Premier Turkish tech event TEKNOFEST kicks off in Istanbul

By Gokhan Ergocun and Seda Sevencan

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's biggest aerospace and technology festival TEKNOFEST has kicked off in Istanbul on Tuesday.

The six-day event at the Ataturk Airport will host activities, such as air shows with warplanes, unmanned aerial vehicles, and helicopters; seminars, summits, competitions, and fairs.

The 2021 edition of the festival will feature technology competitions in dozens of different categories such as smart transportation, helicopter design, biotechnology, robotics, flying cars, rockets, and unmanned underwater systems.

Selcuk Bayraktar, the chairman of the event's organizer, Turkish Technology Team Foundation, said new ideas and new inventions that move the world forward come from start-ups and young people.

"Thus, we must enlarge our start-ups much more and support them," he said.

Today, leading global media outlets speak about Turkish start-ups, he underlined.

Bayraktar added that avoiding being condemned to a world constructed by savage capitalist technology monopolies, Turkey must make its own transformation.

Calling out to the youth, he said don't let the obstacles that come your way discourage you, advising be original in everything you do.

TEKNOFEST, organized by the Turkish Technology Team Foundation (T3 Foundation) and Turkey's Industry and Technology Ministry, is held in various Turkish cities in even years and the metropolis of Istanbul in odd years.

Last year, the event was organized virtually in the country's southern Gaziantep province due to the pandemic measures.

In 2019, some 1.72 million people visited the event in Istanbul.

Anadolu Agency has been the global communication partner of the event since 2018.