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Yandex Türkiye has invested $50 million as part of a $400 million plan to enhance its search engine services in Türkiye, according to Alexander Popovskiy, general manager of Yandex Türkiye and CEO of Yandex Search International.
Speaking at WORLDEF Istanbul 2025, Popovskiy emphasized that Türkiye's dynamic and competitive e-commerce sector presents a unique opportunity for digital innovation.
“E-commerce in Türkiye is something really very unique; it is already around 20% of total retail turnover. So, this is very impressive,” he said.
Popovskiy said Yandex has long positioned itself as a bridge between buyers and sellers and is now expanding its tools in Türkiye with the introduction of the Merchants platform.
“Here today, we're introducing Yandex Türkiye Merchants. This is a tool that is very helpful for merchants currently to get new traffic and control their performance inside Yandex search results,” Popovskiy said.
He added that Yandex Metrica is “a powerful analytics tool” offered for free to help emerging e-commerce platforms track user behavior.
Yandex’s advertising services, which reach more than 100 million people globally, are also being promoted to Turkish businesses. “Many Turkish companies are already successfully using Yandex Ads to grow their reach and boost their sales,” he said.
Popovskiy confirmed that Yandex Türkiye’s initial $50 million investment is part of a $400 million commitment announced last year, focused primarily on enhancing its search engine.
“We are focusing on improving as a search engine currently. We believe that this is going to be a locomotive for many more Yandex services to follow,” he said.
“Fasten your seatbelts; there will be a lot of new announcements from Yandex Türkiye, both inside our search engine, inside Yandex Maps, and other services.”
Yandex’s AI tool Yazeka, designed for source-based answers, has seen growing use in Türkiye, according to Popovskiy. “Customers now are using AI more and more. It helps them to solve their traditional searching tasks faster and in a more comprehensive way,” Popovskiy said.
Recent upgrades added visual and video results, enhancing searches for complex topics and offering helpful suggestions.
Popovskiy praised Türkiye’s regulatory approach in e-commerce and called for similar rules for search engines and browsers. “This is not some kind of coincidence. This is a result of efforts and ideas that Turkish regulators have been implementing for quite a while,” he said.
“We believe that faster adoption of those amendments is absolutely needed...,” he noted.
Reflecting on the conference, Popovskiy said AI was a key topic and highlighted Yandex’s lead in this area. “We can proudly say that we were the first in the Turkish market to introduce artificial intelligence in search results...,” he said.
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