Control of a consortium Alfa Group over Turkey's Turkcell operator is not a problem, Turkcell CEO Kaan Terzioglu has said.

"We have lots of shareholders, big and small. And Alfa or Letter One [L1 manages assets of Alfa Group of Mikhail Fridman and partners] is one of our shareholders. The responsibility of our management team is to make our company grow faster and be more profitable. Our responsibility will not change, whoever is control of the company. We have an independent board of directors. We are operating today in the interests of our shareholders… We will continue doing so. We believe the nationalities of investors are not a problem," he told reporters on Tuesday.

He said that Alfa Group is a valuable investor for Turkcell.

"Alfa is a valuable shareholder today and we hope they will continue being our investor," he said.

Letter One, the investment division of Alfa Group, earlier said that Cukurova Holding of Mehmet Karamehmet is hindering the completion of the deal to buy shares of Turkcell.

Cukurova was to take steps to lift or change the arrest of its shares in Cukurova Telecom Holdings Limited (CTH) via which it holds shares in Turkcell. The shares were arrested by the court of British Virgin Islands. Wihtout these steps it is impossible to finish the deal to buy 13.8% of Turkcell by Letter One from Cukurova.

On November 28, the term during which Letter One was to buy the shares belonged to Cukurova in Turkcell for $2.8 billion.