Crowdfunding In Turkey With The Recently Announced Draft Communiqe

1. Introduction

Crowdfunding is an alternative type of business funding that matches a large number of investors with the entrepreneurs for the purpose of financing a business, project or venture through an online platform.

In order to bring more transparency, Turkey, since 2016, has been eager to adapt this popular alternative funding method to its legislation and so, create a legal framework for crowdfunding. Certain types of crowdfunding platforms based on rewards-based and donation-based models have been actively operating in Turkey for almost 10 (ten) years, however, these were not regulated as crowdfunding models until 2017. After several consultations with the existing crowdfunding platforms and certain other market representatives, crowdfunding is legally recognized and defined in the Capital Markets Law No. 6362 (the "CML") following the enactment of The Law on Amending Certain Tax Laws and Other Laws No. 7061 published in the Official Gazette on 5