Protocological Exchange Cultures: Financial Infrastructures in Comparative Perspective between Copenhagen and Istanbul

Department seminar with Dr. Fatih Karakaya, Istanbul University.

This research examines how trading protocols and regulatory frameworks jointly shape the operational and epistemic architectures of financial markets. Focusing on NASDAQ Copenhagen and Borsa Istanbul, it compares how the OUCH and ITCH message protocols (originally developed to enhance speed and transparency) are incorporated into distinct national market infrastructures and regulatory settings. The analysis draws on close readings of technical documentation, market operation manuals, and legal-regulatory materials from Denmark and Turkey to trace how different layers of the market “stack” articulate contrasting approaches to automation, oversight, and fairness.

Rather than treating protocols as neutral technical tools, the article shows how they function as institutional devices that embed regulatory priorities and normative assumptions about market order. In Denmark, the integration of OUCH and ITCH within the EU’s MiFID II framework emphasizes interoperability, liquidity transparency, and low-latency coordination as infrastructural ideals. In Turkey, similar protocols operate under the Capital Markets Board’s authority and are shaped by a more developmentalist and prudential regulatory logic, foregrounding control, data sovereignty, and systemic resilience. Taken together, the comparison highlights how algorithmic trading infrastructures emerge as regulatory assemblages rather than purely technical environments. By examining protocol governance across two market contexts, the research contributes to debates in the social studies of finance and infrastructure studies on the co-evolution of code, regulation, market organization, and exchange culture.

All members of the Department of Sociology and research staff from across the faculty are invited to attend.