BinYaprak empowering women Throughout history, in every country, women have earned their equal place beside men through great struggles. As a man, I am ashamed women have had to fight to prove they can contribute to society as much as men. How men think women are inferior is beyond me. However, unfortunately,…

How to fix the education system?   Unfortunately every year the quality of education in our beloved country sinks even deeper. I have written before, Turkey lags far behind in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores compared to countries with which it wants to compete. Now that there is a university…

Can the Turkish defense industry catch up with the world? The progress in the Turkish defense industry is unrivalled. No other industry in Turkey has done so much in so little time. In the last decade, Turkish businesses and state-owned R&D centers have put amazing effort into their work and received amazing…

Do boycotts make sense? These days it is difficult to be a technology retailer. On one hand, there is the fluctuating Turkish Lira/United States dollar parity and on the other hand there is a call to boycott products “Made in the U.S.A.” They are certainly paying a price, but are they paying…

Will there be a wave toward nationalizing technology? I have written time and again that I am against all kinds of efforts to nationalize technology, especially if they are geared toward suppressing citizens, like a national search engine or a national Twitter, where the government controls content. I am equally against any…

Being 99th in quality education According to the World Economic Forum, Turkey is 99th when it comes to quality education. Sweden is at the top. Singapore is second and Finland ranks in third. Although this index is about the quality of education right now, it is an indication about the future of…

Trillion-dollar potential Advertisement is one of the least understood industries of Turkey. It is partly due to the ever-changing landscape of the industry and partly because the stakeholders of the industry are not well-known for collaboration. The competition is much harsher than many other industries and the stakeholders don’t usually come together…

Facebook’s never-ending problems Facebook was the hype in our youth, now it is seen as a gathering place for the elderly. Therefore, the acquisition of Instagram was a very well-played move by Mark Zuckerberg to keep the company relative to advertisers. It also helped that Facebook has immense targeting abilities.class="cf"> However, because it…

About Murat Yetkin and journalism Murat Yetkin, the editor-in-chief of the Hürriyet Daily News, is leaving the paper. It is particularly an important piece of news for me as I really do think he is the embodiment of how a journalist should be at any age.class="cf"> I have never seen him being forced…

Changing the way we order things I have recently met Austin Kim. He is what we Turks call a “Turkified foreigner.” He has been living in Turkey since 1991 and can speak Turkish perfectly. He is also as familiar as the best Turkish businesspeople with the Turkish business world. Many of my…