At the last cabinet meeting of the year, the National Cybersecurity Strategy and Action Plan was also discussed. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who made statements after the cabinet meeting, emphasized that cybersecurity, which has become an integral part of digitalization, is one of the most sensitively addressed issues worldwide.
Drawing attention to the significant increase in cyber threats alongside digitalization, which has become an inseparable part of life in every field from security to health, education to household appliances, President Erdoğan stated, "So much so that protecting countries' physical borders and their digital infrastructures and data has gained almost equal importance. Essentially, digital systems rank at the top among the basic components of our defense industry projects. Similarly, almost all technologies that facilitate our daily lives operate on digital infrastructures."
Underlining that states are obliged to protect not only the lives and property of their citizens but also their digital information and the services they receive, President Erdoğan said that the first step in this direction was taken with the establishment of the National Cyber Incident Response Center approximately 7 years ago.
Stating that they have taken a step to form the country's cybersecurity policies, especially a new strategy, with a comprehensive and holistic approach by taking current needs and threats into account, President Erdoğan announced that in recent periods, they have been exposed to some covert and sometimes overt obstructions in digital infrastructures and cybersecurity issues, along with other areas, and therefore they are shaping their strategies with a domestic and national understanding.
President Erdoğan made the following remarks:
"We are sending our first domestically produced communication satellite to space, God willing, in 2022. We had already reached the capacity to carry out many projects in our country, whose alternative costs are tens of millions of dollars. The interest of our youth in a project like 'One Million Programmers' has given us hope for our future. Now we are taking these efforts even further. By developing our own national cybersecurity technologies, we are creating a strong and deterrent infrastructure. In line with our goal of becoming a country that leads in technology, we will assert our sovereignty rights in every field from the Blue Homeland to cyberspace. For this purpose, with the leadership of our Presidency Digital Transformation Office and the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, and with the participation of all relevant parties, we have reached the end of the works we have been conducting for a long time. By implementing the activities determined in this plan, which covers the first phase for the 2020-2023 period, we will, God willing, make our country's digital infrastructures secure against cyber attacks. We will not stop there; we will also ensure that Turkey has a say at the international level with its own products and companies in this field. I wish the success of our National Cybersecurity Strategy and Action Plan for our country."