Ronesans Holding and Digital Realty have broken ground on a 22-megawatt data center in Ankara's Baskent Organised Industrial Zone. Launched on October 19, 2026, the project is a primary pillar of Turkey's strategy to secure digital sovereignty and expand its national computing capacity.
The $4.1 billion bet on Ankara's Baskent Organised Industrial Zone
The joint venture between Ronesans Holding and Digital Realty is investing heavily in the new Ankara complex to establish a high-capacity data processing hub. According to the report,the initial phase requires approximately $450 million for basic construction and infrastructure, while another $900 million is dedicated specifically to IT infrastruccture and cooling systems. Once all phases of the project are completed,the total fixed capital investment will reach $4.1 billion.
This facility is not an isolated project but part of a larger corporate commitment. The report says that the combined investment from Ronesans Holding and Digital Realty across both Ankara and Istanbul is expected to exceed $10 billion. This broader effort aims to deliver 200 megawatts of capacity, providing a significant portion of the infrastructure needed to support Turkey's growing demand for cloud services.
How the $30 billion HIT-30 programme fuels Turkey's 'digital oil' strategy
Industry and Technology Minister Mehmet Fatih Kacir has framed modern data processing as the "oil of the 21st century," signaling that Turkey views cloud computing as a critical economic resource. To accelerate this transition, the Turkish government launched the HIT-30 programme, an incentive package designed to attract high-tech investments with a total value of $30 billion through 2030.
The HIT-30 programme is divided into specialized funding streams to target different technological bottlenecks. These include the HIT-Data Centre Call, which allocates $1.4 billion for facilities of 30 megawatts or more,and the HIT-Artificial Intelligence Call, which provides $1.6 billion for domestic cloud infrastructure. Additionally, the HIT-Quantum Call seeks to establish a national quantum computing network, ensuring that Turkey's digital sovereignty extends into next-generation computing.
From TRUBA's 80,000 cores to a regional AI hub
Turkey's current push for digital sovereignty builds upon the foundation of the Turkish Science e-Infrastructure, known as TRUBA. This existing system has already supported over 8 ,900 researchers and provides the nation with 80,000 processor cores, 504 GPUs, and 26 petabytes of data storage. By integrating these academic resources with commercial projects like the Ronesans Holding and Digital Realty venture, Turkey is attempting to create a seamless AI ecosystem.
This strategy mirrors a global trend where nations are treating AI infrastructure as a matter of national security rather than just commercial utility. By implementing a "GPU for Everyone" program and providing access to high-performance chips, the Turkish government aims to lower the barrier to entry for local entrepreneurs and policymakers, effcetively nationalizing the means of AI production to avoid over-reliance on foreign cloud providers.
The gap between 200 megawatts and the 1 gigawatt 2030 target
While the Ronesans Holding and Digital Realty partnership is substantial,a significant gap remains in Turkey's 2026-2030 Artificial Intelligence Action Plan. The combined 200-megawatt capacity planned for Ankara and Istanbul represents only one-fifth of the national goal to install 1 gigawatt of data-centre capacity by 2030. It remains unclear which other partners or state-led projects will be tapped to fill the remaining 800 megawatts of required capacity.
Furthermore, the report focuses heavily on the government's financial incentives and the joint venture's commitments, but it does not detail the specific energy sources that will power these energy-intensive facilities. Given the scale of the 1 GW target, the ability of the Turkish power grid to sustain such growth without compromising environmental goals remains an unverified aspect of the national plan.
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