Minister of Commerce Ömer Bolat attended the Türkiye Innovation Week (TIW26) program, which was held for the 13th time this year at the Haliç Congress Center.
The program, organized by the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM) with the support of the Ministry of Commerce, is being held this year with the theme of 'Humanity 6.0 - The New Phase of Humanity'.
In addition to Minister Bolat, TİM President Mustafa Gültepe, sector representatives and guests attended the program.
At the ceremony held after the opening speeches, the awards were given to their owners by Minister Bolat and TİM President Gültepe.
Minister of Commerce Ömer Bolat said, "Although Turkey, with its political and economic stability, is in the middle of hot wars in the north, south, east and west, and despite the fact that there has been a fight against terrorism that has caused huge losses for 44 years, it has won the fight against terrorism and maintained its economic stability, continued its economic development, and in this sense, in political and economic stability, it has become a key player, a key country that is desired to be a partner for both the Western world and the Eastern world. Continuous uninterrupted growth for 16 years and 1.7 trillion dollars of national income." "It has been really important for us to reach a national income of 18 thousand 300 dollars. The current account deficit has been maintained in a reasonable manner, without any crisis situation in the last 3.5 years, in a stable and consistent manner and in a tempo and environment that does not cause major volatilities in the goods and services markets, money and foreign exchange markets," he said.
Minister Bolat said, "September has been a very good and fruitful year for exports this year. We broke monthly records in 5 of the first 9 months of this year and had increases in 6 months. As of September, we have reached 283.7 billion dollars with an annualized increase rate of 5.2 percent and we have exceeded the year-end target of 282 by 1.7 billion dollars. We aim together to reach better figures at the end of the year. Also in services exports According to the figures announced by the Central Bank in August, we reached an annualized export volume of 125.1 billion dollars. While our year-end target was 410 billion dollars, we reached 409 billion dollars. Here, the area where you will see the contribution of innovation, technology and R&D is our medium high and high technology product exports. The share of medium high and high technology product exports, which was 30.4 percent in 2002, was 10 billion dollars at that time. "This figure reached approximately 112 billion dollars at the end of last year, and it increased to 86.5 billion dollars in the first 9 months of this year, reaching 43.7 percent," he said.
Minister Bolat said, "Your exports, which were 1 dollar 53 cents per kilogram last year, increased to 1 dollar 73 cents at the end of the first 9 months this year. When we reduce the export items such as cement and marble, which are very large in tonnage but lower in value, our kilogram exports increased to 2 dollars 11 cents. When we look at it, it is much more in some sectors. In the defense industry, the kilogram is 61.5 dollars, apart from that, it is 39 times the Turkish average. In the pharmaceutical industry, 25 dollars, It can be 14 dollars in the ship and yacht industry, and 9 dollars in the automotive industry. We are even trying to progress in every field within the framework of the Turkey Century vision drawn by our President. Today, our 97 technology development regions contribute 21 billion dollars to our exports in the services sector, and 6 billion dollars are exported to the world in these technology development regions. The Global Innovation Index for the year was announced. Turkey ranks 45th among 139 countries. We are ranked 3rd among the 35 countries in the upper middle income group. We have a rapidly progressing structure in the fields of industrial design, branding, research and development, and intellectual property. According to 2025 data, Turkey's innovation performance has increased by 2.7 points in one year. "It has increased by 6.6 points. Türkiye is at the same level with the EU average in terms of the sales of new products for the newly launched business and the indicators of the population with higher education," he said.
TİM President Mustafa Gültepe said, "With a comprehensive approach, our companies can measure themselves from their strategies to their culture and follow their development from year to year. We started InovaLIG with 460 companies in 2014. This year, 2 thousand 641 companies from 70 provinces applied. We would like to underline 70 provinces here. In this sense, InovaLIG has turned into an innovation mobility that spreads to every corner of Türkiye. Now, innovation is not only in our big cities, "We see that it has found a response in our companies all over Anatolia," he said.
