Marketplace protocol for women's cooperatives: 0 percent commission for six months
Türkiye's Ministry of Trade has signed a protocol with Hepsiburada, N11, PttAVM, Pazarama and Trendyol to support women's cooperatives through e-commerce. Under the arrangement announced on September 7, 2026, cooperatives can register on the platforms free of charge, and commission is set at 0 percent for the first six months and 1 percent for the following 4.5 years. The protocol runs for five years.
A five-year protocol between the ministry and five marketplaces
The Ministry of Trade announced on September 7, 2026 that it had signed a joint protocol with five e-commerce intermediary service providers. The parties are named: Hepsiburada, N11, PttAVM, Pazarama and Trendyol. The document's full title translates as the protocol between the Ministry of Trade and e-commerce intermediary service providers on supporting women's cooperatives through e-commerce. Its scope is narrow and specific, covering cooperatives whose members are mostly women. In the ministry's statement the stated purpose is to make access to digital markets easier for those cooperatives and to strengthen their competitiveness in e-commerce. This is not a standalone campaign either: it is being carried out under the 2025-2029 Türkiye Cooperatives Strategy Paper and Action Plan.
Free registration, tiered commission and homepage placement
The cost side of the protocol has two parts. Women's cooperatives can register free of charge on the participating platforms, which removes the entry fee for opening a store. Commission is tiered: 0 percent for the first six months, then 1 percent for the following 4.5 years. Because the total term is five years, a cooperative can see a five-year cost picture from day one. The second part is visibility. Cooperative products will be promoted in the platforms' homepage banners and in dedicated category areas, and products will be listed in special visibility areas created under a "Cooperative Products" label. On top of that, the platforms will run dedicated campaign periods, and cooperatives will be supported in social media campaigns.
One of two barriers falls, the other stays where it is
Two separate barriers keep a small producer off a marketplace. The first is cost, because registration fees and commission can be discouraging before a low-volume seller even starts. The second is visibility, because a store can be open and the product still has to surface among thousands of listings. The protocol targets the first barrier directly and opens prepared ground for the second, since homepage banners and dedicated category areas are normally space you buy. The real gain here is time: six months at 0 percent commission is a trial window in which a cooperative can list a product and measure demand. A five-year horizon also allows pricing and stock decisions to be made against a planned picture rather than a one-off campaign.
The storefront is ready, listing quality finishes the job
The protocol makes registration and commission cheaper, but being visible on a marketplace comes down to product content. For cooperatives and small producers the actual work starts with listing quality: placing the product in the right category, using a clean and consistent product image, filling in size and content details completely, writing shipping and return terms clearly, and keeping stock counts aligned with reality. None of that is decoration, since those fields drive both search ranking and return rates. The visibility areas and campaign periods provide a ready storefront, and the side filling that storefront has to be prepared. If a campaign period arrives while the product page is incomplete, traffic shows up and orders do not. For a cooperative planning to sell on five platforms at once there is one more item: keeping stock and price consistent across platforms is the first thing to break when it is tracked by hand.
The UNALSOFT take
From a business standpoint the takeaway is straightforward: when entry cost drops, competition moves to the product page. For cooperatives and small producers in Türkiye, the way to use those first six months well is to get product data in order before the store opens, covering category mapping, an image standard, size and content fields, and price and stock managed from a single place. Once selling happens on several marketplaces at the same time, that turns into an e-commerce panel question, because manual consistency stops being sustainable as order volume grows. The storefront stays open for five years; what goes into it is the seller's decision.
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