Positioned as a critical bridge between East and West, Türkiye occupies a strategic vantage point in global supply chains, most notably along high-growth routes like the Middle Corridor and the Belt and Road Initiative. Yet for Turkish small and medium enterprises (SMEs) looking to scale internationally, navigating fragmented cross-border trade finance, paper-heavy documentation and evolving legal standards remains a major hurdle.
In this Q&A, we speak with Mitigram Advisory Board Member Meral Şengöz. An expert in digital trade, trade law and supply chain digitalisation, Meral shares her deep insights on how Turkish exporters can leverage structured data, modern legal frameworks and digital multi-bank connectivity to de-risk growth and scale globally.
1. As global supply chains evolve and the Middle Corridor gains prominence, how can Turkish exporters capitalize on Türkiye’s strategic position as a trade hub connecting Europe, Asia and the Middle East to access new markets and drive international growth?
Meral: Geography is an advantage, but it is not a business model. As a panellist rightly noted at GTR Türkiye, proximity to Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and the Middle Corridor does not, by itself, make a transaction bankable: long lead times, inventory costs and mismatched payment terms still need to be financed.
Turkish exporters need three things to turn the advantage of strategic position into growth:
- First, new markets and new production corridors. Beyond traditional EU partners lie Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. Middle Corridor volumes rose 62% to 4.5 million tonnes in 2024, and BCG expects significant further growth by the end of the decade.
- Second, architecting finance from day one. Treasury must sit at the table before the deal is signed and plan payments and collections: how much funding is needed, and at what tenor. New markets bring local currencies and FX conversion needs that only some banks or third-party providers can handle, yet most corporates still rely on their local banks alone. Exporters should also look beyond conventional bank loans: development bank programmes, such as those from the EBRD and IFC, help local banks extend more trade finance, while new instruments such as warehouse receipt financing will grow with transit trade.
- Third, digital capability. Digitalisation is the most effective way to cut the cost of trade, making investment in it non-negotiable. Multi-bank platforms like Mitigram and structured trade data are vital, but above all, exporters need professionals who can use technology well. That expertise is what will separate the exporters who scale from those who stay where they are.
2. Türkiye is one of the world’s 20 largest importers, presenting significant opportunities for international companies looking to expand into the market. What should foreign businesses consider when entering Türkiye, and how can they navigate local banking relationships, trade finance requirements and regulatory frameworks to establish and grow their export business?
Meral: My first advice is simple: work with reliable local partners. Turkish legislation, from foreign exchange and customs rules to banking regulation, can be complex for newcomers, and a seasoned partner saves months of friction.
Secondly, come with your own financing, especially on tenor. Türkiye imported around $365 billion of goods in 2025, but financing imports locally is difficult and expensive. Under tight monetary policy and high borrowing costs, Turkish buyers value supplier credit and extended payment terms almost as much as price. A seller who brings an ECA-backed or bank-backed tenor solution often wins the deal.
Thirdly, use Turkish banks as your risk partners. Local lenders understand their corporate clients’ financials far better than any foreign seller can assess from afar. Letters of credit, avalised bills of exchange and bank guarantees remain solid, well-understood instruments in Türkiye, and a bank aval adds the bank’s own liability to the buyer’s payment promise. As a banker noted at GTR, Turkish banks’ access to international funding has also improved markedly since 2023, with syndications renewed at higher rollover ratios and with more participating banks, which supports their capacity to take on this risk.
Mitigram’s platform makes this easier still: a foreign seller can send one request to multiple banks to find those willing to confirm a Turkish LC, compare their quotes side by side and spread counterparty risk across several institutions rather than depending on a single correspondent.
Finally, invest in banking relationships. Financial mechanisms are essential, but so is the institutional network behind them. Work with two or three banks, rather than relying on just one.
3. With international frameworks like UNCITRAL’s MLETR and Negotiable Cargo Documents (NCD) reshaping global shipping, how prepared is Türkiye’s legal and banking landscape for electronic trade documents, and what does this mean for Turkish mid-market exporters?
Meral: MLETR will change trade finance at its roots. The bill of lading (BL) is the most important document in most letters of credit, and in my experience, handling the BL alone accounts for almost 30% of the operational work in a documentary transaction. Paper is also vulnerable to forgery, a risk I expect AI to make worse.
MLETR does not stop at the BL: it also gives legal standing to electronic bills of exchange, promissory notes and warehouse receipts. Once partner countries share the same legal structure, the whole trade finance layer changes.
The NCD Convention, adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2025, extends negotiability beyond sea transport to rail and road, which is critical for the Middle Corridor. I expect enacted MLETR, followed by the NCD, to converge with customs reforms such as the EU Customs Data Hub, aligning B2B, B2G and G2G workflows. This convergence is entirely logical: the ICC Digital Standards Initiative identified 36 key trade documents that largely share the same underlying data.
Where does Türkiye stand? The Ministry of Trade is running an MLETR legal reform project with the EBRD, though the legislation has yet to be drafted and enacted. The EBRD business case study for Türkiye, which I led locally, estimates that digitalisation could lift Turkish trade by around 25% and add $57 billion in exports by 2030.
For mid-market exporters, this means easier access to finance, even from banks in other countries. The trade-off is transparency: companies that rely on opaque relationships and legacy operating models will find this new landscape challenging.
4. Turkish banks play a critical role in financing the country’s exporters, yet fragmented data, manual processes and limited visibility into trade flows can make it difficult to assess risk and identify opportunities. How can digital trade finance solutions help banks improve risk assessment, streamline operations and extend financing to more Turkish businesses?
Meral: Trade finance still predominantly runs on paper. Many banks believe that OCR and scanning solve this problem; they do not. As long as paper remains the legal original, banks run paper and digital processes in parallel, driving operational costs up instead of down.
The real change comes from legally recognised structured data. When documentation shifts to electronic transferable records under MLETR, banks gain end-to-end visibility into the physical trade itself, not only into the client’s balance sheet. That improves risk assessment in three ways:
- Fraud mitigation: MLETR’s concept of “control” means only one party can hold an electronic record at a time, which removes the double-financing risk created by multiple paper originals.
- Capital efficiency: Trade finance is short-term and self-liquidating, with low default and loss rates. Better-evidenced collateral can lower risk weights, allowing banks to measure trade finance by risk-adjusted return on capital, not by profit per transaction.
- Operational productivity: In the EBRD study for Türkiye, participating banks expected a 24% reduction in their trade finance cost base, driving immediate improvements in ROE and RAROC.
Digital multi-bank platforms such as Mitigram add a further layer. An exporter’s request can reach international banks beyond its usual panel, which can quote to confirm or take on the risk, and the exporter can compare those quotes side by side. That widens the financing capacity available to Turkish exporters.
The commercial stakes are high. The ADB puts the global trade finance gap at about $2.5 trillion, with SMEs still facing high rejection rates. Because losing a client’s trade finance often undermines the broader banking relationship, early movers will protect their core customer base.
5. Traditional trade in Türkiye still heavily relies on physical bills of lading and paper-based letters of credit. What are the practical steps Turkish businesses and banks must take to migrate away from physical paper without creating operational friction?
Meral: The migration does not require a “big bang” overhaul. I recommend five practical steps:
- Start with data, not documents. Map which documents you issue and receive, and align their data with standards such as the ICC DSI key trade documents. Scanning paper is not digitalisation.
- Pilot on an established digital corridor. Choose a route where the carrier already issues eBLs and both banks are ready: for example, shipments to the UK or Singapore, where MLETR-based laws are in force.
- Leverage existing legal and contractual tools. Even before Türkiye enacts MLETR, eBL platforms approved by the International Group of P&I Clubs can be used under contractual rulebooks, and banks can accept electronic presentation under the ICC eUCP rules. Türkiye also has a head start with two decades of e-signature law and nationwide e-invoicing.
- Run hybrid models with a defined end date. Running parallel paper and digital processes indefinitely is the most cost-inefficient operating model. Establish a clear timeline to phase out dual documentation.
- Prioritise people and interoperability. Train operations teams. The main obstacles are still operational: as bank leaders noted at GTR Türkiye, missing documents and lost time remain an exporter’s biggest problem. Concurrently, choose platforms built on common standards, so that an electronic document can move between carriers, banks and buyers instead of being stuck on a closed “digital island”.
Banks can actively accelerate this shift by passing part of their cost savings to clients through lower pricing for digital presentation. Concurrently, banks and corporates should actively support Türkiye’s MLETR reform, so that electronic records gain the same legal standing as paper originals.
