17 November 2016•Update: 18 November 2016
By Ovunc Kutlu
NEW YORK
Turkey is at the heart of a digital transformation that can benefit investors, a senior executive of Microsoft in the country said.
Murat Kansu, the tech company’s general manager, told Anadolu Agency that small start-ups in Turkey were producing innovative ideas.
“Turkey is at the center of a digital transformation,” he said in New York, where a delegation from the Investment Support and Promotion Agency of Turkey is visiting. “It has solutions that can be examples for the world. With foreign investment, these can be expanded even more.”
Foreign investment would help Turkish start-ups “turn their ideas into reality,” Kansu said. Microsoft provides free software and technical support to 1,500 such companies in Turkey.
He added: “Some foreign investors have a wrong impression of Turkey. We told them there can be short-term changes in the country, like in any other developing market. However, we showed them that Turkey is an ever-growing country that benefits investors. We asked them to trust in Turkey's potential.”
Turkey has made a number of changes to the law in recent years to provide incentives to foreign investors.
Cenk Yildirim, the general manager of Cisco Turkey, said most American investors looked to Turkey for a short-term investment but they should also consider the medium- or long-term.
“Some American investors focus on a small snapshot, which gives them the wrong picture about Turkey,” he said. “We tried to show them Turkey’s performance in the past 10 to 15 years and told them our long-term performance will be an extension of that for the future.”
Technology had penetrated every industry in Turkey, he told Anadolu Agency earlier this week.
“Turkey is such a dynamic country,” Yildirim said. “It is a very competitive market because people and businesses in Turkey try to use the latest technology. That’s why Cisco also brings and applies the newest technology in Turkey as well.”
He added: “There are so many start-up companies in the U.S. They can come to Turkey to cooperate with foreign firms that have been in the country for a long time, and with local entrepreneurs as well.”
Turkey has plans to open an innovation center next year to allow foreign and Turkish researchers to work together on projects related to logistics, transport and energy management.
