Turkey’s domestic car venture appoints CMO

The joint venture which will produce Turkey's first locally made car has appointed a former employee of France's Groupe Renault as its Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

Talin Yıldız was the Global Marketing Director of the French automotive giant, according to her LinkedIn profile. She has taken the position of CMO at Turkey's Automobile Joint Venture Group (TOGG) as of April 1.

The TOGG's factory in the northwestern province of Bursa will start mass production in 2022 with an annual capacity of 175,000 units, according to a statement by Gürcan Karakaş, the venture's CEO and a former Bosh manager, in January.

Meanwhile, Turkey's car and light commercial vehicle sales surged 41 percent in the first quarter of 2020 versus the same period a year ago, an industry group said on April 2.

The Automotive Distributors' Association (ODD) said in a statement that more than 124,400 vehicles were sold from January to March.

Passenger car sales jumped 45 percent year-on-year to 99,630 in the first three months of this year.

It revealed that nearly 24,800 light commercial vehicles were sold, up 26 percent compared to the same period of last year.

In March, the automotive market saw a slight rise of 1.6 percent on an annual basis selling 50,008.