President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is speaking at the 13th Innovation Week Program of the Turkish Exporters Assembly in Istanbul.
The highlights of President Erdoğan's statements are as follows:
"It is extremely meaningful that this year's theme of Innovation Week, which started yesterday, is determined as the new phase of humanity. There are radical changes in all areas of our lives, especially artificial intelligence, robotics and biotechnology.
While technology is advancing rapidly, the human factor is unfortunately not taken into account. Recently, we have seen an increasing number of people questioning the relationships between humans and technology. Question marks are increasing not only in intellectual circles, but also in academia and society in general, and anxiety is replacing trust. Those who resisted change were those who were afraid of change. But every time, a middle ground has been found between humans and technology.
"TECHNO-OLIGARKS ARE TARGETING THE WORLD"
As in history, we see similar concerns expressed for many innovations, especially artificial intelligence. The techno-oligarchs I mentioned last week are targeting the world. We cannot yet measure the extent of this new threat. We built the world's puzzle infrastructure.
As Türkiye, we do not want to fall behind in the technology race. We have built an innovation infrastructure that few countries have. The number of technoparks, which numbered on the fingers of one hand 24 years ago, has reached 115 today. We recently shared our future vision with you with the 2026-2030 Türkiye Artificial Intelligence Action Plan. We aim for 100 thousand technology startups to emerge from our country by 2030, and their total valuation to reach 100 billion dollars. We will not fall behind in technology.
INVESTMENTS IN TECHNOLOGY
We see in the field of defense industry what our investments in technology mean for our economy and digital sovereignty. The localization rate of our defense and aviation sector was only 20 percent in 2002. We had to import many of our security materials used by our security loans.
Today, we have reached a completely different level in the defense industry with more than 4,500 companies, more than 1,400 projects, and nearly 100 thousand direct employment. Last year, we exported more than 10 billion dollars of defense and aerospace products to 180 different countries and regions.
FUND INVESTIGATIONS
The funding problem has been brought under control with the steps we have taken since September 17. We meticulously formed the Fund Coordination Board, which has full authority. We are solving the issue with determined, careful and very sensitive steps.
We have three priorities. Payment of the savings in the funds decided to be liquidated to the investment owners as soon as possible. Payments started in the ordinary liquidation last week. It continues smoothly. In extraordinary liquidations, interim payments will begin after the bill becomes law.
Our second priority is to deal with those who gain unfair profits through manipulation before the law. Investigations are deepened by taking into account judicial processes.
