Turkey's Begendik to buy Tesco stores, looks at stock market listing

* Turkish retail competitive market for foreigners

* Local player Begendik to buy stores from Tesco (Xetra: 852647 - news)

* Talking to foreign funds, including in Iran

By Ceyda Caglayan

ISTANBUL, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Turkish food retailer Begendik plans to buy 10 stores from rival Tesco Kipa this year, its CEO said on Friday, part of expansion plans that could lead to a tie-up with a foreign investor, potentially from Iran, and a stock market listing.

Turkey has been hobbled by slowing economic growth, political uncertainty and a worsening security situation, but it remains an attractive market for retailers, given its young population and rising spending power.

Domestic players like Begendik have benefited as international chains have pulled back from the country's highly competitive retail market. Last year, Begendik bought 12 stores from German food retailer Metro AG (Xetra: 725750 - news) .

"We had been focusing on organic growth until last year, but the acquisition of the Real stores showed us that we can do it more rapidly and easily with inorganic growth," Haci Begendik told Reuters in an interview.

He did not say how much the company would pay for the Tesco stores.

Tesco Kipa parent company Tesco Plc is cutting back in Turkey, where the British retailer has 173 stores but made a net loss of 574 million lira ($191 million) in the 2014-2015 financial year.

France's Carrefour (Paris: FR0000120172 - news) has sold some of its stake in local business Carrefoursa to Turkish partner Sabanci Holding.

Begendik runs 46 supermarkets and 13 hypermarkets throughout Turkey. It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) aims to almost treble sales to 1.5 billion lira ($500 million) this year, with a target of 2 billion for next year, Haci Begendik said.

The company is in talks with foreign investors to boost growth and an initial public offering could follow, he said.

"We are in talks with several funds. There are funds from Iran among them. If the sanctions on Iran are lifted, there is a serious source of funds that will come from that country."

International sanctions on Iran could start to be lifted next year as Tehran and the West rebuild ties and potentially open up billions of dollars of trade deals. This follows an agreement between Iran and six major world powers in July where sanctions on Iran would be lifted in return for the country curbing its nuclear programme.

($1 = 3.0012 liras) (Writing by Ece Toksabay; editing by David Dolan and Jane Merriman)