Türkiye attracts cyber activity because geopolitical interests overlap with valuable government, transport, telecommunications and financial targets—and because attackers can exploit weaknesses in exposed systems. Trellix ATLAS reported that Türkiye accounted for 27.7% of its global advanced persistent threat (APT) detections in Q4 2025 and Q1 2026. That is a share of one vendor’s detections, not a finding that 27.7% of the world’s malware infections or attacks struck Türkiye.
What the malware figures do—and do not—show
The statistics often cited about Türkiye use different categories and denominators. A count of targeted-malware detections is not interchangeable with broad malware detections or APT detections. Each figure also reflects a particular provider’s telemetry and reporting period; none should be read as a complete census of attacks.
| Source and period | Reported figure | What it measures and how to read it |
|---|---|---|
| FireEye, 2016; reported by CyberScoop on 3 February 2017 | More targeted-malware detections in Turkey than in all of Europe combined | Detections made through FireEye email and network protection services. The underlying vendor dataset and definition were not independently audited in the reporting. |
| Symantec, 2016; reported by CyberScoop on 3 February 2017 | Turkey accounted for 3.4% of malware detections across Europe, the Middle East and Africa | A share of Symantec’s detections across that regional denominator. It is a different measure from FireEye’s targeted-malware figure. |
| Trellix ATLAS, Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 | Türkiye accounted for 27.7% of global APT detections; the United States accounted for 31.7% | A share of Trellix ATLAS’s global APT detections in those two quarters, not a share of all global attacks or infections. |
These figures cannot be combined into a single trend line: they come from different providers, cover different categories and periods, and use different geographic denominators. The Trellix percentages describe its reported telemetry; the available figures do not establish how representative that telemetry is of all activity.
Why attackers may have an interest in Türkiye
The explanations offered in 2017 were plausible strategic factors, not a measured ranking of causes. They help explain why intelligence groups might value access in Türkiye, but do not prove that any one factor produced a particular detection count.
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Geopolitics and regional intelligence
Experts quoted by CyberScoop in 2017 connected cyber-espionage interest to regional conflict, including the situation in Syria, and international attention to Türkiye’s handling of the refugee crisis. They said political groups, financial institutions and civil society could be of interest to intelligence actors.
John Hultquist, then iSight’s director of espionage analysis, said: “The geopolitical situation in and surrounding Turkey has attracted a number of the bigger cyber-espionage, APT groups,” in CyberScoop’s 2017 report. This is a historical expert explanation, not a current threat assessment or proof of attribution for later detections.
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Connectivity and cross-border economic links
Türkiye sits between Europe and the Middle East and has regional financial connections. In the same 2017 report, FireEye senior manager for Intelligence Production Nick Rossman described Türkiye as having “one of the better internet infrastructures in the Middle East” and noted that financial institutions there serve the Middle East, Russia and Iran. He also said attackers had routed traffic out of Türkiye. These observations provide strategic and network context; they do not quantify how much connectivity causes targeting.
Exposure and security practices
The 2017 article also cited obsolete systems and weak IT management as possible contributors to malware exposure. Blake Darche, a former NSA analyst, said: “The Middle East has some of the highest number of malware infections worldwide often due to outdated operating systems,” in that 2017 report. Neither that quotation nor the article establishes a measured, countrywide vulnerability rate for Türkiye today.
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Which sectors appear in Trellix’s current detections
Trellix ATLAS’s 2026 report attributes its largest Türkiye sector shares to transportation and shipping and to government. It also reports smaller shares for telecommunications and finance.
| Sector | Share of Trellix-attributed detections in Türkiye |
|---|---|
| Transportation and shipping | 9.5% |
| Government | 9.2% |
| Telecommunications | 0.9% |
| Finance | 0.2% |
These are shares of report-specific attributed detections, not the percentage of organizations in each sector that were compromised. They show what Trellix observed and classified, not every incident in the country.
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Why NATO membership does not mean cyber immunity
NATO treats cyber defence as part of its deterrence and defence mission, but alliance membership is not a guarantee that a member’s networks cannot be attacked. NATO describes its work as protecting alliance networks while helping Allies strengthen national resilience through information-sharing, exercises and voluntary support for national capabilities.
NATO says significant malicious cyber activity accumulated over time might, in some circumstances, be considered an armed attack that could lead to Article 5. The Alliance says this would be assessed case by case; an ordinary malware detection does not automatically trigger collective defence.
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Türkiye’s national cybersecurity planning
A 2025 report from the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) says Türkiye published a 2020–2023 National Cybersecurity Strategy and Action Plan, then updated and extended the plan in 2024 for 2024–2028. The report describes the updated plan as emphasizing round-the-clock response to growing and more complex threats. This is a secondary account; the national strategy itself is the appropriate source for detailed policy provisions.
CCDCOE’s country-report page describes its Türkiye report as covering institutional responsibilities, agency coordination, the digital ecosystem and strategy objectives. CCDCOE also notes that the report does not necessarily express NATO policy.
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