From R&D Expansion to Innovation Capacity: Enterprise Innovation, Digital Market Integration, and Ecosystem Dynamism in Türkiye, 2015–2025

This study develops a multidimensional, indicator-based framework for assessing whether the expansion of research and development (R&D) resources in Türkiye is accompanied by broadly distributed innovation capacity, digital market integration, and ecosystem dynamism. The analysis uses the latest available official TurkStat tables, whose reference periods span 2015–2025, and treats them as a diagnostic profile rather than a longitudinal or causal dataset. Gross domestic R&D expenditure reached TRY 651.8 billion in 2024, and the business enterprise sector accounted for 64.8% of the total. R&D expenditure was geographically concentrated: İstanbul and Ankara together represented 61.2% of national expenditure. During 2022–2024, product innovation rates rose from 21.6% among small enterprises to 45.1% among large enterprises, while information and communication and scientific R&D activities each recorded a product specialisation ratio of 2.19. In 2025, 93.6% of enterprises had fixed-line internet access, but only 8.6% had a connection of at least 1 Gbit/s; in 2024, 12.4% made web sales and 27.8% of web sellers sold abroad. The proposed Strategic Innovation and R&D Capacity Index (SIRDCI) is therefore presented as a transparent conceptual diagnostic. A partial firm-size proxy is demonstrated only with indicators available at a common firm-size level; ecosystem dynamism remains a national contextual dimension because it cannot be disaggregated by firm size. The descriptive results reveal a positive firm-size gradient, marked sectoral and regional concentration, and a gap between digital access and commercialisation. These patterns do not establish causal mechanisms; instead, they identify areas that may warrant further capability-oriented policy attention and evaluation.