Insights into Türkiye’s Technology Development Journey

OpenAlex İngilizce

Türkiye, an emerging economy, has been attempting to improve its socioeconomic strength through the promotion of research and development (R&D), innovation, and technological development activities. Most notably, since 2000 the government has been implementing programs and supporting schemes with a particular focus on improving the innovation capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and universities. First, institutions were set up by the government to provide support to SMEs, and different support programs were then introduced by these institutions. The support programs subsequently diversified to include patenting, commercialization, and entrepreneurship support as well as support for ecosystem improvements. In this commentary, I provide a summary of these programs and how they have affected technology R&D and innovation capacity in Türkiye. Although it is clear that the programs have had an impact, we were not able to source any evidence delineating the size of their impact. Nevertheless, it would have been better if we, as a country, could have focused on measuring not only the financial contributions of the programs but also their social impact as well.