Telecoms

Turkcell gets Emirates NBD loan to expand data centres

By Pramod Kumar

May 21, 2025, 7:52 AM

Turkcell’s strategy focuses on building high-capacity, eco-friendly data centres to meet the growing demands of cloud computing, AI and big data

Turkey’s mobile operator Turkcell has secured €100 million ($113 million) in sharia-compliant funding from Emirates NBD to accelerate its investment in data centres.

TDC Veri Hizmetleri (TDC is a subsidiary of Turkcell, which is listed on both the Borsa İstanbul and the New York Stock Exchange.

Turkcell’s strategy focuses on building high-capacity, eco-friendly data centres to meet the growing demands of cloud computing, artificial intelligence and big data in the country.

“By diversifying our financing portfolio, TDC can mitigate risks while exploring further partnerships in key markets,” said Kamil Kalyon, CFO at Turkcell.

The murabaha funding involves the lender buying a product or asset on behalf of the customer and selling it later to the client at a marked-up price.

The Turkish data centre market is anticipated to grow to $5 billion by 2032, from $3 billion in 2023, at a compound annual growth rate of 5 percent, according to Arizton Advisory & Intelligence.

In February 2024, Edgnex, a data centre subsidiary of Dubai real estate developer Damac, established a joint venture with Vodafone Turkey to build its first data centre in the Turkish city of Izmir at an estimated cost of $100 million.

Emirates NBD, which trades on the Dubai Financial Market, closed 1.5 percent lower at AED23.05 on Tuesday. The stock is up nearly 8 percent year to date.