Polymarket in Turkey: Why the Site Stopped Loading and What Still Works
Open polymarket.com from a Turkish connection today and nothing happens. No maintenance notice, no geo-block message from the site, no "your country is restricted" banner.
Open polymarket.com from a Turkish connection today and nothing happens. No maintenance notice, no geo-block message from the site, no "your country is restricted" banner. The request dies before it reaches the server. For the first day or two most people assumed it was a bug. It was not.
Here is what changed, who changed it, and what the situation means for anyone in Turkey who traded event contracts or still holds a position.
The July 2026 decision that cut access
On 16 July 2026 the Milli Piyango İdaresi issued decision 2026/10 and classified Polymarket as unlicensed betting. The Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) passed the order down to internet service providers. By 20 July the restriction was live on the major networks, and word moved fast through local crypto groups.
That timeline matters because it separates two things people keep mixing up:
- Polymarket did not restrict Turkey. Its geographic policy, updated in August, still treats Turkish IP addresses as eligible for account creation, deposits, and trading.
- Turkey restricted Polymarket. The block sits at the network layer inside the country, not on the platform's side.
So the servers keep answering. The local pipes stopped delivering.
Polymarket's own restricted list names the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Singapore, and OFAC-sanctioned jurisdictions. Turkey is not on it.
That distinction has practical consequences later in this article, especially around open positions.
The Paribu integration that lasted two weeks
Two weeks before the ban, the direction looked opposite.
On 1 July, Paribu, one of the largest crypto exchanges in Turkey, turned on a native Polymarket integration inside its own app. Users could open positions straight from their exchange balance through a self-custodial DeFi section. No second wallet, no separate gas token, no bridge dance. Trades settled on chain and stayed under the user's control.
What Paribu allowed and what it kept off the board
The exchange picked its markets with care. Sports contracts stayed out. Esports stayed out. Anything tied to Turkish domestic politics stayed out. What remained covered geopolitics, macro events, and general culture questions. Paribu described the product as an information layer, not a betting product.
Why it stopped
Public debate grew louder than the feature. Within days Paribu paused the options section and pointed to responsibility toward its users as the reason. By the time the Milli Piyango decision landed on 16 July, the local gateway had already gone dark.
The first serious attempt to deliver prediction markets to Turkish retail users through a licensed exchange ended before most people finished testing it.
Turkey markets keep trading without Turkish traders
Global liquidity on Turkey-related contracts did not disappear. If anything, the block made the gap more visible: the world prices Turkish outcomes while people inside the country cannot see the book.
Contracts running through the second half of 2026 include:
- Erdoğan out as president by 31 December 2026. Priced in the low single digits, with volume past $600,000.
- Early presidential elections scheduled in 2026. Around 11 percent, with more than $160,000 traded.
- Israel and Turkey in a military clash before 2027. Near 16 percent.
- Greece and Turkey engagement by year end. Lower, thinner book.
- Turkey rejoining the F-35 program, CAATSA sanctions lifted by set dates, a new constitution or a referendum in 2026, and the release of Ekrem İmamoğlu from custody this year.
Prices move daily. Treat those numbers as a snapshot from the reporting period, not a live quote.
Where Turkish law stands on prediction markets
Turkish gambling law is narrow and old. The state-run IDDAA system holds the only license for sports betting. Everything else falls outside the legal frame by default.
Prediction markets never appeared in those statutes by name. That left a grey zone for years, which is part of why Paribu could try the integration at all. Decision 2026/10 closed the gap for one platform by putting Polymarket in the illegal betting category.
Crypto rules are separate and clearer
Nothing about the ban changes the legal status of crypto itself:
- Exchanges that serve Turkish users fall under Capital Markets Board (SPK) supervision.
- Owning and trading digital assets remains legal.
- Paying for goods with crypto stays banned.
- The proposed 10 percent flat tax on gains from early 2026 was withdrawn. No dedicated crypto capital gains tax exists now, and gains fall under general income rules, which leaves room for interpretation.
Buying USDC on Paribu or BtcTurk and sending it to a personal wallet is ordinary, legal activity. The legal question starts one step later.
The risk sits in what you do with the funds
Enforcement in Turkey has moved toward money flows and infrastructure behind unauthorized gambling rather than individual users. That does not make participation risk-free.
Once authorities label a platform illegal betting, funding an account there becomes a traceable chain: exchange withdrawal, wallet address, on-chain contract. Exchanges report to regulators. Chain analytics vendors sell exactly this kind of mapping. Administrative exposure is the realistic concern, and it arrives later, not at the moment of the trade.
Anyone weighing this should talk to a Turkish lawyer rather than a Telegram group.
What happens to positions opened before the ban
Polymarket applied no close-only rule to Turkish addresses. The contracts sit in the user's wallet and settle normally when the market resolves.
The problem is access, not custody. Closing a position early requires reaching the order book, and the network block prevents that from a normal Turkish connection. Positions held to resolution pay out to the wallet without any action on the interface.
Questions people keep asking
Is Polymarket illegal in Turkey now?
The Milli Piyango İdaresi classified it as unlicensed betting, which puts it outside the legal frame. The domain is blocked by BTK order.
Did Polymarket ban Turkish users?
No. Turkey is absent from the platform's restricted jurisdiction list as of August 2026.
Can I still withdraw my funds?
Funds live in a self-custodial wallet, so they are not frozen by the block. Withdrawal and settlement depend on wallet access, not on the website.
Will Paribu bring the feature back?
Paribu paused it before the ban and has not announced a return. With decision 2026/10 in force, a licensed Turkish exchange has no clean route to offer the product.
Is this only happening in Turkey?
France issued its own block on the same day. Several other regulators had already restricted access under the same reasoning, that event contracts are gambling.
What the ban actually settled
Turkey has high crypto adoption for a straightforward reason: lira pressure and inflation pushed retail savers into digital assets earlier than in most countries. That made it a natural test market for prediction platforms, and Paribu ran the test.
The answer came in nineteen days. A regulated exchange front-end does not soften the classification, and the speed of the block shows how little appetite regulators have for the grey zone. The line around prediction markets in Turkey is drawn more clearly now than it was in June.
If you trade Turkish event contracts or follow Turkish crypto regulation, bookmark this page and check the status before you assume anything about access. Rules here change by decision, not by consultation, and the last one took four days to reach every ISP in the country. Drop your own experience in the comments if you held positions through the July block, because the practical details of settlement after a country-level ban are still thinly documented.
