Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey

In his speech here, TOBB President M. Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu conveyed his thanks to TÜBİTAK President Prof. Dr. Hasan Mandal, who has held very important missions in the R&D field and supports the private sector. Stating that they work together with TÜBİTAK on many platforms, Hisarcıklıoğlu said, “With the support of TÜBİTAK, we are running the BIGG - Individual Young Entrepreneur Program as TOBB ETU TTO. Ufuk2020, Ufuk Europe, we are moving forward together in the Calls for Green Reconciliation. Especially in 2019, we have a very good area of cooperation within the framework of Ufuk2020. This cooperation continued in 2020 as well.”

Hisarcıklıoğlu noted that R&D and innovation entrepreneurs have some ways to go yet, “We need to speak more about R&D, we need to direct SMEs more towards R&D. We need to make our SMEs work harder within the R&D ecosystem. In the areas of new product development, technology development and university-industry cooperation, we need to both encourage our SMEs and support them by guiding our SMEs. We are ready with our 365 Chamber-Exchanges to spread the R&D activities of our SMEs.

With the support of TÜBİTAK, we believe that we will create SMEs which produce and develop technology. We also see the draft law on Technology Development Zones in Parliament as an opportunity. The pandemic is changing the way we do business all over the world.”

- Call on SMEs to benefit from TÜBİTAK support

“In the past, the economy of scale was an advantage. Now it's smaller but faster and more flexible, and the way it's produced and serviced stands out. For example, the importance of micro-scale enterprises in the local is increasing. The star of businesses such as grocery stores, bakeries, pharmacies, bakeries in our neighborhood shines. E-commerce, on the other hand, is becoming much more important. Consumers are increasingly shopping through e-commerce.

In this process, more SMEs began to sell through e-commerce. And let's not forget, there are new needs in the world now. In this way, research is required to analyze these needs correctly, and development is required to produce solutions to them. In this environment, it is also an opportunity to increase the R&D capacity of our SMEs. If we want to have a say in global competition, we need to act today and turn to R&D. Here is TÜBİTAK, the leading organization of our country in this field, to support us in how to do this. Alongside our entrepreneurs, with both financial and technical support. I invite all our SMEs to make the most of TÜBİTAK support."