Digital Realty Forms Türkiye Data-Center Joint Venture With Rönesans Infrastructure

Digital Realty and Rönesans Infrastructure have formed a joint venture to develop and operate data centers across Türkiye, giving Digital Realty its first direct presence in the market. The partners said the venture will extend Digital Realty’s PlatformDIGITAL network into Türkiye as demand grows for cloud, artificial-intelligence, connectivity and enterprise computing infrastructure.

The first investment is a carrier-neutral data-center campus in Ankara designed for more than 22 megawatts of IT capacity. Land, power and permitting have already been secured, early construction work has begun, and completion is scheduled for 2028. The partners also plan a second data center in Istanbul, although they did not disclose its expected capacity or development timetable.

Digital Realty’s September 14 announcement did not state the joint venture’s ownership split, the amount each partner will invest, or the expected cost of the Ankara project. Those omissions leave the financial structure less defined publicly than the operating plan, which already identifies the first site, planned capacity and target completion year.

Ankara campus anchors Digital Realty’s entry into Türkiye

The Ankara site is intended to serve domestic and international customers, including enterprises, public-sector organizations and digital service providers. Its planned capacity of more than 22 MW refers to the IT load the campus is designed to support, making the power figure a useful measure of the computing infrastructure the project could ultimately host rather than a statement of total site electricity consumption.

Securing land, power and permits before the announcement gives the project a more concrete starting point than an early-stage market entry that still depends on those basic development requirements. Digital Realty and Rönesans said early construction is already under way. The 2028 completion target remains forward-looking, however, and the release does not provide a phased opening schedule or say whether all of the planned capacity will enter service at once.

Carrier-neutral positioning is also central to the design. Rather than tying the facility to a single network provider, the model is intended to let customers connect through multiple carriers and services. Digital Realty uses that approach across its global portfolio, where its PlatformDIGITAL business links data-center capacity with colocation and interconnection services.

The company said Türkiye’s geography is part of the investment case. It sits between Europe, the Middle East and Asia, making the country relevant to regional data flows and connectivity routes. Digital Realty described the market as an extension of its footprint across Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, not simply as a standalone national expansion.

Istanbul is planned as the next leg of the network

After Ankara, the partners intend to add a data center in Istanbul, Türkiye’s largest commercial and financial center. No opening date, capacity figure or site details were given for that project. The strategy is to link the two locations into a broader platform capable of serving Turkish customers while also supporting international traffic and regional connectivity.

The expansion fits a wider push by Digital Realty around the Mediterranean and other growth markets. In May, the company opened its first Barcelona data center with 14 MW of planned capacity, describing the city as part of a connectivity corridor that includes Madrid, Marseille, Athens, Heraklion, Rome and Lisbon. The Türkiye venture extends that regional buildout farther east and adds a market positioned between Digital Realty’s European footprint and demand centers in the Middle East and Asia.

Digital Realty says its global platform now includes more than 300 facilities in more than 55 metropolitan areas across more than 30 countries on six continents. That scale gives the company an existing customer and network base that it can bring into Türkiye, while Rönesans contributes local development and investment capabilities. The partners are effectively pairing Digital Realty’s operating platform with a Turkish group experienced in delivering large infrastructure projects.

Rönesans brings local development and investment experience

Rönesans has spent decades as a contractor and investor in Türkiye and international markets. The group said this month that it has remained among the world’s top 50 international contractors for an 11th consecutive year and has generated about $50 billion of international project revenue. Its September 7 company update also highlighted a project record spanning close to 40 countries.

For the data-center venture, that background matters because execution depends on more than the buildings themselves. Large campuses require suitable land, dependable power, permitting, construction capability and coordination with local infrastructure. Digital Realty Chief Investment Officer Greg Wright said the partnership combines Rönesans’ development expertise with Digital Realty’s global platform, customer relationships and operating experience.

Rönesans President Emeritus Erman Ilıcak said the group has delivered more than $10 billion of private-sector investment in Türkiye and pointed to partnerships with organizations including IFC, TotalEnergies, Meridiam, GIC, Samsung and Sojitz. The new venture adds digital infrastructure to that partnership model, an area Rönesans has increasingly identified as part of its investment activity.

Several financial details remain undisclosed. The announcement does not identify the partners’ percentage stakes, the capital commitment for either company, a valuation for the venture, or the expected cost of the Ankara and Istanbul developments. It also does not provide a customer pre-leasing figure for Ankara. For now, the clearest operating milestones are that early work has started on the Ankara campus, more than 22 MW of IT capacity is planned there, and the partners are targeting completion in 2028 before building out the broader two-city footprint.