Stock Hyped as Turkey’s Tesla Sinks 90%, Burning Retail Traders
(Bloomberg) — Small-time investor Riza Gundogdu thought he had found the next Tesla Inc. early last year when he invested in shares of Kontrolmatik Enerji ve Muhendislik AS.
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Newspapers had dubbed the company’s co-founder and chairman, Sami Aslanhan, as “Turkey’s Elon Musk,” and Aslanhan, like Musk, talked a great game: He boasted of plans to build a global “company of the future” that engineers everything from sensors and satellites to batteries and robots.
“They shared really advanced and visionary statements and goals,” Gundogdu, a lawyer in Istanbul, said in an interview.
But now Kontrolmatik shares have lost more than 90% of their value from their peak, in a rout fueled by a cash crunch, debt defaults and concerns about the founders offloading many of their shares.
Kontrolmatik is one of the highest-profile casualties of a Turkish stock market that’s earned a reputation for increasingly wild price swings. The saga shows yet again that when speculators embrace untested companies and the hype machine hits overdrive, individual investors can end up losing big time.
Kontrolmatik is now weighing the sale of assets including its battery unit’s flagship factory in Ankara and its transformer-manufacturing business to raise cash, people with knowledge of the matter said.
It’s also seeking to refinance around $100 million of debt after missing loan repayments this spring, they added.
This account of Kontrolmatik’s rise and fall is based on interviews with over a dozen people familiar with the company’s operations including former and current staff who asked not to be identified discussing confidential matters, as well as corporate documents and public statements by executives.
Kontrolmatik and Aslanhan didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment via phone and email.
Hype Stock
Aslanhan founded Kontrolmatik with his brother-in-law, Omer Unsalan, in 2008, under the motto “who controls technology, controls the future.”
The company started out doing electrical and automation work for industrial sites, often in countries shunned by others as being too risky like Sudan and Ethiopia.
But the founders had bigger ideas, and in 2020 the pandemic shutdowns gave them the time to develop plans to expand into developing lithium batteries, robotic arms and the so-called Internet of Things that connects smart devices.
Those investment plans formed the basis of Kontrolmatik’s pitch in its listing on the Istanbul stock exchange in October that year. The move coincided with a craze for initial public offerings, and demand from investors outstripped supply 26 times over.
The IPO’s success, quickly followed by the launch of another venture developing satellites, made the stock a favorite among retail investors looking for a high-tech success story that could protect their savings from runaway inflation.
The hype was amplified by the pandemic-era proliferation of investing communities on social media. Kontrolmatik shares soared 23,200% from the IPO price to the peak in September 2023, when it had a market value of 67.3 billion lira ($2.5 billion).
During the boom years, strangers recognized the company logo on employees’ lapel pins in public and thanked them for making them rich. A restaurant waiter whose shares allowed him to buy a new car gave the team the best seats in the house.
Visitors to its open-plan Istanbul office could tour a laboratory downstairs or unwind in a cigar room at the top.
Aslanhan made the front page of the Turkish edition of Forbes magazine under the headline “future-bender.” In private, management pushed back on the comparison with Musk, the world’s richest man — though they also drew the parallels themselves.
Cash Squeeze
Meanwhile, many Istanbul finance professionals were scratching their heads.
Two who attended analyst calls with management said they found them confusing, citing unrealistic growth expectations, a lack of clarity on what Kontrolmatik’s core business was, and the financials underpinning it.
The company slipped from a profit in 2024 to a loss last year, as the government’s pivot to tighter monetary policy pushed financing costs higher. Kontrolmatik paid almost $50 million in interest alone in 2025, triple the previous year’s figure.
Aslanhan and his deputy Unsalan sold more and more of their own shares to put cash back into the business, telling investors that this form of financing was preferable to expensive bank loans.
People involved with Kontrolmatik’s expansion said the company tried to grow too quickly, pointing to the failure of bigger peers like Northvolt AB in Europe. Rather than outsourcing components like the battery cells or joints for robotic arms, Aslanhan preferred to produce them in house, adding to costs.
Government ties were strained by a 2022 Twitter spat between Aslanhan and Mustafa Varank, the then-minister of industry, in which the chairman criticized the ministry for rejecting a funding application.
“Instead of posting tweets that mislead your investors as the owner of a publicly traded company, focus on your application file,” Varank replied. Aslanhan apologized and deleted the tweet.
As funds dried up, progress on a US factory slowed, and plans to list the Internet of Things unit were postponed without explanation.
Then, last year, the World Bank barred Kontrolmatik from its projects, citing “fraudulent and obstructive practices” in Iraq including submitting “fabricated past performance documents” and “making false statements.”
Finally, after Kontrolmatik missed bond and loan payments in the first half of 2026, the Istanbul stock exchange relegated it to a sub-market for companies facing distress or legal issues.
The company acknowledged “temporary cash flow issues” and delays to wage payments, adding it had applied for a capital increase and was considering asset sales.
Despite everything, Gundogdu, the retail investor, hasn’t lost hope.
A management overhaul this month that saw Aslanhan leave the board, plus assurances that Kontrolmatik would pursue divestments and restructuring, offered “a glimmer of hope,” he said.
“I hope the investors’ only loss will be time.”
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