Türkiye Launches $4.1 Billion Ankara Data Center Campus to Boost AI and Cloud Capacity

Türkiye has taken a significant step toward strengthening its digital infrastructure with the groundbreaking of the Ankara Temelli Data Center, a large-scale facility developed through a partnership between Rönesans Holding and Digital Realty in the Başkent Organized Industrial Zone (OSB) in Ankara. The project underscores the country's ambition to position itself as a regional hub for cloud computing, artificial intelligence and advanced data services, and will enable international technology companies to deliver services to customers from within Türkiye.

The campus will be built in three phases, with the first phase allocating $450 million to construction and infrastructure development. This will be followed by $900 million in technology investments from service provider companies, which will equip the facility with high-capacity servers, data storage systems and advanced cooling infrastructure. The initial phase alone will deliver more than 22 megawatts (MW) of information technology capacity, with approximately 10,000 square meters of the facility scheduled to become operational in 2028. Once all three phases are completed, total investment in Ankara is expected to reach $4.1 billion, with the project targeted for completion within three years.

The development is expected to generate new employment opportunities for Ankara residents and contribute to the local economy through technical staffing requirements and the procurement of services once operations begin. The facility will support a wide range of applications, including banking transactions, internet services, digital government platforms, artificial intelligence and big data analytics, while bringing data processing closer to end users to reduce latency and improve the performance of digital services.

As part of a broader investment program, the partnership also plans to establish a new data center campus in Deliklikaya, Istanbul, with a groundbreaking ceremony scheduled for February 2027. The Istanbul campus will have a planned capacity of 120 MW, with Rönesans Holding expected to invest $1.7 billion and service provider companies contributing a further $3.5 billion in technology investments, bringing the total projected investment in Istanbul to $5.2 billion. The partnership's long-term objective is to establish a total of 200 MW of data center capacity across Türkiye, positioning the country to serve growing demand for cloud computing, AI infrastructure and digital services.

Power capacity, expressed in megawatts, is a key indicator of a data center's scale, reflecting the amount of electrical power available to servers and other IT equipment. Higher capacity enables operators to deploy more servers and support systems requiring greater computing power, including advanced AI applications and large-scale data processing workloads. The combined Ankara and Istanbul investments signal Türkiye's intent to build substantial digital infrastructure capable of meeting rising regional demand.