Sourcing Turkish Food Products for the US Market

The United States holds a distinctive position among Turkish food export markets: it is the world's largest single buyer of Turkish delight, a major destination for Turkish hazelnuts and dried apricots, and a market where olive oil shipments have grown sharply in the most recent season. It is also a market with real regulatory entry requirements that a buyer and supplier need to plan for together.

An established, and in one case dominant, position

Turkish confectionery of the Turkish-delight type reached over $150 million in cumulative exports between 2021 and 2025, and the United States is the single largest destination for that category worldwide — not a growing niche, but an established leadership position built over decades of specialty-food and retail distribution. Hazelnuts follow a similar pattern of scale: US imports from Turkey have been valued at several hundred million dollars in recent years, supplying a confectionery and food-manufacturing base that treats Turkish hazelnuts as a standard input. Dried apricots add tens of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tonnes annually to that picture.

The most recent movement worth noting is olive oil: Turkish olive oil shipments to the US grew by more than 50% year on year in the latest season, a meaningfully steeper trajectory than the more mature categories above.

The tariff and registration reality

A baseline tariff of 10% has applied broadly to US imports, including from Turkey, since 2025, though the applicable rate for a specific product depends on its HS classification and a buyer should confirm this rather than assume the baseline figure covers every line.

Separately from tariffs, US food imports operate under the Food Safety Modernization Act's registration and Foreign Supplier Verification Program requirements. In practice this means the US importer (or, depending on the arrangement, the foreign facility) needs FDA registration in place, and the importer carries FSVP obligations for verifying the supplier's food-safety practices. This is not a formality to handle after the first shipment arrives — a buyer should confirm registration and FSVP status with their Turkish supplier before committing to an order, since a gap here can hold a shipment at the border regardless of how good the product itself is.

What documentation looks like in practice

US specialty-food and retail buyers tend to treat complete documentation as table stakes rather than a point of differentiation: a batch-specific Certificate of Analysis, contaminant testing suited to the product (aflatoxin testing for hazelnuts is the clearest example), and full lot traceability back to origin. A supplier who can produce this consistently, alongside confirmed FDA/FSVP compliance, removes the two most common points of friction US importers encounter.

Beyond the established categories

While Turkish delight, hazelnuts, dried apricots and olive oil carry the largest documented trade volumes, US demand for private-label confectionery, tea and natural personal-care products including soap is active as well, particularly through specialty retail and e-commerce channels that have built consumer familiarity with Turkish-origin products well beyond the traditional categories.

A US buyer working with a Turkish supplier who has FDA registration and FSVP compliance in order, and who documents every batch to the standard US retail and specialty buyers expect, is working with a market that already wants the product — the entry requirements are a checklist, not a barrier.