By Gokhan Ergocun

ANKARA

Turkey's stock exchange rose by 0.21 percent, or 207.31 points, to open at 96,795.51 points on Wednesday.

On the third transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices climbed 0.17 percent and 0.11 percent, respectively.

Among all sector indices, the information technology sector index posted the best performance, up 2.19 percent, while the insurance sector index was the only one to see a decline, down 0.10 percent.

On Tuesday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 96,588.20, down 0.19 percent, or 185.29 points, with a trade volume of 5.7 billion Turkish liras ($1.2 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate dropped slightly to 4.6730 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Wednesday, from 4.6780 at Tuesday's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate stood at 5.4570 in the open market -- from 5.4540 at the previous close -- while one British pound traded for 6.1910 Turkish liras versus 6.1690 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil rose to $77.97 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Wednesday, from $77.43 at the previous close.