VakıfBank Brand Guidelines: A 1954 Foundations Bank & a Yellow-and-Black Volleyball Club

A bank created by law for the foundations.

VakıfBank’s full name, Türkiye Vakıflar Bankası, means the Turkish Foundations Bank. Vakıf is the Turkish word for a charitable foundation, and the bank was created to manage foundation money. Turkish Wikipedia says it was set up on 11 January 1954 by a special law, Law No. 6219, as a joint-stock company, so that foundation funds and their income could be put to good use, savings could be gathered for the country and those savings could be used for economic development. English Wikipedia, citing the bank’s own history page, adds that it began operating on 13 April 1954.

That origin shaped its ownership for half a century. The Directorate General of Foundations, the state body that manages Türkiye’s historic foundations, held most of the shares, with the bank’s staff pension fund holding much of the rest. Both Wikipedia editions say that after a public offering in 2005 the directorate’s stake fell from about 75 per cent to about 58 per cent, the pension fund’s from about 25 per cent to about 16 per cent, and roughly a quarter of the shares began to trade publicly. The bank remains listed on Borsa İstanbul.

The name has never changed. The bank still operates under its own founding law, Turkish Wikipedia says, and the word “Vakıf” runs through the group: Vakıf Faktoring, Vakıf Finansal Kiralama, Vakıf Yatırım and the Vienna-based VakıfBank International AG are among the subsidiaries Wikipedia lists.

From the foundations to the Treasury and the wealth fund.

The ownership changed in a sequence of dated steps between 2019 and 2023. As of 11 December 2019, both Wikipedia editions say, the shares held by the Directorate General of Foundations — about 58.5 per cent in total, across two share groups — were transferred to the Ministry of Treasury and Finance under a presidential decision dated 3 December 2019.

New shares then went to the Türkiye Wealth Fund. On 20 May 2020 a capital increase by private placement made the fund a shareholder with about 36 per cent, English Wikipedia says; Daily Sabah reported the same 36 per cent stake in February 2022. A second placement followed in March 2022, and the fund’s own disclosure that year said it had raised its VakıfBank stake from 35.9 per cent to 64.8 per cent. Turkish Wikipedia records a further placement to the fund completed on 29 March 2023 and, citing the bank’s ownership page in 2026, gives the fund about 73 per cent and the Treasury about 15 per cent, with a little under 8 per cent traded publicly.

The bank is a full-service commercial and retail lender. English Wikipedia lists corporate, commercial, small-business, retail and private banking, as well as leasing, factoring and capital-market work through subsidiaries. Its international network, according to Turkish Wikipedia in 2026, includes branches in New York, Bahrain, Qatar and Erbil and representative offices in London and Dubai, while VakıfBank International AG has branches in Vienna, Cologne, Frankfurt and Hungary. English Wikipedia, citing a public disclosure, says the Qatar branch was approved to begin regulated activities by the Qatar Financial Centre Regulatory Authority on 2 February 2021.

Size is given only by outside tables. Turkish Wikipedia, citing the Banks Association of Türkiye’s figures for the first quarter of 2026, calls VakıfBank the country’s second-largest bank by total assets. English Wikipedia’s infobox places the head office in the Istanbul Finance Center in Istanbul’s Ümraniye district.

How Turkish banks present themselves.

Turkish banks tend to present themselves through bold, simple wordmarks and one dominant colour. Across the country’s large lenders the palettes run through greens, reds, blues and purples, and the names keep their Turkish letters — the dotted capital İ, the ş, the ı and the ğ — on logos, apps and branch signs, so a typeface that handles those diacritics cleanly belongs in any design brief for the sector.

Advertising is a large part of how these brands are known at home. Mascots, recurring characters and campaigns led by well-known actors and athletes appear across the sector, alongside photography of branches, city streets and Istanbul itself. On their websites the banks arrange themselves around everyday tasks: accounts, loans, credit cards and loyalty programmes, and mobile apps that sit at the front of most pages.

Sponsorship and culture extend the identity. Turkish banks sponsor football, concerts and festivals, and some run publishers, galleries, museums or art collections under their own names; İşbank’s publishing house and painting collection, and the SALT institution that grew out of Garanti BBVA’s Ottoman Bank archive, are two documented examples covered in this series.

The banks also publish a great deal of formal material. Listed lenders produce annual and integrated reports, sustainability reports and investor presentations in Turkish and English. This series sets out what can be checked about each bank — when and where it was founded, who owns it and how its name has changed — and marks clearly what rests only on a bank’s own word.

A bank name carried on a volleyball shirt.

The VakıfBank name is also carried by a volleyball club. VakıfBank Spor Kulübü, the bank’s sports club, plays in the Sultanlar Ligi, the Turkish women’s league. The club’s own history traces it to two teams: Güneş Sigorta, founded in Istanbul in 1986, and a VakıfBank club founded in Ankara in 1988, which won its first Turkish league title in 1992; the club now lists 15 Turkish league titles in all. English Wikipedia says the team moved to Istanbul after the merger and passed through several sponsor names before settling on VakıfBank.

Its record is documented by outside sources. Anadolu Agency reported on 3 May 2026 that VakıfBank had beaten Eczacıbaşı Dynavit 3–1 in an all-Turkish final in Istanbul to win the women’s CEV Champions League for the seventh time, after titles in 2011, 2013, 2017, 2018, 2022 and 2023, and called the team “the yellow-and-black side.” The club lists four FIVB Club World Championship titles, in 2013, 2017, 2018 and 2021. English Wikipedia says a 73-match winning run between October 2012 and January 2014 was recognised as a record by Guinness World Records. The team plays at the VakıfBank Sports Palace.

The bank also publishes books. VakıfBank Kültür Yayınları (VBKY) says it began in 2018 and has since issued close to 450 titles across literature, history, economics, philosophy, science and art, aiming at books meant to be kept rather than seasonal sellers.

For a design guide, VakıfBank shows how a bank created by statute for one purpose can keep that purpose in its name for seven decades, while its most visible colours reach the public through a sports club. Compare Ziraat Bankası, the other state-owned bank in this set, and İşbank. For this guide we use charcoal, a warm yellow, bronze and paper with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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