In a city long defined by its layers of memory, Türkiye’s first E-Commerce Week unfolded as a new chapter – one where economic scale met human story. Held at the Lütfi Kırdar Convention Center, organized by the Ministry of Trade, the gathering brought together Türkiye’s leading digital commerce companies, small producers from across Anatolia, young innovators and thousands of consumers. For the first time, the country’s rapidly expanding e-commerce landscape assembled itself not just as a sector, but as a shared narrative space.
Where data meets memory
One of the event’s most striking features was its embrace of storytelling as a strategic and cultural force. The main stage showcased individuals whose personal histories anchor the digital economy in lived experience.
Among them was Zümran Ömür, an older entrepreneur from Kars, who began her talk in French before transitioning into Turkish. Far from a young founder archetype, Ömür represents a different but increasingly visible face of digital participation: a seasoned artisan producing traditional cheeses with her husband and bridging generations through digital platforms. Her presence emphasized that Türkiye’s e-commerce expansion is not limited to youth-driven, metropolitan innovation; it is also a channel through which older cultural carriers, rural producers and heritage artisans reach national audiences.
Another powerful moment came from Şemse Gökalp, a chef, researcher, writer and social entrepreneur from Hatay. She described how, in the aftermath of the 2023 earthquake, local producers – suddenly left with unsold goods and collapsed markets – turned to e-commerce as a lifeline. Gökalp helped move products around the country, transforming digital commerce into an emergency infrastructure. Her new book, “Kırık Tabaklar” (“Broken Plates”), memorializes culinary masters lost in the disaster and safeguards recipes that risk disappearing. Through her narrative, the audience witnessed how food functions as memory and memory as resilience.
This year’s E-Commerce Week also incorporated experience zones, immersive areas designed to bring together brands, consumers, creators and educators. These spaces – ranging from interactive product demos to live content studios – made the event feel less like a conventional trade fair and more like a multi-sensory narrative arena. Visitors encountered stories not only through speeches, but through spaces, objects and encounters.
On the conference’s opening night, the atmosphere shifted from dialogue to music as Mazhar & Fuat – continuing the legacy of the legendary band MFÖ, following Özkan Uğur’s passing – performed on the main stage. Their appearance introduced an unexpected cultural dimension: iconic Turkish pop harmonizing with discussions about digital transformation. The performance blurred boundaries between art and commerce, showing how music and storytelling can shape entrepreneurial imagination. Many attendees described the moment as emblematic of Istanbul itself – a city where genres, generations and narratives routinely overlap.
In the session “Turn Your Brand into a Story: The Storytelling Atelier,” the audience filled the room beyond capacity. The speaker, Muhammed Tan, founder of Bella Maison, discussed how his home-textile brand recently entered the U.S. market while maintaining a strong narrative identity rooted in Turkish craftsmanship.
When asked how new entrepreneurs should begin, Tan responded with an inversion: “Decide first what you will not do.”
This echoed Turkish novelist Kemal Tahir, who argued that a writer must resist the noise of the present moment and cultivate deeper lines of meaning. In entrepreneurial terms, clarity emerges not only from choices but from exclusions – an insight that resonated deeply with the audience.
Podcast studios operated throughout the venue, with the Düşün Taşın Association recording dozens of personal stories, effectively expanding the event into a living oral archive of Türkiye’s entrepreneurial evolution.
The timing of the event mattered. Istanbul’s cultural calendar is currently dense, yet E-Commerce Week managed to draw voices from every region of the country. This convergence made clear that Türkiye’s digital economy is not merely expanding; it is learning to narrate itself, weaving commerce, culture and community into a cohesive story.
If Istanbul once projected itself to the world through literature – Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s Huzur being the most iconic example – it now does so through entrepreneurs whose journeys resemble contemporary novels: marked by mobility, reinvention, uncertainty and ambition.
Türkiye’s inaugural E-Commerce Week made one point unmistakably clear: When technology converges with narrative, Istanbul becomes not just a marketplace but a cultural stage – still and always, a city of stories.
