Turkish social network Yonja raises $12.5m

What is it about Turkey? They are really getting into social networking. Turkish social network Yonja (whose logo actually looks Irish to me) has raised $12.5M in Series A funding from Greywolf Capital Partners and Tiger Global Management, reports PEWire. HQ’d in San Francisco, the firm is led by founder and CEO Kerim Baran, who was educated at Harvard and Siebel before launching Yonja. Founded in 2003, Yonja claims a billion page views per month and nearly 5 million members. Owners Yonja Media Group also launched MetroListe (a craigslist for Turkey), 7inci (a DailyCandy for Turkey) and Nolyo (a Twitter for Turkey), says AlarmClock. In fact, Turkish startups aren’t doing too bad. Last week we reported that Xing, the Germany-based European business social network which resembles LinkedIn, had bought Turkish business social network Cember, for about $6.43 million (€4.36 million).