Minister of Industry and Technology Mehmet Fatih Kacır said technology entrepreneurship was at the center of their goal to move Türkiye higher in the global high-technology value chain.
Kacır spoke at the GITEX AI Türkiye event held at the Istanbul Expo Center under the hosting of the Presidential Investment and Finance Office and with the strategic partnership of the Ministry of Industry and Technology.
Türkiye’s entrepreneurship ecosystem
Kacır said innovation was reshaping the foundations of economic activity, industrial production and global competition, adding that the capacity to develop, implement and scale advanced technologies had become decisive for economic strength and strategic autonomy.
Kacır said more than 13,000 companies operate across 1,700 research and development and design centers and 115 technoparks in Türkiye. He said the technological transformation in the defense industry demonstrated the results of this ecosystem. Kacır added that Türkiye develops training aircraft, helicopters, maritime platforms, land systems and satellites, and said nearly 120,000 units of the fully electric national automobile Togg had taken to the roads.
Kacır said they viewed technology entrepreneurship as one of the main driving forces behind Türkiye’s next-generation success stories, and announced that while Türkiye had no unicorns in 2019, it now had eight on the global stage.
Kacır said they aimed to produce 100,000 technology startups from Türkiye and raise the total valuation of Turcorns to $100 billion. He said they were working to make Türkiye one of the world’s top 10 entrepreneurship ecosystems and position Istanbul among the world’s top 20 centers for entrepreneurship and technology investment.
Public support for startups
Kacır said $130 million in public funds had been transferred to the entrepreneurship ecosystem through fund and fund-of-funds mechanisms since 2007. He added that these resources had mobilized a total fund volume of $2.8 billion.
Kacır announced that $300 million in new funding had recently been allocated to venture capital funds and said the funding was expected to provide the ecosystem with more than $750 million in additional resources.
Kacır said the Turcorn 100 Program provided end-to-end support to startups with high growth potential. He added that the Türkiye Tech Visa Program supported technology specialists and innovative founders in establishing and growing companies in Türkiye. More than 5,000 international technology specialists had been brought into the ecosystem through the program, he said.
Kacır also said the terminal of Atatürk Airport had been transformed into a global meeting point for entrepreneurs, technology companies and investors under the name Terminal Istanbul.
Artificial intelligence investment and infrastructure
Kacır said artificial intelligence was being rapidly integrated into different stages of companies’ value chains, adding that global AI spending was expected to approach $2.7 trillion this year. He said data centers accounted for more than $270 billion of the value of global greenfield investment projects last year.
Kacır said the spread of artificial intelligence was creating new challenges in safety, security, trust and accountability. He added that some widely used models could be inadequate at understanding the nuances of different languages and cultures.
Recalling that the Artificial Intelligence Institute had been established under TÜBİTAK, Kacır said companies, technology developers, universities and research centers had been brought together through the Artificial Intelligence Ecosystem Calls. He said the Pre-Competitive Cooperation Program aimed to facilitate the joint development of Turkish-language AI solutions.
Kacır said the national computing cluster TRUBA had been commissioned with more than 80,000 processor cores, 504 graphics processors and 26 petabytes of data storage capacity. He added that Türkiye had joined the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking. Türkiye-based AI startups could access EuroHPC supercomputers under the Digital Europe Program, while researchers and companies could benefit from the computing capacity of MareNostrum 5, he said.
Kacır announced that $150 million in public financing had been allocated to AI-focused venture capital funds. He also said the $30 billion HIT-30 program had been designed to attract large-scale investments in artificial intelligence and other frontier technologies to Türkiye.
Kacır said the HIT-Data Center Call would accelerate the establishment of high-capacity, secure and energy-efficient data centers. He added that the $1.6 billion HIT-Artificial Intelligence Call would support investments in cloud and AI infrastructure. The HIT-Quantum Call aimed to develop capabilities in quantum technologies, he said.
2030 targets
Kacır said Türkiye’s Artificial Intelligence Action Plan set out the national roadmap for the 2026–2030 period. Under the plan, the targets are to make 5 million citizens AI-literate, train 10,000 advanced AI specialists and develop 100,000 AI professionals within the first two years.
Kacır said plans called for at least 2% of public investment programs to be allocated to AI projects and for at least 2,000 public datasets in strategic areas to be made accessible through the National Data Library. He announced that data center capacity would be increased to 1 gigawatt by 2030.
Kacır said they aimed to mobilize at least $10 billion in private-sector investment in artificial intelligence, cloud technologies and digital infrastructure by the same year. He added that the Artificial Intelligence Growth Zones were intended to provide investors, small and medium-sized enterprises and researchers with ready access to energy and digital infrastructure.
