The leaders of the ICT sector met in İstanbul on the 25th of April 2008 in order to evaluate the participation of the Turkish ICT sector in the EU R&D programmes and discuss the successes and the failures of the Turkish ICT sector in 6th and 7th Framework Programme Projects. EU R&D Programmes and Turkish ICT sector status evaluation meeting was organized by TAGES and Turkish Informatics Foundation with the support of Communication and Information Technologies Application and Research Center-İzmir.
Turkish ICT NGOs, Public and Private Sector Cooperation
The meeting hosted 14 notable representatives from NGOs, public and private sector. The representatives of the ICT NGOs Mehmet Can Ekim from Telecommunication and Energy Services Consumer Rights and Sector Specific Research Association (TEDER), Behçet Envarlı and Gökçe Vahapoğlu from Turkish Informatics Foundation (TBV), Akif Şimşek from Turkish Informatics Industry Association (TÜBİDER), Doğan Ufuk Güneş from Software Industrialist Association (YASAD), Kutluk Özgüven from Turkish Informatics Association (TBD) attended the meeting and discussed the present situation of the Turkish ICT sector in EU wide R&D projects. Morever Zeynep Sarılar from Mobilera, Güven Fidan from AGM Lab, Bilgin Yazar from Innova, Erdem Gülgener from Logo contributed to the debates with their expertise and success stories in EU R&D projects.
Serdar Özen from Communication and Information Technologies Application and Research Center-İzmir and Behçet Envarlı from Turkish Informatics Foundation shared his views on the current situation of the Turkish ICT sector. TAGES representatives Leyla Arsan and Selen Akçalı presented the EU funded EASIER project through which TAGES encourages and supports Turkish ICT SMEs in participation in the EU R&D project. TÜBİTAK representative Hüseyin Metin gave information on the figures of the Turkish ICT companies and institutions that participated in the EU R&D projects and presented the contribution of the 7th Framework Programme projects to the Turkish ICT sector.
The participants discussed the current situation of the Turkish ICT sector in the EU R&D projects and the role of the ICT NGOs in encouraging the sector in increasing their R&D potential and activities. The participants suggested and agreed on the establishment of a technology platform for the ICT sector, building mechanisms for technology transfer and information dissemination, building a cooperation project for supporting and increasing the participation in the 7th Framework Programme and other R&D funding programmes, making a common study to train the project initiators to submit project ideas by thinking in a global scale, making workshops for ICT sector, building a common resource platform which includes information on the Turkish ICT sector.
The discussions in the meeting illustrated the need to build a common cooperation platform for the Turkish ICT sector through which the representatives can discuss the common challenges of the sector, find solutions to the problems, increase communication and cooperation and build business networks within the sector and increase the competitive advantage of the Turkish ICT sector in the world. The sector specific meeting on the 25th April initiated a common discussion platform for the ICT sector representatives and paved the way for further cooperation by bringing public and private sector and NGOs together.
