FINANCE FIRST, ECOSYSTEM NEXT
Turkey is becoming an increasingly active retail investing market, driven by rising digital adoption and growing participation from individual investors. This continued growth creates strong conditions for the development of the financial ecosystems. Against this backdrop, Freedom Holding Corp. is entering the market, using brokerage as an entry point and primary growth engine, with plans to deploy its broader multi-industry fintech ecosystem to support global expansion.
Turkish Market in Motion
According to the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), the global industry association for exchanges and clearing houses, domestic market capitalization on Borsa Istanbul increased by 34.1% in Turkish lira terms and by 8% in U.S. dollar terms from December 2024 to December 2025, reaching $409.2 billion. The dollar-denominated figures show the currency volatility over the period. Market capitalization reached a peak in August 2025 at approximately $434.4 billion.
For context, WFE data shows that domestic market capitalization of the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange — Freedom Holding Corp.’s home market — stood at $75.7 billion in December 2025, up 20.5% year on year in U.S. dollar terms and 23.4% in tenge. Compared to this, the Turkish market, though more volatile, is significantly larger, underscoring its growing attractiveness to international investors.
WFE data indicates that domestic market capitalization on Borsa Istanbul reached $472.4 billion as of March 2026, increasing 53.5% year on year in local currency terms and 26.1% in U.S. dollars. The BIST 100 index, the main stock market benchmark, stood at 12,790.98 points in March 2026. The overall value of the index was 12.43 trillion liras ($280.2 billion).
Freedom Holding steps in
Last year, Freedom Holding Corp., the Nasdaq-listed fintech group founded by Kazakhstani entrepreneur Timur Turlov, expanded into the Turkish market. Freedom’s financial arm, Finansal Hizmetler, has already received approval from Turkish regulators to establish its own brokerage firm. It will operate under Freedom Yatirim (Freedom Investment Securities Inc.).
Freedom Holding’s ambitions extend well beyond the equity brokerage segment. Freedom has already begun a broader phase of expansion. Following its entry into brokerage, the group announced in March 2026 its move into the banking market of ~90 million people. It is acquiring 99.32% of Turkish Bank A.Ş. from Özyol Holding and the National Bank of Kuwait.
And this is just the beginning: Freedom Holding intends to bring its broader multi-industry fintech ecosystem, already fully developed and actively operating in its home market in Kazakhstan, into Turkey. Financial services will become the primary engine driving the expansion of the wider ecosystem. In Turkey, this approach is particularly logical given the market’s dynamism and high level of retail investor participation.
Building Momentum
According to Turkish analytics firm Matriks, based on data from the Capital Markets Board of Turkey (Sermaye Piyasası Kurulu, SPK), 18 IPOs were completed in 2025. Total funds raised reached TRY 45.15 billion, or approximately USD 38.0 million. Matriks notes that the largest IPOs of 2025 included Pasifik Holding (TRY 6 billion), Balsu Gıda (TRY 4.88 billion), and Gülermak (TRY 4.85 billion).
Turkey’s capital markets also show strong activity. According to Matriks, sales of debt instruments reached TRY 2.13 trillion, while sukuk (Islamic bonds) amounted to TRY 350.4 billion and other capital market instruments to TRY 86.6 billion. As a result, total capital market issuance volume in 2025 reached TRY 2.57 trillion, compared to TRY 1.90 trillion in the previous year.
According to data from the Central Securities Depository and Trade Repository of the Turkish Capital Markets (MKK), registered investors (including all accounts) reached 37.94 million at the end of 2025. Of these, 10.64 million are investors with active accounts. In this environment, building a strong customer base and trust in core financial services enables Freedom to deploy successfully the other segments of its ecosystem over time.
Ecosystems rule
Freedom Holding Corp. began in 2008 as a small brokerage. By the time of its Nasdaq listing in the fall of 2019, Freedom Holding Corp. had evolved into a compact, specialized financial group with a presence in several countries across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Freedom began actively expanding beyond financial services. The group’s non-financial businesses include lifestyle offering (travel, e-commerce, and event ticketing), telecommunications (mobile services, data centers, and AI-related infrastructure), and media (news outlets and a social media platform). The holding’s multiple services are provided under Freedom’s mobile SuperApp. The number of clients, while including users onboarded through partner platforms, the total reaches around 11 million.
Freedom Holding Corp. shares debuted on NASDAQ at just over $14 per share and now trade at around $145, six and a half years later – approximately 10-fold increase – with a market capitalization of approximately $9 billion. Total assets have increased from modest levels for a financial firm to $12.38 billion. According to Nasdaq data, 162 institutional investors currently hold shares in Freedom. Among them are major global institutions such as BlackRock, State Street, Geode Capital Management, Millennium Management, Morgan Stanley, Tudor Investment Corp., Vanguard, Northern Trust, UBS Asset Management, and others.
As Freedom Holding’s CEO and Founder, Timur Turlov often says, “All the competition is not between standalone companies. It’s not between offline and online. It’s just between ecosystems.”
The ecosystem model has become a key trend in global fintech and a common strategy among leading international companies. Its idea is simple: build a set of connected products that cover users’ everyday needs and increase loyalty. Companies such as Ant Group (Alipay), Tencent (WeChat), Revolut, and X (Elon Musk’s platform) are all developing in this direction. McKinsey analysts say this shift from industry-based business to customer-focused ecosystems could be one of the biggest changes in the global economy. They estimate that ecosystem revenues could reach $70–100 trillion by 2030, or about 30% of global GDP and over 40% of total profits.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of impakter.com — In the Cover Photo: Freedom Holding Corp. launches in Turkey Cover Photo Credit: Freedom Holding Corp
