August 16, 2016
BTK President Dr. Ömer Fatih Sayan: “As BTK, we will continue to take the motto of one state, one nation, one flag, and one homeland as our guide in all our works”
The ceremony held on August 15, 2016, at BTK's campus in Beytepe was attended by AK Party Istanbul MP Dr. Ravza KAVAKCI KAN, AK Party Konya MP Hüsniye Erdoğan, Deputy Undersecretary of the Ministry of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communication Dr. Özkan POYRAZ, Deputy Minister of Family and Social Policies Mehmet Ersoy, Deputy Minister of Finance Dr. Cengiz YAVİLİOĞLU, BTK Board Members, BTK Managers and employees, and sector representatives. The ceremony, which began with a recitation from the Quran, included a moment of silence in honor of the 15 July Democracy Martyrs, and a video prepared to narrate the 15 July Coup Attempt was shown. On the other hand, plaques of appreciation were presented to the BTK employees who were veterans of the 15 July Coup Attempt.
Our Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım stated the following in his telegram: “I sincerely congratulate the 16th anniversary of the Information Technologies and Communication Authority, and thank you for inviting me to the ceremony held on this occasion. I extend my love and greetings to all employees of your institution, which has successfully fulfilled important duties such as creating a competitive environment in the electronic communications sector, diagnosing the trust environment in the sector, encouraging investments to ensure the development of the sector, and developing information technologies; and I wish their successes to continue.”
BTK President Dr. Ömer Fatih Sayan delivered the opening speech of the ceremony. In his speech, Dr. Sayan began by expressing his pleasure at being together on the 16th anniversary of BTK's establishment and continued: “From its establishment until today, alongside the approaches of our colleagues serving in our institution in considering the interests of the country in their works, I want to particularly state that as the President of the Institution, I am proud of the solidarity they have shown in recent days for the unity and togetherness of our country. Our colleagues at the institution continued their duties during working hours, and outside working hours, as members of the nation, they were present in the crowds protecting the national will in the squares without feeling any fatigue. The stance of our operators in the information technologies and communications sector during and after this treacherous coup attempt, prioritizing their homeland, nation, and state, is exemplary to the whole world. And of course, our consumers, that is, our citizens... The way our citizens, each one being a consumer of our sector, stood against the FETÖ/PDY terrorist coup attempt with all their material and spiritual possessions is beyond all appreciation. May God not let our state and nation face such treacherous attacks again.”
Dr. Sayan said: “As BTK, from now on, we will continue to take the motto of one state, one nation, one flag, and one homeland as our guide in all our works. I have full confidence that every element of Turkey's very valuable information and communications technology sector will continue this four mottos as the most important goal.
As one of the regulatory and supervisory authorities in Turkey's telecommunications and informatics fields, which is one of the world's largest information and communications technology sectors, important developments related to our sector have been realized by our Institution or under the coordination of our Institution. Some of these have been turning points not only in the information and communications technology sector but also in our economic and social life. They have reshaped and reinterpreted our daily lives. I express my sincerest thanks to all our managers and personnel for their works in these developments, which I will briefly recall some in outline.”
Referring to the coordination carried out in our country on informatics, Dr. Sayan said: “Serious coordination has been provided in many areas such as bringing the world's most advanced technologies to Turkey with planning suitable for its needs and starting their implementation, reducing the digital divide, ensuring equal opportunities in access to communication services, having operators and producers with global competitive power, enabling consumers to purchase quality services at reasonable prices, and ensuring information security. With the establishment of our Institution, the regulatory framework in the information and communications technology sector began to function effectively, and policy-making, regulation, and operation functions were truly separated from each other. In these 16 years we have passed, the Ministry of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communication paved the way by setting policies in great harmony, our Institution showed the direction by authorizing, and our operators delivered services to the end users,” he said.
BTK President Sayan, who briefly touched on and informed about the works carried out since 2004, said: “Liberalization began in Turkey on January 1, 2004. Privatizations were also carried out behind this liberalization. If we briefly recall what they were: Infrastructure licenses were given on March 10, 2006. Currently, Türk Telekom and alternative operators have a total of 270 thousand km of fiber infrastructure. We are working with the vision of covering every corner of our country with fiber networks. Cable platform licenses were given on April 24, 2006. Directory services authorization and fixed telephone service authorization were made. Today, 582 operators and 930 authorizations continue to serve in the sector. You remember this number was higher and did not represent real operators. With our work, we canceled the authorization documents of operators who did not operate in accordance with their authorization documents or did not operate at all,” he said.
Emphasizing that an important revenue of 4 billion Euros was obtained after the 4.5G tender held on August 26, 2015, Dr. Sayan continued: “On April 1, 2016, 4.5G services went live. In a very short time, the 4.5G subscriber number exceeded 40 million. 42 million subscribers are using mobile broadband. In addition, there are 3.4 million M2M subscribers. I will return to this topic in a bit more detail later. During the 3G and 4.5G authorizations, R&D obligation was imposed on operators. Türk Telekom, Türksat, Turkcell, Vodafone, Avea, and large suppliers opened R&D centers and production centers in Turkey starting from 2010. With the Electronic Communications Law, 20% of BTK revenues began to be transferred to the R&D fund. Secondary regulations were made in this regard, paving the way for significant support to R&D activities. Under Number Portability, which started in 2008, more than 96 million mobile numbers and 1 million 115 thousand fixed numbers have been ported to another operator to date. In 2012, as a result of the works within the scope of the Action Plans prepared by the Cybersecurity Board established under the presidency of the Minister of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communication, the National Cyber Incident Response Center (USOM) was established, and institutions began to establish Cyber Incident Response Teams (SOME). I want to open a parenthesis about 4.5G. In our country, regarding the use of next-generation technology, the operators' provision of services with the most advanced technologies and the subscribers' demand to use the newest technologies combine to yield very successful results. However, these successful results are successes oriented towards usage and technology tracking. With 4.5G, there is an opportunity we want to seize this time. Thanks to our President's vision, during the 4.5G authorization, again with the same vision, we are in consensus across the entire sector on achieving domestic and national production. Unfortunately, in previous generation technologies, although these technologies were brought to Turkey at the right times with the right decisions, due to the standards of these technologies and the production of hardware and software within these standards, we became, so to speak, good followers and suppliers. Whereas now, by starting 5G works already, we want to realize the domestic and national production target we started with 4.5G.”
BTK President Sayan, underlining that our President emphasized providing domestic production in the 5G field and being one of the first in the world, and that works are being produced in line with this vision that can be summarized as establishing 5G infrastructure especially with national means and being one of the first countries to benefit from 5G services: “International standardization organizations, regulatory bodies, and the global mobile industry have been focusing more intensively on 5G for the last few years. 5G will symbolize the beginning of an era where almost everything other than human users communicates with each other, and the virtual dimension becomes as prominent as the physical dimension we live in. Although industrial standards have not yet been defined, while heated discussions continue on 5G, it is known that leading equipment manufacturers in the world have started field tests within the scope of their R&D works. There is an opportunity to develop a domestic ecosystem for meeting the infrastructure requirements in our sector to a large extent with domestic resources when transitioning to 5G in Turkey in the future. Especially for our universities and small-medium scale investors, there are important business opportunities. What falls to us as public institutions is to implement incentive practices and legislation that will clear the way for investors in this field. We are aware of this.”
Expressing that our country has a human resource that can go far beyond being just a follower country in the world's 5G works, Dr. Sayan said: “I think we can reach the position of one of the leading countries by activating and supporting our potential accumulation with the active participation of every piece of this ecosystem. GSMA estimates that mobile operators will invest 1.7 trillion USD in infrastructure for LTE alone between 2015-2020. And 5G investments will follow. Now our vision is to focus on and increase domestic production, domestic R&D works, domestic intellectual property rights, and domestic content development with a mobilization understanding, thereby transforming our country, which is largely dependent on foreign technology, from a consumer position to a producer position on the path to the new Turkey and making it have a say in this market. As observed in countries like South Korea, Japan, and China that lead in 5G technology, it is necessary to ensure cooperation between public, university, producers, operators, and relevant NGOs in our country, and to establish a platform where coordination of all these works will be provided in order to have a say in 5G technology worldwide; thus, on April 29, 2016, we established the 5GTRforum with the participation of public, university, sector, and NGO representatives. An important expected output will be contributions to international standardization platforms on behalf of our country under the 5GTRforum label. I would like to emphasize once again the importance of all relevant parties contributing to the 5GTRforum,” he said.
Dr. Sayan also touched on the works regarding the abolition of the corporate identity of the Telecommunications Directorate (TİB) and the continuation of the duties performed by this Directorate under BTK: “As a result of the legal arrangement prepared, TİB will be closed, and the works carried out here will be transferred to BTK. I want to thank all my colleagues who have contributed to the fight against terrorism for two years. TİB will be closed institutionally and restructured by directly connecting to BTK. As you know, wars are now made or supported with cyber attack methods. Creating awareness and educating on cybersecurity is very important, but ensuring cybersecurity is too important to be left to arbitrariness. While working on one hand to not be the loser of global competition in the information and communications technology sector, on the other hand, as I said in our establishment anniversary last year, we have continued the fight against the FETÖ/PDY organization embedded in our institution with determination. We saw how right our struggle was after the parallel structure unworthy of neither our Turkey nor BTK and other institutions, and the terrorist coup attempt that followed. What falls to us from now on is to be determined and careful in using the duties and powers given to us as all institutions and organizations of the state within the legal framework determined by the constitution and laws, so as not to give way to such structures again,” he said.
Deputy Undersecretary of the Ministry of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communication Özkan Poyraz stated in his speech that a country's sovereignty can be ensured definitively and clearly with the freedom of communication, saying, "If we were able to reach July 16, it is because our communication infrastructure is structured to ensure this independence." Drawing attention to the fact that sovereignty can be ensured definitively and clearly with the freedom of communication, Poyraz said, "If we were able to reach July 16 that day, it is because our communication infrastructure is structured to ensure this independence. In this framework, I congratulate all our operators that kept communication operational, and Türksat for their loyal works and citizen awareness they showed us."
Poyraz pointed out the importance of 5G technology and stated that in order to carry capacity with 5G at the same time, it is necessary to use and widespread fiber terrestrial technologies step by step together with mobile communication across the country. Stating that establishing cybersecurity is also very important, Poyraz said, "It is important to keep the communication within our country by creating a secure public network, and to ensure security in Turkey by establishing IBM points."
Poyraz congratulated the 16th anniversary of the Information Technologies and Communication Authority (BTK), saying, "Hopefully, in many more years, we can put forward much more strategic, domestic investments in informatics, informatics, and communication fields."
Additionally, Development Minister Lütfi Elvan, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ, Labor and Social Security Minister Süleyman Soylu, Health Minister Prof. Dr. Recep Akdağ, National Education Minister İsmet Yılmaz, National Defense Minister Fikri Işık, Deputy Minister of Food, Agriculture and Livestock Mehmet Daniş, and Undersecretary of the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources Fatih Dönmez also sent telegrams to congratulate BTK's 16th establishment anniversary.