Deputy Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Dr. Ömer Fatih Sayan attended the Bilişim 500 award ceremony where successful IT companies were honored.
Deputy Minister Sayan delivered a speech at the award ceremony he attended, emphasizing the importance of the IT sector. Touching upon the indisputable importance of IT in securing our country a significant place in the race for science and technology, Sayan stated: "Turkey is advancing on the path to becoming a country where technological labor combined with knowledge and experience receives the value it deserves, rather than physical labor being cheaply procured. If we achieve this, I believe we will become a more prosperous country in every field, from economy to health, from transportation to defense."
Stating that they are taking steps in line with the 2023 vision, Sayan drew attention to the fact that Turkey is now marching towards the future with much more confident steps. Explaining his biggest goal as ensuring Turkey's place among the world's top 10 economies, Sayan asked for support from the companies that qualified for Bilişim 500 on this matter and expressed that they are ready to provide all kinds of support.
Also touching upon the importance of R&D and innovation efforts, Sayan said: "Today, the world is experiencing technological developments that are very different, faster, and more radical than ever before. In the process, the gap in international and economic competition will open much faster than ever for those who lag behind. Therefore, managing this process is of utmost importance. Succeeding in this new race for superiority based on technology requires countries to behave differently than ever before."
Deputy Minister Sayan listed the works they have carried out as follows: "In this regard, while our Ministry aims to provide citizens with the latest technologies on one hand, on the other hand, we attach great importance to empowering consumers who receive these services. Considering consumer demands and needs, ensuring they receive quality services, and facilitating their lives are always among our priorities. The world is now placing even greater emphasis on the concept of 'consumer empowerment.' Because in the digital world, consumers' habits, desires, and needs shape many applications and open doors to new service areas. Where there are people, there is innovation. When we conduct studies centered on people, success becomes inevitable."
Deputy Minister Sayan: Our Citizens' Data is Not Worthless Compared to Users' Data in Other Countries
Expressing that their priority as a ministry is to widespread domestic and national production at the highest possible level, Sayan said: "In every product where we do not develop our own services and contents, our citizens' data is used and processed by others, and great revenues are obtained from this. As we know, with the developing technologies in the communications sector, applications and businesses providing over-the-top (OTT) services on top of networks are increasing their usage day by day. In addition to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, we can count applications such as WhatsApp, Viber, Line, and Messenger, which have started to compete with the services of operators in the communications sector directly. We know that the activities of global internet actors, which create unfair competition for domestic alternatives without assuming any responsibility or being subject to any authorization, need to be regulated, and we are working in this direction."
Emphasizing that platforms operating on a global scale of this type have problems in terms of security, Sayan said: "Just yesterday, the service outages lasting 7-8 hours in OTT applications worldwide also affected our users in our country to a certain extent. We have all observed that these OTT companies do not make sufficiently transparent explanations regarding the reasons for such outages. Essentially, these outages were a concrete example that our citizens should not become dependent on applications owned by global companies. Claims that users are manipulated by running different algorithms in the background with non-transparent policies are being discussed not only in our country but all over the world, and necessary steps are being taken. Indeed, Germany fined Facebook 2 million Euros just a few days ago for not acting transparently and distorting data while fulfilling its obligations under the German social network law. Our citizens' data is not worthless compared to users' data in other countries. Therefore, social media companies that have a large number of users in our country and generate great revenues through these users must establish clear and transparent policies regarding contents and personalized advertisements they offer, and take necessary measures to prevent their platforms from being used for manipulation and disinformation," he warned.
Advising users to use domestic applications such as BİP, LAFF, and DEDİ, Sayan stated that developing and using domestic and national products, resources, and methods is of utmost importance in ensuring our national cyber security, just like in every field related to national security.
Drawing attention to the studies carried out in this direction, Sayan concluded his speech with the following words: "Our country has taken very important steps on the path to digital economy transformation so far. Undoubtedly, the great impact of the initiatives made in the last 17 years on this path is significant. We will crown these initiatives with our President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's launched 'National Technology Move.' Because we need to produce our own technology. As Turkey, we are determined not to leave the key to our future to the conscience of any other country. For this, as we emphasize again on every platform, we must produce our domestic and national technological solutions."