The Turkish government has outlined its plans for crypto regulation, aiming to finish the regulatory framework within the calendar year of 2024. The comprehensive “2024 Turkish Presidential Annual Program,” released on October 25, 2023, in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Turkey, has set the stage for defining and potentially taxing crypto assets.
Defining Crypto assets and providers
An extensive document, spanning nearly 500 pages, sheds light on the planned efforts to define crypto assets and establish a legal framework for the entities involved. This includes giving legal definitions to crypto asset providers like crypto exchanges. However, the document does not offer specific details on the forthcoming regulations.
Turkey’s journey in the realm of cryptocurrencies has been marked by notable events. Recently, in a report by Todayq News on September 2023, Faruk Fatih Özer, the former CEO of Turkish crypto exchange Thodex, was handed a staggering sentence of 11,196 years in prison by a Turkish court. Thodex, once one of Turkey’s largest trading platforms, collapsed in 2021.
Turkey’s growing interest in Cryptocurrency
A 2022 study revealed Turkey as the second-highest nation in the world in terms of crypto-related search queries, with approximately 5.5% of the population actively exploring. The surge in crypto usage in 2021 was massive. This surge was largely attributed to the ongoing inflation crisis of the local fiat currency, the Turkish lira.
In December 2022, the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey successfully completed the initial trial of its central bank digital currency, known as the digital lira. The central bank has indicated its intent to continue testing throughout 2024. While the government has not yet committed to fully digitizing the country’s currency, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has consistently voiced support for the digital lira project.