Minister of Industry and Technology Kacır: It will bring very important gains to Turkey’s future

Minister of Industry and Technology Mehmet Fatih Kacır said, “The competitions we will organize in 11 cities in Turkey for the next 2 months will bring very important gains to the future of Turkey and will allow our youth to grow and meet with us.”

Visiting the TÜBİTAK Gebze Campus, where the Teknofest Electric Vehicle Races were held, Kacır toured the garages of the vehicles and received information from the competitors.

Later, Kacır went to the track and started the 10 vehicles participating in the competition one by one.

Kacır, in his speech here, stated that just like every year, the TEKNOFEST wind started to blow all over Turkey in August this year.

Noting that they have signed a unique event in the world with the participation of hundreds of thousands of young people every year, Kacır reminded that the world’s largest festival, TEKNOFEST Aviation, Space and Technology Festival, has been held since 2018.

“We offer more than 30 million lira in prizes and 50 million lira in technical support”

Kacır pointed out that they ensured that hundreds of thousands of young people were included in Turkey’s national technology initiative journey in technology competitions with more than 100 stakeholders within the scope of TEKNOFEST and said, “We broke new records together at TEKNOFEST this year. 1 million 650 thousand young people applied to our 49 competitions in 790 thousand teams from all 81 cities and 96 countries. We are offering more than 30 million liras in prizes and more than 50 million liras in technical support to the competing teams at TEKNOFEST. TEKNOFEST competitions play a very important role in the training of technological entrepreneurs who will increase Turkey’s national technology initiative and in the development of the human resources we need in the leading institutions of the national technology initiative.”

Referring to the competition they started today, Kacır said:

“With our electromobile and hydromobile competitions, we are training human resources who adopt innovative approaches in mobility technologies and experience them not only in theory but also in practical applications. Those who participated in these competitions in previous years have now established their own technological enterprises and are powering Turkey’s national technology journey. This year, more than 600 teams participated in our electromobile, hydromobile and high school electric vehicle competitions and 73 of these teams qualified to advance to the finals. Here, we are at the TÜBİTAK research center campus with nearly 1,000 friends in our 73 teams. We believe that our young people who are trained in these teams will be leading Turkey’s journey to the future in TÜBİTAK research institutes, in the leading institutions of the national technology movement, in the star organizations of our defense industry and of course in the technology enterprises they establish.”

“It will bring very important gains to Turkey’s future”

Recalling that this year’s TEKNOFEST competitions started with the Turkish Natural Language Processing Competition in Bilişim Vadisi last week, Kacır emphasized that this competition is an artificial intelligence-based competition and that it provides very important gains for the development of human resources, especially in the “Turkish Great Language Model” project that they aim to implement in the next term.

Kacır continued his words by reminding the competitions they will organize in Istanbul, Kocaeli, Izmir, Antalya, Ankara, Isparta, Aksaray, Erzurum, Kahramanmaraş, Adana and Mersin in the upcoming period.

“The competitions we will organize in 11 cities in Turkey for the next 2 months will bring very important gains to the future of Turkey, and will allow our youth to grow and meet with us. The TEKNOFEST wind will blow strongly all over Anatolia this year as it does every year, and God willing, TEKNOFEST Adana will be the stage where this wind will reach its peak between October 2-6. I would like to congratulate all our young people participating in the competitions in advance. I wholeheartedly congratulate our valuable academicians and teachers who support them, their valuable families who are always with our young people, and all our stakeholders, especially our Turkey Technology Team Foundation, who lead all these competitions. May TEKNOFEST 2024 be auspicious and auspicious for our country, homeland and nation. “

“We aim to attract new brand investments to Turkey”

In response to a journalist’s question, “Automotive companies are showing great interest in Turkey, will the results of TEKNOFESTs also contribute to the employment of young people?”, Kacır stated that Turkey is one of the ambitious and pioneering countries in the automotive sector, and reminded that Turkey is the third largest automotive manufacturer in Europe and the largest commercial vehicle manufacturer in Europe.

Pointing out that they aim to be the leading country in Europe and the region, especially in the new generation automotive sector, Kacır said, “For this purpose, we aim to attract our current manufacturers to make investments in new generation vehicles and to attract new brand investments to Turkey.”

Kacır emphasized that Togg is the most valuable and important step they have taken in the field of new generation vehicle technologies, and explained that the fact that BYD, the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer, has chosen Turkey for investment is another event that concretely demonstrates the country’s opportunities and capabilities in this field and the opportunity it offers to investors.

“Hopefully, in the coming period, Turkey will continue this journey with the 8 existing global brands in Turkey, a total of 13 brands that are producing and new globally leading brands in this field,” said Kacır, and touched on the very important advantages that Turkey offers to investors.

Kaçır concluded his remarks as follows:

“With its unique position, Turkey, as a Customs Union member country, offers investors the opportunity to reach a population of over 1 billion with the free trade agreements it has signed in 23 different countries, but I think the most valuable element we have is our young, dynamic, hard-working human resources. These competitions are very important and meaningful for this element to be activated and for this potential to be transformed into value. When I talk to our competitor teams here at TEKNOFEST competitions, I see this; our young people who were raised in the successful teams of the previous year have now established their own enterprises this year and continue on their paths in the ecosystem with the entrepreneurial hat. I hope that; in the coming period, both our tech entrepreneurs will continue to be raised in these competitions and the brands that prefer Turkey for investment will have the opportunity to meet with our young people who were raised in the best way here.”

TÜBİTAK President Hasan Mandal also accompanied Kacır during his visit.