Procurement in Türkiye: A Practical Guide for Foreign-Owned Operations

Who this guide is for

This is written for procurement, facility and finance managers at companies with operations in Türkiye but decision-making abroad — joint ventures, subsidiaries of European or Gulf groups, and international contractors running Turkish sites. The friction in these organisations is rarely price. It is that the local process does not look like the one in the group handbook.

Nothing here is legal or tax advice. Thresholds and rates change; verify current figures with your Turkish accountant (mali müşavir) before acting.

1. Catalogue prices are the exception, not the rule

Most Turkish B2B suppliers of indirect materials do not publish list prices. This is not evasiveness — pricing genuinely moves with volume, exchange rate and packaging unit, and a published list would be stale within weeks.

The practical consequence is that you cannot compare suppliers by browsing. You compare them by sending the same item list to several and reading the returned quotes. This makes the quality of your request the main determinant of the quality of the answers.

A well-formed request is the single highest-leverage thing a foreign-owned buyer can fix; it usually shortens the cycle more than switching suppliers does.

2. Payment: cards are not the corporate instrument

Corporate purchasing in Türkiye runs on current accounts (cari hesap) settled by bank transfer, not on corporate cards. A supplier opens an account in your company’s name; deliveries are debited, payments credited, and both sides reconcile periodically.

Deferred terms of 30, 45 or 60 days are ordinary — but they are usually extended after a relationship exists, not on the first order. Expect the first one or two transactions to be prepaid or on short terms. This is standard practice and is not a comment on your company’s creditworthiness.

Deferred payment is a financing instrument and is priced. Ask for the cash price and the 60-day price separately, then compare the gap against your own cost of capital before defaulting to the longest term available.

3. VAT and invoicing

Türkiye’s general VAT rate is 20%, with reduced rates of 10% and 1% for specified goods and services (Presidential Decision 7346, Official Gazette 7 July 2023, effective 10 July 2023). Business-to-business quotes are conventionally given VAT-exclusive with VAT shown on a separate line.

For ordinary trade in goods there is no VAT withholding (tevkifat). Withholding applies only to specifically listed categories — scrap, certain metals, paper and glass waste, forest products and similar. General office, cleaning, safety and MRO supply falls outside that list, so a standard supply invoice carries full VAT.

4. e-Invoice and e-Waybill obligations

Electronic invoicing is widespread but not universal, and the difference confuses foreign finance teams. Obligation is triggered by turnover thresholds and sector, not by choice.

A supplier below these thresholds legally issues paper invoices and paper delivery notes. If your group policy requires electronic documents, treat it as a selection criterion and state it in the request — do not assume it.

5. PPE and safety compliance

Turkish occupational safety law is harmonised with EU practice, which makes this the easiest area for a foreign-owned operation to get right.

Two separate regulations apply. The use of PPE at workplaces is governed by the regulation published in the Official Gazette on 2 July 2013 (No. 28695), which requires the employer to provide PPE free of charge. The placing on the market of PPE as a product is governed by the regulation of 1 May 2019 (No. 30761), aligned with EU Regulation 2016/425.

In practice this means the EN standards your group already specifies — EN 397, EN 388, EN ISO 20345, EN 149, EN ISO 20471, EN 361 — are directly usable in a Turkish specification. For Category III equipment, verify the four-digit notified body number next to the CE mark.

6. Delivery across 81 provinces

Türkiye has 81 provinces and industrial sites are frequently far from the commercial centres of İstanbul, Ankara and İzmir. Two things follow.

First, the delivery address is not the invoice address. It is standard to invoice the head office while delivering to a plant, site or branch; the delivery note names the site, the invoice names the legal entity. Multi-site orders are normally handled as one order with a location breakdown table, separate delivery notes per site and one consolidated invoice.

Second, name a receiver. The most common cause of failed delivery to remote sites is not logistics — it is that nobody at the gate is expecting the shipment. Put a name and mobile number for each location in the order.

7. What to ask a Turkish supplier before you commit

• What is your registered legal name and tax number (VKN)? — verifiable identity
• Are you an e-Fatura and e-İrsaliye taxpayer? — determines your document flow
• Will the quote be line-by-line with VAT shown separately?
• For each line, is the lead time from stock, from production, or from import?
• Do you deliver to our site address, or only ex-works?
• Can you invoice the head office while delivering to multiple sites?
• What are the cash price and the deferred price?
• Which compliance documents come with the goods (CE, declaration of conformity, SDS)?
• What is the returns and warranty process, in writing?

Common mistakes foreign-owned operations make

1. Assuming published prices exist. Waiting for a catalogue that will never come, instead of sending a list and getting a quote in a day.
2. Comparing unit prices across different packaging units. The most frequent source of apparently absurd price gaps.
3. Expecting deferred terms on the first order. Standard local practice is to establish payment behaviour first.
4. Requiring e-invoicing without checking thresholds. This silently excludes competent suppliers who are legally outside the obligation.
5. Ignoring the receiver field. Remote-site deliveries fail at the gate far more often than they fail in transit.
6. Buying on unit price rather than coverage. A supplier who fills 38 of 40 lines usually costs less overall than a cheaper one who fills 22, because the remaining lines require a second procurement cycle.

Frequently Asked Questions