Dr. Ömer Fatih Sayan, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, also attended the event held online where the 3rd quarter evaluation was conducted. Sayan, who spoke about the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation, touched upon the works carried out by the Ministry.
Emphasizing that as the Ministry, they continue to pursue policies supporting domestic and national production in the fields of electronic communications and cybersecurity, Sayan said, “We are conducting important studies to meet both the current needs of the electronic communications sector and the needs for 5G and beyond technologies through domestic and national capabilities.”
Reiterating that they attach great importance to domestic and national production in this regard, Sayan stated, “With the 4.5G authorization, we have introduced obligations for operators to meet up to 45% of their high value-added investments such as hardware and software with domestically certified products, and similarly, at least 10% with products manufactured by SMEs in our country. We do not allocate frequencies in the determined bands to products without domestic goods certificates. Thus, we are creating a market to indirectly support our domestic producers. As a result, many producers have developed domestic products, and this continues. For example, base stations used in communication networks, billing systems, radio links, security software, and similar software are being developed by producers in our country at world standards and used in our networks. As a result of the efforts we have carried out to develop a domestic and national production ecosystem in the electronic communications sector, the domestic ratio in our networks, which was 0.98% in the first year within the framework of 4.5G authorization, exceeded 23% by the end of 2019. I can already say that we will see higher figures by the end of 2020.”
Drawing attention to the works they have done as the Ministry to pave the way for entrepreneurship, Sayan also gave good news to the youth. Sayan conveyed this good news with the words, “The Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure has an R&D fund. There was an ongoing study for this, and finally, we are putting it into use. We are talking about something that includes many projects like R&D and entrepreneurship. I want to announce to my young friends that we will put it into use as soon as possible. We are aware that some things cannot be achieved just by getting a diploma. Therefore, the digital skills of our youth also need to be developed. We are conducting studies for this.”
Deputy Minister Sayan: Discovering Talents with High Entrepreneurial Spirit is Important
Stating that discovering talents in our country who can think innovatively and have a high entrepreneurial spirit is important, Sayan said, “To benefit from this qualified power, we need to elevate the competence of our citizens, especially children and youth, in learning digital skills beyond the current situation. We have made significant progress as a country in this regard. With the 2023 education vision, while rapid steps are being taken to build a productive society that can look through different windows, as the Ministry and BTK, through the BTK Academy education platform; we contribute to raising inquiring children who think more innovatively by providing free training such as robotic coding, Python, mobile app development for our children, our future; and by organizing digital game development competitions, who understand the importance of generating questions as much as solving problems. Only in this way can we position our country as one of the leading countries in the world in this field by integrating entrepreneurial youth who adopt advanced information and communication technologies tools and activities, who can think analytically and digitally, into society.”
Sayan also mentioned the importance of the “1 Million Employment” Project, which was launched with the support of the Ministry of Transport, in collaboration with BTK and the Ministry of Treasury and Finance.
Deputy Minister Sayan: eSIM Technology Developed with Domestic and National Capabilities
eSIM technology was also on the agenda of Deputy Minister Sayan. Sayan said, “With the use of eSIM technology, it becomes possible to change the operator profile without any physical intervention to the device. Thus, instead of physical intervention to the device, operations such as loading, updating, or deleting the operator profile become possible through remote access. Necessary decisions have been taken to ensure that eSIM technology is used with domestic and national capabilities and that the relevant parties can make the necessary preparations for the transition to this technology. eSIM technology has been developed with domestic and national capabilities. In the coming periods, with the start of eSIM technology in our country, we will also see applications that create added value for both consumers and developers.”
While producing our own technology, Sayan stated that we also have to develop domestic and national services and content offered to users with these technologies, saying, “There are domestic alternatives to the services offered by global internet actors, but we need to diversify these alternatives and make them preferred by our citizens. We know that the activities of global internet actors, which create unfair competition to their domestic alternatives without assuming any responsibility or being subject to any authorization, need to be regulated, and we are working in this direction. As the Ministry, while working to develop domestic services, on the other hand, we have taken the necessary steps to ensure that the data of global internet actors' users in Turkey are kept in Turkey. As in the example of Germany, they have been asked to have representatives in our country, and it is aimed to protect Turkish citizens in the same way by responding to citizen applications within 48 hours, just as they take protective measures against attacks on the personal rights of citizens in the countries where they have representatives.” With these words, he concluded his speech.