E-export supports 2026: which item does a website fall under?

Turkey’s Ministry of Trade lists an item called “website setup” among its e-export supports; the item belongs to the E-export promotion support, and according to the 2026 ceiling table this support is used not by companies but by E-Export Consortia, retail e-commerce sites, B2B platforms and marketplaces. For a manufacturer with company status, the support touches store, promotion and delivery costs on foreign marketplaces, not its own corporate website.

The question comes up often, and the answer is usually shortened to “e-export support pays for a website”. The official text speaks more narrowly. The reading below extracts the answer the official text gives to an exporter who is planning a B2B website and asks “will part of this spending be covered by support?”. The three documents it relies on were read on the Ministry of Trade’s website on 23 September 2026: the current text of Decision No. 5986 on E-Export Supports, the Circular on the Decision dated 13.04.2026, and the “2026 E-Export Support Ceilings” table published together with the Circular’s annexes. Links are at the end of the page.

Support conditions may change; verify the current text with the Ministry of Trade before applying. This article is not legal or financial advice.

Which legislation are e-export supports based on?

The framework is the Decision on E-Export Supports, put into force by Presidential Decision No. 5986 dated 24/8/2022. The Decision aims to support the preparation of companies, marketplaces and retail e-commerce sites for e-export, the online display and promotion of Turkish products in foreign markets and on marketplaces, and fast-delivery costs for orders from abroad. According to the current text on the Ministry’s website, the Decision was last amended by Presidential Decision No. 10881, published in Official Gazette No. 33140 dated 17/1/2026. Application and implementation details are set out in the Circular; the current published version is dated 13.04.2026.

Which list mentions “website setup”?

The “E-Export Promotion Activities List”, an annex to the Circular, enumerates the supported activities under the heading of digital promotion. Three lines directly concern a website:

• “Website setup”
• “Search engine optimization (SEO), app store optimization (ASO)”
• “Costs relating to digital catalogs prepared in a foreign language”

The same list also includes promotion on search engines and social media, preparation of promotional images and videos, email promotion and mobile app design. The list is an annex to the E-export promotion support in Article 14 of the Circular; in other words, these items only carry meaning within that support. We discussed what the digital catalog line means for a website in the comparison product catalog: PDF or web page.

Who can benefit from the E-export promotion support?

Article 5 of the Decision and Article 14 of the Circular list the beneficiaries: E-Export Consortia, retail e-commerce sites, B2B platforms and marketplaces. The support is granted at 50% of costs and for 3 years per country. The Circular sets two further conditions: promotion activities must be carried out in a foreign language and aimed at audiences abroad; and before spending, a pre-approval application is made to the reviewing body.

In the 2026 ceiling table, the annual caps for this support are: TRY 123,315,792 for retail e-commerce sites, TRY 19,728,673 for B2B platforms, TRY 147,980,040 for marketplaces and TRY 73,990,019 for E-Export Consortia. In the table’s “Companies” column there is no amount next to this line, only a dash.

Can a manufacturer or exporting company benefit from this item?

According to the text of the Decision and the table, not directly with company status. To access this support you need one of the statuses the text lists. The definition of a retail e-commerce site, moreover, is narrow: the Decision lists companies that make retail sales through an e-commerce site belonging to their own brand, earn at least two thirds of their total sales revenue online and have their place of business in Turkey. A typical manufacturer’s site that works with a quote form appears to fall outside this definition; the final assessment belongs to the reviewing body.

The second route is a consortium. The Decision defines E-Export Consortium status as a status granted to companies that can carry out e-export end to end and channel the output of manufacturing companies into e-export. In that case it is the consortium that makes the promotion spending and receives the support, not the manufacturer.

Which supports can an exporter with company status use?

In the 2026 table there are four supports with an amount in the “Companies” column, and all four are built around foreign marketplaces and delivery:

• Digital marketplace promotion support — pay-per-click advertising, display advertising and similar promotion costs on foreign marketplaces; 50%, 3 years per marketplace.
• Order fulfillment service support — per-unit order fulfillment and warehousing costs abroad.
• Support for online stores and for services obtained from target-country e-commerce stakeholders — opening, designing and annual fees of store accounts on foreign marketplaces in target countries, plus consulting obtained from an e-commerce stakeholder; for companies whose exports in the previous year exceeded USD 1,000,000; 50%, 3 years per country; 2026 company cap TRY 7,396,548 per year.
• Marketplace commission cost support — commissions of foreign marketplaces in target countries.

The “List of Consulting Services Obtainable from E-Commerce Stakeholders”, the annex to the store support, also includes translation services for the content of listed products and brands. So for a manufacturer with company status, the support touches the translation of product content into a foreign language in the context of a marketplace store — not the corporate site on its own domain.

Does the target country list change the rate?

Article 16 of the Decision says that support rates may be increased by up to 20 percentage points for target countries set by the Ministry. The same article excludes the supports in Articles 7, 8, 9 and 12 — marketplace integration, online store, marketplace commission and promotion projects of cooperation organizations — from this additional rate, and states that the support paid may in no case exceed 75% of the eligible cost. The “Target Countries List” in the Circular’s annexes names 35 countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Where else does the website appear in the support process?

One notable detail in the texts is that the site also appears as evidence in the support process. Article 5 of the Circular says that when examining whether a product is a Turkish product, the E-Export Secretariat or the reviewing body may also make its assessment on the basis of the “product catalog on the beneficiary’s web page”. The promotion support, meanwhile, includes a measurement requirement: on platforms that do not provide campaign tracking, a UTM code must be used and the results report shared with the reviewing body. Both provisions point in the same direction: the site’s product information should be readable and its promotion measurable.

The languages of the two textile exporters we manage also largely overlap with this list. The Italian, Russian, German, French and Spanish versions of Fersan Tekstil correspond to Italy, the Russian Federation, Germany, France and Spain on the list; the Arabic version of Karcem corresponds to the Gulf and North African countries on the list. This overlap does not by itself create any entitlement to support, but it shows that the Ministry’s list is also a data point when deciding which language to open first.

What should you check before applying?

• Membership and registration — under Article 5 of the Circular, membership of an exporters’ association and registration in the Support Management System (DYS) are prerequisites.
• Trademark — a domestic registration certificate and a foreign registration application are required for the trademark of the supported product.
• Status — with which status will the spending be made: as a company, or through a consortium?
• Pre-approval — for promotion and marketplace supports, a pre-approval application is made to the reviewing body before spending.
• Current text — the Decision, the Circular and the ceiling table may change during the year; this article is based on the texts dated 23.09.2026.

This studio does not prepare support applications and cannot decide whether a given expense is eligible; that assessment is the job of the exporters’ association and the Ministry. What we can do is build the two things the support asks for — a readable product catalog and measurable promotion — into the site itself. The general framework from the foreign buyer’s perspective is in the guide what an exporter’s website should look like, and the side of KOSGEB, Turkey’s SME development agency, in the article KOSGEB website support.

For a site that presents your products to foreign buyers in their own language, B2B website builds and measures the path to product, certificate and quote in the target market’s language.