The suspension occurred thanks to an application for a license to process payments in the country being denied. Why? Because a recently passed law (PDF) in Turkey demands that a firm's IT systems be localized to the country itself if the company wants to do business there. PayPal tells TechCrunch that:

"We respect Turkey's desire to have information technology infrastructure deployed within its borders, however, PayPal utilizes a global payments platform that operates across more than 200 markets, rather than maintaining local payments platforms with dedicated technology infrastructure in any single country."

We've reached out to PayPal for more information and if this will affect the company's Venmo payment service as well, and will update this post should we get a response. This closure will apparently impact thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of customers. The "new money" the outfit bragged about in its Superbowl ad probably never saw this coming.