A little over three years ago, the Middle East Technical University (METU) and the Information Technologies and Communications Authority (ITCA) signed a new protocol agreeing to transfer authorization and management procedures related to Turkish country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) to a new system—TRABIS.
The full transfer from NIC.TR to TRABIS is expected to be completed by the end of January 2022; an exact date has not been released by the registry. Domain name applications, transfers, and domain name renewals will be taken over by TRABIS.
TRABIS will bring radical changes to the domain application process, renewals, and transfers. Domain extensions such as, .COM.TR, .ORG.TR, and .NET.TR will become non-restricted. With the launch of TRABIS, these ccTLDs will be registered first-come first-served without the requirement of supporting documents. At this point, no exact date has been announced by the registry.
Turkey is one of the fastest growing economies in the world with a population of around 84 million, and they are attracting foreign investors from all over the world. Yet according to Netcraft, the .TR extension is also in the top 50 TLDs for cybercrime, and no formal dispute process has been put in place as of today, which means it’s harder to recover third-party domains. Therefore, the threat profile for these domain extensions will become higher than before.
Our recommendation is to evaluate your brands and secure critical domains in this namespace to prevent future cyberthreats.
Businesses and organizations interested in registering a .TR-related domain name as an opportunity, or even for defensive purposes, should speak with their CSC strategic account manager or client service partner.