Press release

22 May 2007

Dr. Ragıp Mustafa Başbuğ, a doctoral engineer, announced that they would establish the TeknoSoft Technopark in Sivas, a first in Turkey. He stated that, by giving real weight to software engineering and programming programs at Cumhuriyet University, they would make Sivas Turkey’s new center of software development.

Because Sivas and the region are among the places that lose the most people to migration, he argued that Sivas would become the hub of the software sector, the technology with the lowest investment cost and the highest added value.

He said that once a software industry was established in Sivas, many firms from inside and outside the province would come to invest in software production, and that they would hire their programmers from graduates of Cumhuriyet University’s software engineering and programming programs, so students would have work while they were still studying. In that way, he argued, Cumhuriyet University would become one of the most sought-after universities in Turkey.

“We will work to make room for as many companies as possible in the Sivas TeknoSoft Technopark. We are thinking big, and during the European Union process we will compete with the software centers of India and Eastern Europe. We will be the offshore software partners of large Western firms, and we will also be software producers who have succeeded in building our own brands. We will leave India and the other countries behind in this field.”

“I am determined to make Sivas Turkey’s new center of software development, and I will work for it to the end.”