With the “Internet Domain Names Regulation” prepared by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure and published in the Official Gazette on November 7, 2010 and entered into force, the allocation procedures of domain names with the “.tr” extension, carried out by METU since 1991, were submitted to the Information Technologies and Communications Board ( BTK) was given.
The joint application made by METU and BTK to IANA/ICANN for transfer approval was approved on May 3, 2019.
Within the scope of this task, TRABİS (.TR Network Information System) within BTK became operational on September 14, 2022. Within the scope of the development of TRABİS, some necessary updates regarding the management of domain names were made by BTK with the Communiqué on Amendments to the Internet Domain Names Communiqué published in the Official Gazette on June 10, 2023.
The procedures and principles regarding the first allocation of domain names in the “.a.tr” structure, regulated by the Board decision, and the issues to be applied in this process, have entered into force as of today.
Domain names of public institutions and organizations will be given priority.
Accordingly, in the first allocation procedures, priority will be given to domain names allocated to public institutions and organizations and public institutions with more than half of their capital on the effective date, respectively. In the initial allocation of internet domain names with the structure “a.tr”, TRABİS uses the names “a.gov.tr”, “a.edu.tr”, “a.tsk.tr”, “a.bel.tr”, “a. pol.tr”, “a.k12.tr” will be allocated free of charge.
Then, domain names with the “org.tr” extension that they currently use will be allocated to professional organizations that are public institutions, associations that benefit the public, tax-exempt foundations, and professional organizations of workers or employers, based on their applications.
Following the completion of this process, other extensions such as “com.tr, net.tr” will be given priority to obtain the “a.tr” of existing domain names.
“First come, first served” rule will apply
Fees for transactions regarding domain names with the “a.tr” structure were regulated by the Board. Accordingly, the domain names to be produced for the domain names “gov.tr, edu.tr, tsk.tr, bel.tr and k12.tr” will be allocated free of charge.
For other extensions, 150 lira will be requested during prioritization, and when the prioritization is completed, the fee for domain names with the “a.tr” structure will be 100 lira. These prices will be requested from registrars by TRABİS, and registrars may apply different pricing to their customers.
There are nearly 1 million sites with “.tr” extension in the records.
While there are nearly 1 million sites with “.tr” extension in the TRABİS records in Turkey as of the first quarter of 2023, the largest share belongs to websites with “com.tr” extension, with 862 thousand 775. This is followed by sites with “org.tr” extension with 30 thousand 225, and “net.tr” with 29 thousand 20.
79.32 percent of the sites are hosted in Turkey
79.32 percent of the websites using the domain names in question are from Turkey, 7.91 percent from America, 6.11 percent from Germany, 2.74 percent from the Netherlands, 1.57 percent from France, 0 percent from 55 are hosted in the UK and 1.79 per cent in other countries.
