment system (HepsiPay), and personalized ads
and data insights services (HepsiAd). Moreover, the platform
now encompasses a number of affiliate services, enabling its
customers to purchase grocery and essentials shopping, pro-
ducts from international merchants (HepsiGlobal) and online
airline tickets (HepsiFly). HepsiJet typically hires couriers as
independent “business associates,” who need to have their
own companies and vehicles, and pays them on a piecework
basis. This way, Hepsijet evades responsibility for insurance
and accident costs while the couriers are compelled to work
for longer hours and under greater pressure.
The active customer base (number of people who pur-
chased at least one product in the last 12 months) of
Hepsiburada exhibited a 38% CAGR, growing from 4.8
million in 2018 to 10.7 million in 2021, while the number
of active merchants rose from 12,000 to 67,000 in this
period. Gross merchandise value, on the other hand,
reached 16.8 billion TL, for the three quarters of 2021,
representing a 54.9% year-to-year growth rate from 2020
(Hepsiburada, 2021).
In 2015, Abraaj Capital, a Dubai-based private equity
firm, bought 25% of the stakes of Hepsiburada. In May
2021, Hepsiburada applied to the US Securities and
Exchange Commission and became the first Turkish
company ever to be listed in NASDAQ, which is in itself
an interesting phenomenon. At its initial public offering,
it raised more than 680 million $ and was valued at 3.9
billion $ (Bloomberg, 2021a). The fact that Hepsiburada
is now a listed company enables us to access detailed infor-
mation about the company’s balance sheet, income state-
ment, and cash flow statement. As mentioned previously,
this is not the case for the other two highlight companies
(Trendyol and Getir), rendering it impossible to conduct a
systematic comparison among them. Due to the SEC dis-
closure requirements, however, this data only goes back
to 2018, hence not allowing us to observe long-term
trends. Yet, we can still generate useful results by analyzing
the publicly available data of Hepsiburada, in comparison to
the overall trends in the Turkish capital markets and in con-
versation with the themes raised in the literature.
A highlight that comes from the financial statements of
the company is that it has been running up losses most of
the time. While the company has realized huge growth in
terms of net sales (from 1.95 billion TL in 2018 to 2.60
billion TL in 2019 to 6.36 billion TL in 2020), it has regis-
tered a net loss of 51.5 million TL in 2018, a net profit of
101.1 million TL in 2019 and again a net loss of 181
million TL in 2020. A closer look reveals that the main
reason behind this is the dramatic increase in the share of
advertising in the overall expenses of the company. From
2018 to 2020, while labor expenses rose from 130 million
TL to 325 million TL (%150 increase) and administrative
expenses from 155 million TL to 579 million TL (%275
increase), advertisement expenses jumped from 93 million
to 646 million (%597 increase) in the same period. As of
September 2021, advertising expenses reached 843
million TL (SEC, 2021). This finding is in line with the
patient capital phenomenon in the platform model in
which investors sacrifice short-term profits to reap off the
benefits of future market dominance. Figure 1 puts
Hepsiburada’s financial accounts into perspective with non-
financial companies in the Turkish Stock Exchange.3
Accordingly, Hepsiburada comes out as the firm with the
highest market capitalization among the firms with a nega-
tive profit ratio, underscoring the divergent path of
Hepsiburada among other big companies and demonstrat-
ing the impact of the patient capital phenomenon.
Trendyol
Trendyol was founded by Demet Mutlu in 2009 as an
e-commerce platform with a focus on fashion products.
The company took off with a capital of about 300,000 $
before receiving investments from a number of venture
capital funds between 2010 and 2012 (Techcrunch, 2011).
Yeşilbağ
Figure 1. Hepsiburada in comparison with nonfinancial companies in the Turkish Stock Exchange.
A negligible player until 2015, the company gradually
expanded its scope and share in the market thereafter. Its
great leap forward moment, however, came in 2018 when
the Chinese giant Alibaba purchased 75% of the company
for 728 million $. With this investment, Trendyol became
the first “unicorn” of Turkey. With additional investments
in 2020 and 2021, Alibaba’s share in the company rose to
86.5% (Bloomberg, 2021b). At another round of funding
in August 2021, it raised another 1.5 billion $ from a
range of investors including US-based General Atlantic
and Princeville Capital, Japanese SoftBank Vision as well
as sovereign wealth funds from Qatar and the UAE. The
company is now valued at 16.5 billion $, becoming the
first Turkish firm to acquire the title of “decacorn” (a term
for startups that have surpassed a valuation of more than
10 billion $) (Techcrunch, 2021). More importantly, these
figures suggest that only in 11 years, Trendyol has
become by far the most valuable company in Turkey,
dwarfing even the largest and decades-old Turkish indus-
trial firms.
7
After the takeover by Alibaba, Trendyol quickly became
the top player in the market. Thanks to the financial power
acquired by the Alibaba takeover, it has since pursued an
aggressive advertisement activity (with a generous budget
that is significantly higher than its rivals; Turkish
Competition Authority, 2021: 164) and is now regarded
as the absolute leader of the market. In 2019, it had a
35% market share, while in 2020 it obtained a %50
market share. In 2020, the platform served around 30
million customers and delivered 347 million packages.
Similar to other platform patterns, it has expanded its
operations, founding associate firms in neighboring indus-
tries. It now has an R&D firm specialized in natural lan-
guage processing for the Turkish language and AI
applications (Trendyol Tech), a last mile delivery firm
(Trendyol Express), an instant grocery and food delivery
firm (Trendyol Go), a customer-to-customer secondhand
channel (Dolap), a digital wallet (Trendyol Pay) along
with its own fashion brands Trendyol Milla and Trendyol
Man. The last mile delivery firm of Trendyol follows the
8 Big Data & Society
same hiring model as Hepsiburada. Currently, the platform
is seeking to achieve the super-app status that combines all
the functions (retail e-commerce, grocery and food deliv-
ery, hotel and flight booking, payment, etc.) in one
mobile app, demonstrating the role of the data imperative
for the company.
In 2020, Trendyol initiated a support program called
“enlarge your business with Trendyol” targeting SMEs
(small and medium-sized enterprises) together with
TOBB (Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges
of Turkey, a semipublic business organization that is domi-
nated by SMEs). Through this program, Trendyol offers
trainings for e-commerce and digital transformation to
SMEs along with a special opportunity of zero commis-
sion sales at Trendyol for up to 30,000 liras (TOBB,
2020). This program has enabled Trendyol to expand
its supplier base, but also tighten its grip on producers.
As of 2021, Trendyol works with 98,000 merchants,
the overwhelming majority of which are micro-
enterprises and SMEs. The company has also generously
contributed to state campaigns during the pandemic,
granting a 5 million TL worth health-related products
to the Ministry of Health along with a 1 million TL
worth donation to the National Solidarity Campaign
declared by the President’s Office (Durdak, 2020). As of
2020, Trendyol has also gone abroad by launching an inter-
national site serving 27 European countries. This move, the
consequences of which yet remain to be seen, is regarded
as part of a broader strategy of Alibaba, which faces chal-
lenges in penetrating Western markets directly as a
Chinese firm, for global expansion (Ayaydın, 2021a).
Getir
Getir was founded by Nazım Salur in 2015. Unlike
Trendyol and Hepsiburada, it is not an all-inclusive
e-marketplace, but an ultrafast delivery platform for
grocery and essentials with an ambitious promise of deliv-
ery time under 10 min. In the initial stage, the company
received seed investments from Yandex CEO Arkhady
Veloz (Genç, 2020). Starting up its business in Istanbul, it
rapidly expanded to other cities. The high performance of
the company attracted investors across the globe, rendering
Getir a rising star in the startup universe. At the funding
round in June 2021, the company received investments
from a number of venture capital funds including the
UAE-based Mubadala along with the US-based Silver
Lake, Sequoia, and Tiger Global, reaching a valuation of
7.5 bn $ (Bradshaw, 2021). The latest round in March
2022, led again by Mubadala, catapulted the firm to an
astonishing 12 bn $ valuation (Reuters, 2022).
As of December 2021, Getir operates in all 81 Turkish
cities, has 3.5 million active users, and delivers more than
75,000 packages daily. Getir initiated a wave of acquisi-
tions as well, buying up Blok, a fast delivery firm mainly
operating in Southern Europe, in July 2021, Moov, a
Turkish digital car rental service, in August 2021 and
Weezy, a UK-based online supermarket platform, in
November 2021 (Crunchbase, n.d.).
Getir operates with a different business model than
e-marketplaces. Its profits mainly derive from online
selling of groceries and essentials at marked-up prices
along with delivery fees. The company operates ware-
houses (the so-called “dark stores”) that are strategically
located in the neighborhoods to enable delivery under 10
minutes. The dark stores work with a franchise model, in
which Getir is responsible for product quality and pricing
and the franchising warehouse for the actual shipping.
Recently, Getir has also begun to shift to the business asso-
ciate model for couriers as well. The company has prolifer-
ated its services, combining differentiated services in its
app. Apart from the ultrafast delivery function, it also
offers services for larger purchases (Getirmore) with a
30-min delivery time, products directly from local shops
(Getirlocal), food delivery (Getirfood), drinking water
delivery (Getir water), and taxi services (Getirbitaxi).
A distinctive feature of Getir is the weight of its abroad
operations. After its remarkable success in capturing the
Turkish market in a very short time span, Getir began to
expand its operations beyond Turkey by opening its first
abroad branch in London in January 2021. As of
December 2021, Getir has operations in 29 cities in eight
foreign countries (UK, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands,
Italy, France, Portugal, and the United States). In its
abroad operations, the company is strategically focusing
on urban centers mostly populated by younger and rela-
tively wealthier population segments that are willing to
pay extra for basic needs.
Institutional and regulatory dimensions
Until recently, it was not possible to talk about a systematic
state strategy concerning digital transformation in Turkey.
Recent years, however, saw a more hands-on approach by
the state concerning this issue. In this regard, The Office
of Digital Transformation was established directly under
the Presidency in 2018. In 2019, this Office declared a strat-
egy document called “national technology and digital
Turkey,” which formulates the priorities and aims within
the realm of digital transformation. Underscoring the
importance of big data and artificial intelligence for future
development, the document states: “by combining the
opportunities of science and technology with the targets
of our country and our nation, we will prepare all our insti-
tutions, public and private, to this great transformation.” In
line with this, the Office undertakes several projects in a
number of areas ranging from digital transformation of
public services, R&D, and maintaining cyber security.
The Office also emphasizes the importance of tech startups
for the Turkish economy. In cooperation with the Office,
Yeşilbağ
The Minister of Industry and Technology stated that they
have a target of having 10 unicorns (reworded as
“Turcorns” by the Ministry) by 2023, the centenary of the
Republic (CBDDO, 2021).
An overall evaluation concerning the institutional setting
of the tech setup in Turkey would yield the following con-
clusions. The fact that digital transformation has become a
state priority only in the last three years demonstrates that
Turkey is lagging well behind advanced cases in this
regard. Furthermore, in terms of R&D expenditure’s share
in GDP, Turkey’s score (a mere 1.09%) was well below
the OECD average (2.5%) (OECD, 2019). Given these
limitations, the rise of the three highlight companies does
not seem to be the product of a systematic state policy as
in China. Yet, the growing attention of state bodies to this
realm might mean that tech startups and already well-
established firms will enjoy greater support from public
authorities. Thus, it is likely that this will speed up the
process of platformization.
In recent years, regulatory attempts targeting the monop-
olization dynamics have echoed in the Turkish landscape as
well. In this regard, Turkish Competition Authority has
issued a report analyzing the competition dynamics in the
e-marketplace industry. The report highlights the increas-
ingly oligopolistic structure of the market and the
growing dominance established by the leading firm,
Trendyol through network externalities along with the
growing pressures over supplier firms working with the
company. The report also warns that the asymmetric dom-
inance of Trendyol along with diminishing shares of other
major players in recent years might trigger a wave of
M&As that would lead to further consolidation of monop-
olization (Turkish Competition Authority, 2021).
Noteworthily, the board decided to open an investigation
to Trendyol on allegations of favoring its own firms
against other third-party sellers in the marketplace
(Dünya, 2021). Soon after, however, the head of the inves-
tigation team was transferred to Trendyol as the Chief
Regulation Officer, leading to a controversy over ethical
violations (Ayaydın, 2021b). The consequences of this
investigation remain to be seen. Yet, given the sheer scale
of the company along with its pivotal position in the logis-
tics networks that tie a significant base of producers across
the country to consumers and the generous support pro-
grams in cooperation with state and semipublic institutions,
it seems unlikely that the company will face serious sanc-
tions that could significantly alter the current trends in the
industry.
Overall findings
The evolution of these three firms gives us the opportunity
to discuss the impact of platformization in the case of
Turkey. Their development from mere startups into digital
giants with market values surpassing those of established
9
industry conglomerates in a tremendously short time
demonstrates that platformization is rapidly transforming
the Turkish corporate scene (Figure 2). Accordingly, from
2020 to 2021, three digital platforms rose to the top
league of Turkish corporations in terms of market value.
While Trendyol became the most valuable firm by a wide
margin, Getir holds the third position and Hepsiburada is
the eleventh. Their combined market value makes 30% of
the top 15 list. This trend demonstrates the exorbitant
growth rates of digital platforms and their increasing
weight in the domestic economy.
The examination of the growth strategies of the con-
cerned companies in conversation with the themes high-
lighted in the global literature, on the other hand, reveal a
convoluted pattern. Table 1 summarizes the highlights of
the Turkish platform landscape in comparison with the
US and Chinese cases.
Generally speaking, the Turkish case exhibits similar-
ities with the overall business models of platform giants
in terms of several aspects. Data imperative, network exter-
nalities, aggressive growth strategies based on capturing
market share as rapidly as possible, intensifying M&A
activity to buy out potential rivals along with the expansion
of activities into adjacent business areas stand out as well-
known features shared by the emerging Turkish platforms.
Concomitantly, the rise of digital platforms has brought
forward certain novel dynamics in labor markets toward
what is known as the “gig economy.” The last couple of
years witnessed growing grievances against the worsening
conditions of workers in the platform industry, specifically
those of the couriers. The first months of 2022, on the other
hand, saw an unprecedented wave of labor unrest among
platform couriers that started in Trendyol, rapidly spread
to other firms, and ended with considerable gains (Polat,
2022). The fact that a sector filled with workers with very
little organizational experience witnessed one of the most
massive unrests of recent years is reflective of the impact
of platformization for labor, in terms of both scale and the
level of pressure platform workers are facing.
A noteworthy characteristic of the scrutinized companies
is that they remain dependent on Big Techs. All three firms
rely on the infrastructure laid by Big Techs, particularly
concerning web services. Among them, Trendyol comes
out as the one that has the most generous budget in research
and development with a separate technology branch. Yet, it
mostly focuses on natural language processing algorithms
for the Turkish language. Thus, for the Turkish case, it is
not possible to talk about an autonomous innovation
program aiming to overcome the dependency on Big
Techs. That said, however, Van Dijck et al.’s (2017) “sec-
toral platform” distinction does not satisfactorily capture the
evolution of the Turkish platform landscape. Although all
three firms started as online retail companies, they are
rapidly expanding their businesses, entering into other
domains such as hospitality, logistics, as well as production.
10 Big Data & Society

Figure 2. Hepsiburada and nonfinancial companies in the Turkish Stock Exchange.

Source: Value Today and Media Coverage.

Table 1. Comparative platform landscapes.

United States China Turkey

Timing of “Take-Off” Early 2000s, in a context of long Early 2010s, in a context of long After 2018, in a context of
downswing upswing economic turmoil
Leading sectors of origin Search engines, social media, hardware, Search engines, social media, E-commerce
nd e-commerce hardware, and e-commerce
Institutional setting Deregulation along with selective Systematic state strategy Recent strategic attempts by
strategic alliance with the state the state
Technology Autonomous Autonomous Dependent
Finance Capital markets Capital markets Mostly venture capital
Orientation Global Global Mostly domestic markets

Along with their structural dependence on Big Techs, it can
be claimed that they are pursuing an infrastructural expan-
sion at a national scale. This suggests that in the case of
Turkey, platformization is proceeding at an uneven and
dependent manner, generating dynamics that transcend
the infrastructural vs sectoral differentiation put by Van
Dijck et al. (2018).
Another crucial aspect of divergence of the Turkish case
from Big Techs, on the other hand, seems to be the financial
strategies. While Big Techs have immensely benefitted
from capital markets by going public in the last decades,
this is a dynamic that is mostly absent in the Turkish
case. A possible reason is the relative shallowness of
Turkish capital markets. In this regard, it is also noteworthy
that Hepsiburada became the first Turkish company to be
listed in NASDAQ through its initial IPO in July 2021.
Limited presence in capital markets, however, should not
lead us to the conclusion that financialization is not a pertin-
ent issue in the Turkish platform scene. Turkish firms have
instead relied on attracting venture capital funds to achieve
rapid market dominance. The examination of the financial
structure of Hepsiburada reveals that it benefits from a
financial leverage significantly higher than nonfinancial
firms in traditional industries, in line with the patient
capital phenomenon. The fact that Hepsiburada went
public on a US-based stock exchange, Getir receives
funding prominently from the US and UAE-based venture
capital firms, and Trendyol was acquired by Alibaba is sig-
nificant in terms of the financial strategies of these compan-
ies. Yet, taking into consideration that Alibaba itself is a
company that raises massive capital from the US-based
stock exchanges and venture capital funds, it is possible
to conclude that platformization in Turkey is eventually
linked with financial institutions in the US. On the other
Yeşilbağ
hand, the extraterritorial presence of these actors in the
Turkish platform landscape suggests that Turkey is increas-
ingly turning into a stage where the rivalry between the US
and Chinese tech firms play out. Overall, the ongoing pat-
terns suggest that the monopoly power of the concerned
firms is likely to be further consolidated in near future,
with profound impacts on not only in e-commerce
markets but also in the overall capital accumulation dynam-
ics and labor relations.
Concluding remarks
In this paper, I presented an assessment of the Turkish plat-
form landscape. To this end, I first discussed the extant lit-
erature on platformization, emphasizing various factors that
led to the rise of digital platforms such as financialization,
data-driven business models, and the drive for monopoliza-
tion. In that regard, I indicated the gaps in the literature con-
cerning the dynamics of platformization in places other than
the United States and China. Working toward a more global
view, I scrutinized the Turkish case by focusing on three
companies in the e-commerce industry, the most prominent
domain exhibiting dynamics of platformization. The high-
lights of my findings can be summarized as follows. First,
although Turkey is not among the largest e-commerce
markets in terms of volume, Turkish e-commerce markets
are growing very rapidly and increasing their share in the
domestic economy. Second, these markets have generated
a number of firms that have exhibited meteoric growth
rates in recent years. The most emblematic evidence of
this is that the three highlight digital platforms have
climbed up to be among the most valuable companies in
a tremendously short period. This demonstrates that platfor-
mization of the economy is taking place in Turkey, albeit in
an uneven form. Third, the strategies of these companies are
generally in line with the findings emphasized in the litera-
ture. The data imperative, thriving on network effects, util-
izing financial leverage, expanding to adjacent business
lines, and pursuing an aggressive competition strategy to
obtain a decisive market share come out as crucial dynamics
in the Turkish platform scene. Fourth, the Turkish platforms
remain dependent on American and Chinese Big Techs,
particularly for web services. Fifth, an analysis of the
market shares in the e-marketplace industry indicates a
strong monopolization drive. These trends are expected to
be further consolidated in near future. Sixth, the tech
boom in Turkey does not seem to be the product of a sys-
tematic state strategy. There are, however, recent
attempts to support and shape digital transformation in
line with the strategic priorities of the government. The
consequences are yet to be seen. Finally, platformization
is indeed rapidly transforming the Turkish corporate
scene, which suggests that the concerns over the
unchecked power of platforms should not be limited to
the US and Chinese cases. The overall findings indicate
11
the necessity to expand the geographical span of the plat-
formization literature and to further elaborate on the pol-
itical, economic, and social dynamics of this drive with
more detailed field studies as well as comparative cases.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Tobias John Klinge for his gener-
ous support at various stages of this research, the other members of
the REFCOM research group at KU Leuven for their valuable
feedback on previous versions of this article, along with Nefize
Ezgi Altınış ık and Gürsan Ş enalp for their keen guidance.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article
ORCID iD
Melih Yeş ilbağ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5867-433X
Notes
1. Prominent examples along with their focus geographies include
Steinberg (2020) (Japan), Jin (2017) (Korea) Kim an Yu (2019)
(Korea), Chamas and Caldart (2019) (Latin America), Athique
and Parthasarathi (2020) (India), and Johnson et al. (2021)
(Africa).
2. Defined as the share of consumers who purchased at least one
product online in the past year in the total population.
3. The figures for the Turkish Stock Exchange and HepsiBurada
were obtained from the Eikon Database and SEC filings,
respectively. Following Orhangazi (2019), I filtered out nonfi-
nancial companies, NA values and zeros; calculated the rate of
profit as operating income divided by total assets. For
Hepsiburada, market capitalization was taken at the time of
initial public offering.
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