A bank founded to lend to the small man, in a republic short of capital: that is the origin story Halkbank tells about itself, and the outline of it runs through nearly a century of Turkish economic policy. According to the bank’s own milestones record, the idea took shape after World War I, the War of Independence and the Depression of 1929 had driven the young Republic of Türkiye into severe economic strain. The state answered with a model built on social balance, and in 1933 Law No. 2284 on the People’s Bank and People’s Funds laid the bank’s foundations.
Operations began on May 23, 1938, under the People’s Funds Law, and for its first dozen years the bank did not deal with the public directly at all: it financed the People’s Funds, which lent to tradespeople and artisans on its behalf. In the 1940s it introduced what it calls its first SME loans. Only in 1950 did it win the authority to open branches and lend directly, after which, by the bank’s account, its reach widened quickly.
Against this backdrop, the growth decades read as a history of the Turkish state’s priorities. In 1964 the bank created the first fund dedicated to small industrial estates and marketplaces. From 1975 it moved beyond the small tradesman, adding industrial, investment and commercial loans for large-scale industry. In 1989 it joined the SWIFT messaging network and launched HALKÇEK, a payment system developed the year before, as branches were wired into a centralised operation.
Then came consolidation. A merger with Türkiye Öğretmenler Bankası in 1992 was followed by the transfer of Sümerbank in 1993 and Etibank in 1998; 96 branches of Türkiye Emlak Bankası came aboard in 2001, and the Pamukbank integration was completed in 2004. The restructuring of the state banks had been set in motion by Law No. 4603 in 2000, a turn toward modern banking and international competition, in the bank’s telling.
The public offering came in 2007, a first on Borsa İstanbul in the bank’s history, followed by a spread of certificates and acquisitions: the first ISO 9001 quality certification of its kind in Türkiye in 2008, a Macedonian acquisition now run as Halk Bank A.D. Skopje, the Paraf credit card launched in 2012, headquarters moved to Istanbul in 2013, a Serbian majority stake later operating as Halkbank A.D. Beograd, and, in 2017, the transfer of the bank’s shares to the Türkiye Wealth Fund. Capital was raised in 2019 and again in 2020.
What is at stake in such a record is continuity: an institution that began as a funding channel for artisans now spans the Balkans, cards, sustainability indexes and women-entrepreneur programmes, still trading on the motto “We are the People First, Then the Bank!” The wider picture the bank’s own chronicle leaves out, of scandals and courtrooms, is another story; on its own documents, this is a lender that grew up alongside the republic itself.
