Every year, the Istanbul Chamber of Industry lists the biggest 500 industrial companies of the country based on sales of products they manufacture. The latest such list, called the ISO-500, was released at the beginning of June.

In 2009, there were 153 foreign companies on the list, but in 2015 this number dropped to 125. This means that the proportion of foreign companies on the ISO-500 went down from one-third in 2009 to a quarter in 2015.

This report is somewhat confusing because meanwhile, the number of foreign companies in Turkey has been booming. In the 56 years between 1954 and the end of 2010, 25,000 foreign companies established a presence in Turkey, but by the end of March 2016 this number reached 49,095.

This figure means 24,000 foreign companies have opened branches in Turkey over the past five years. But the decline in the number of large companies indicates that production capacity has not simultaneously increased because most of the new companies are small- and medium-size operations. Data from the Ministry of Economy suggests that foreigners are mostly engaging in marketing and trading instead of production. Today, 17,905 foreign companies operate in wholesale and retail commerce. Next are 7,948 companies operating in the real estate sector. The production industry claims the smallest segment at 6,308 companies.