Internationalization of Retailing in Turkey

In the space of less than a decade, the metropolitan cities of Turkey have witnessed a dramatic and continuing change with the entry of international retailers into the Turkish retailing sector. This development was both sudden and surprising for a society in which retailing had always been dominated by small and independent domestic retailers. For years, the only structural change which had been anticipated by politicians and academics was an increasing role of public authorities in retail distribution, with the objective of eliminating middlemen and connecting producers more directly with consumers. In the late 1970s, there were doubts as to whether distribution should be left to the workings of the capitalist market. Even in the mid-1980s, people had only just started to learn how to pronounce the names of the largest international retailers. Then, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, foreign retail companies became involved in Turkish retailing.