The Turkish university system lacks the institutional infrastructure to transform research into technology.

Turkey now has a Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology. The Scientific and Technological Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) is affiliated with this Ministry. I think this is good, in principle. If we could take the lessons learned in the last decade seriously, we might reach a critical turning point in terms of industrial policy. This was what I thought while reading the remarks of the Minister of Science, Industry and Technology, Nihat Ergün, as highlighted in columnist Vahap Munyar's article in Hürriyet yesterday. Today let me tell you why I think that Turkey might be at a critical turning point.

What is it that we have all been complaining about for an eternity? We used to talk about how important the university-industry partnership was. Complaints used to take the form of rebukes when communicated to university administrators. However, we should not have expected universities to build castles in the air. To create a facilitating environment, regulations on techoparks were completed in 2001. The objective was to turn universities into workshops. Additionally, , recently the government has raised the budget of TÜBİTAK to fund research substantially. We have the resources and the means. Despite these, however, the mission of the university-industry partnership seems to be failing. I believe that Turkey's experience has taught us that regulations on technoparks and the R&D supports are not meaningful in the absence of an industrial and technological policy. I guess this was why the need for the Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology emerged. After all, the wind cannot help you if you do not know where to head. Turkey first has to define its goals. This is the first point to state.

The main problem about the university-industry partnership in Turkey is not that the universities are weak in liberal arts. Plenty of research is conducted in universities and their staffs are highly qualified. The resources the government has provided via TÜBİTAK in the recent period have enabled a more intense mobilization of this capacity. However, research activities somehow have not been turned into commercial practice. This signals a problem independent of the channeling of resources to a specific target: The Turkish university system lacks the institutional infrastructure to transform research into technology. There is no mechanism that will help turn a laboratory invention into a commercial product. Universities are the cemeteries of unfinished initiatives. Even the inventor is not sure what he/she has missed. There are plenty of scientific papers but no commercial innovations. This is the second point to emphasize.

If the first and the second points are taken for granted, the new ministry is a good idea and TÜBİTAK is finally in the right position. The following steps must enable the needed link between technology policies and the law of universities. Technoparks are just fit  for this responsibility. That there still is a problem to be solved is evidence of the fact that technoparks do not entirely fit their purpose. The purpose of technoparks is to help universities become workshops as well. Currently there are 40 technoparks. Yet the debates on the university-industry partnership are still heated. Despite the ten-year experience at hand, no impact assessment study has attempted to figure out to what extent the technopark supports have served the purpose. A similar study on TÜBİTAK supports could not be published since the Council did not grant its approval. I am still waiting to read it.

Remarks by Minister Nihat Ergün prove that an official who knows what he says is now in charge of industrial and technological policy, one of the missing links in the university-industry partnership adventure of Turkey. This is a good thing. This awareness must now be developed from rhetoric into practice. The Publication of the World Bank report on TÜBİTAK with no further delay will be a critical progress in this regard.

This commentary was published in Radikal on 16.08.2011