Türkiye, the Middle East and North Africa's biggest crypto market with nearly $200 billion in annual on-chain activity, is heading toward a regulatory model that forces trading platforms to keep client assets in separate custody institutions. The blueprint emerged this week at the inaugural Istanbul Institutional Markets Summit, part of Istanbul Blockchain Week 2026, where regulators and industry leaders laid out a path that deliberately breaks with Europe's MiCA framework.
Custody separation vs. MiCA
Turkish regulators are requiring platforms to spin off custody into independent entities, a structural split that the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation explicitly permits providers to keep combined. The divergence isn't accidental. Officials are also refusing to pre-define digital assets, instead classifying each token case by case based on its whitepaper and actual use. Under the 2024 amendments to Capital Markets Law No. 6362, the scientific council TÜBİTAK now sets IT and wallet infrastructure criteria platforms must meet before getting authorized.
Token launch warnings
Panelists on the fundraising track delivered blunt advice: don't issue a token unless the ecosystem genuinely needs one. Tobias Bauer of TBV and William Campbell of USDKG both stressed that raising money by launching a token early does lasting damage to credibility. Founders were told to hold a long-term plan, be picky about whose capital they take, and enforce strict lock-up and vesting schedules. The message was clear — the quick-hit token sale model is actively harming the industry's reputation.
Stablecoins and tokenization
Stablecoins got more attention than volatile assets this year. Speakers highlighted their use for central counterparty settlement, capital mobilization, and cheaper cross-border payments. Officials pointed to tokenizing yield-bearing assets and agricultural supply chains as near-term opportunities, though they cautioned that past fraud cases dressed up as agri-tech demand thorough due diligence. BitGo MENA Managing Director Nick Coombs argued the opposite of the regulatory trend: he wants trading, storage and security in one platform rather than leaving clients to patch together pieces.
AI in public service
Buğra Ayan, head of IT at the Presidency's Directorate of Communications, gave a keynote on running customized in-house language models. One model now sorts 15,000 daily applications inside CİMER, the citizen request system, and surfaces urgent ones in seven minutes. Ayan described running AI agents directly on-chain through OpenCLI and noted his directorate was the first state institution to acquire a blockchain domain, with post-quantum encryption on its roadmap.
The market is expected to fragment into specialized entities as the rules take shape, with custody handled separately like in traditional banking. For now, the industry is waiting for the Capital Markets Board's final rulebook — and watching whether the separation model becomes a template for other MENA regulators.
