Istanbul hosts IT Summit

ISTANBUL - Anatolia News Agency

Vodafone Turkey Chief Executive Officer Serpil Timuray speaks at summit. Company photo

The theme of this year’s 12th ICT Summit Eurasia is “The Next Step,” and thousands of professionals from 30 countries in the Balkans, the Middle East, the Caucasus region and Turkic republics are expected to attend. The summit is taking place in Istanbul Sept. 11-13.

The summit was organized with the support of Turkey’s Transportation and Communication Ministry, as well as the Economy Ministry, EU Ministry, Health Ministry, Industry and Technology Ministry and the Under-Secretariat for the Defense Industry. The summit will also receive its greatest support to date from the IT Technologies and Communication Board (BTK), in addition to national and international organizations, business partners and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

The summit will discuss mobile communications and the implications they will have for the finance, banking, health and education sectors, to name a only few, as well as future IT trends.

Being bereft of technology is like being disconnected from life, said Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım, speaking at the summit’s opening via video conference. In 2003, Turkey did not even have broadband capability, he said.

“Over the past ten years, we can see that Turkey now has 19 million broadband subscribers and over 50 million Internet users. The turnover in the sector, which used to be around $10 billion, is now more than $35 billion,” Yıldırım said, adding that these developments were no coincidence.

Last year the IT sector in Turkey grew 13 percent, and there is no need for modesty, said BTK President Tayfun Acarer, also speaking at the summit.