One of Türkiye's leading telecoms and technology companies, Türk Telekom, is positioning its investments in data centers, the most critical infrastructure of digital transformation, as a strategic priority, as it aims to transform its vision of "data sovereignty" into a cornerstone of the country's digital power.

Currently, Türk Telekom operates three primary data centers nationwide, located in Istanbul (Esenyurt, Gayrettepe) and Ankara (Ümitköy). These facilities provide a comprehensive suite of services, including virtual servers, storage, hosting, cloud solutions, and 24/7 technical support.

The infrastructure, built to international standards, ensures uninterrupted service through network access redundancy, power backup, and precision climate control systems.

As energy consumption becomes a global concern, Türk Telekom is implementing solutions that increase energy efficiency. A key highlight is the adoption of Immersion Cooling (liquid cooling) systems.

By submerging servers in non-conductive liquids, the company optimizes energy consumption and reduces operational costs while minimizing its environmental footprint.

Expansion in Ankara

Looking ahead, Türk Telekom plans to significantly expand its data center footprint.

The company has entered a strategic partnership with Rönesans Holding to develop a new, large-scale data center in Ankara. This initiative is designed to solidify Türk Telekom's leadership in digital transformation while providing the massive infrastructure needed for the next decade of growth.

The general strategy focuses on making data centers and cloud services the core of the digital economy. According to industry experts, the demand for data centers will increase annually as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and cloud applications become ubiquitous.

AI as engine

The data center industry is witnessing a historic surge, with the total value of mergers, acquisitions, and financing deals reaching nearly $61 billion in 2025, the highest level in history. This boom is directly linked to the intensive infrastructure demands of generative artificial intelligence.

Projects of large technology companies to build new data centers have also come to the fore recently; for example, an investment plan of approximately 1 billion euros has been made in the Netherlands.

According to some analytical reports, global data center infrastructure and equipment expenditures are expected to exceed $1 trillion by 2030.

Global data center capacity is advancing with an average annual growth of 15%. And the main engine of this increase is the rapid rise in demand for AI, big data and cloud applications.

Capacity and price pressures continue, particularly in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions; rents and demands in core hubs are approaching record levels.

While data centers are becoming a significant part of global electricity consumption, next-generation cooling and energy efficiency solutions are becoming priorities in the sector. Global data center investments are growing rapidly, depending on the AI, cloud, and big data strategies of technology giants and are expected to intensify even further between 2025 and 2030.

Data center investments in Türkiye continue to increase in parallel with digitalization, artificial intelligence, cloud service, and data sovereignty policies.

Pandemic served as 'fire drill': Trump's digital war room ready

The pandemic era served as a massive "fire drill" for the global economy. Now, utilizing the data harvested from that drill, technology giants are offering governments a "digital war room" service to predict exactly where the real fire – the trade war – will spread.

The boldness of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs is underpinned by the results of the pandemic's resilience tests and the impact projections of artificial intelligence simulations. From automotive to electronics, retail to energy, the "China dependency" tests conducted during the pandemic opened the eyes of the U.S. and Western nations.

The supply chain fires that erupted during that period laid bare every map of dependency. What began as bans on Chinese tech companies in Trump's first term has, in the post-pandemic second term, evolved into a trade war fought with tariffs derived from data in a digital war room.

Confronting China dependency

The pandemic exposed the fragility of the ecosystem built by Western nations. It became an economic stress test, simulated by algorithms, guided by data, and played out politically. E-commerce and connected living made this fragility measurable and simulatable. AI has transformed trade wars from acts of brute force into data-based maneuvers. Therefore, what is happening today is not a traditional "trade war," but an economic stress test managed by data, software and algorithms.

The supply chain collapse during the pandemic was not merely a logistics crisis; it was a stress test that revealed the vulnerabilities of the global economic order. For the U.S. and the West, this period created a painful but instructive opportunity to confront the China dependency that had been ignored for years.

Today's commercial and tariff wars clearly demonstrate that the pandemic was essentially a "preview." It was a small but shocking demo of the looming major commercial conflict.

Eyes opened on both sides

This process held a mirror not just to the West, but to China as well. While the West realized how much control it had lost in strategic sectors for the sake of cheap production and scale, China saw how vital access to global markets and technology transfer really is.

Mutual interdependence has turned into a serious vulnerability for both sides, as much as it was once a strength. Every tariff step taken today carries a geopolitical message, not just an economic one. The pandemic showed how fragile the system is; commercial and technological wars now declare that this fragility has turned into strategic decisions.

In this new struggle involving software and AI, the winners will not just be those with production capacity, but those who can build ecosystems, set standards, and manage data.

High stakes in big data

However, unlike previous eras, this new trade war is not being fought solely over steel, automobiles, or semiconductors.

Software and AI have settled at the center of this struggle. Competition is now based less on "where do we produce?" and more on questions like "whose algorithm is smarter, whose data is bigger, and whose ecosystem is more closed or dominant?"

AI models, cloud infrastructures, chip designs, and software platforms are becoming domains of digital sovereignty, moving beyond classic trade wars. Therefore, today's events should be read not as temporary commercial tensions, but as the birth pangs of a new global order.

Invisible role of tech giants

The supply chains that collapsed during the pandemic laid the groundwork for today's trade and tariff wars. However, this time, states are not the only actors on stage.

Consulting giants like McKinsey, BCG and Deloitte, alongside data infrastructure players like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Palantir, Oracle and IBM, play a critical role in simulating the impact of tariffs before they are even announced.

Consulting firms map out China dependency sector by sector, from automotive to electronics, and generate answers to the question "what happens if tariffs are imposed?" through chain-reaction impact analyses. Topics such as inflation, employment, price hikes and voter reaction are presented to decision-makers in scenario-based tables. These efforts transform tariffs from blunt, one-off strikes into measurable and reversible policy tools.

Cloud and data infrastructure providers establish the ground upon which these scenarios run. Thanks to e-commerce data, logistics flows and the platform economy, the economy can be monitored almost like a living organism. Companies like Palantir merge commercial data with a national security perspective, while Oracle and IBM ensure the continuity of government data spanning many years. Ultimately, today's landscape is shaping up to be a global economic stress test managed by data, software and algorithms.

AgeSA extends startup grants to back biotech, sustainability

AgeSA, a Turkish financial services company that specializes in private pensions and life insurance, has taken a significant step to support globally rising health technologies and sustainable production models, as it provided a total of TL 1 million ($23,000) in grant support to two startups.

Increasing its effectiveness in the entrepreneurship ecosystem in line with its innovation and digital transformation strategies, AgeSA invested in the technologies of the future at the Big Bang Startup Challenge 2025.

Organized in collaboration with the Istanbul Technical University (ITÜ) Çekirdek incubation center, which AgeSA has supported as a "Golden Stakeholder" since 2019, the event saw Bloocell Health Technologies and Biges Kompozit qualify for the grant support.

Bloocell Health Technologies stands out with its development of personalized, biodegradable artificial tissue technologies that support natural regeneration.

Looking at global data, the tissue engineering and regenerative medicine market, in which startups like Bloocell operate, is expected to reach a volume of tens of billions of dollars in the coming years due to an aging global population and the rise of chronic diseases.

For the insurance sector, such technologies are viewed as a critical investment opportunity in the field of "preventive health and risk management" due to their potential to shorten treatment processes and improve quality of life.

Circular economy

The other recipient, Biges Kompozit, transforms textile waste into high-performance composite materials and acoustic panels using upcycling methods. With this support, the company aims to back not only technology entrepreneurship but also the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In an era where companies worldwide are under pressure to reduce their carbon footprints, circular economy models are projected to create an economic opportunity worth trillions of dollars by 2030.

Startups like Biges Kompozit, which ensure waste management and raw material efficiency, play a strategic role in helping the insurance and finance world comply with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria.

Through these financial supports, AgeSA contributes to the development journey of these startups while simultaneously paving the way for potential future collaboration opportunities.