A landmark partnership between Türk Telekom and Aselsan is laying the groundwork for smart communication devices powered by domestic chip technology, a national operating system (OS) and on-device artificial intelligence (AI).
The strategic cooperation agreement signed by Türkiye's leading telecom operator and defense electronics maker this week represents far more than an ordinary corporate announcement in the country's technology history.
Backed by the Ankara Chamber of Commerce (ATO) and the Turkic World Business Council, the initiative formally outlines a road map to develop fully domestic smartphones, user devices and communications infrastructure, from hardware and software to chips and operating systems.
From a global perspective, the timing is highly significant.
Supply chain disruptions driven by U.S.-China competition in semiconductors, the way the Russia-Ukraine war exposed communications infrastructure as a strategic weapon, and increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks have all made one reality unmistakably clear: communication devices are no longer only consumer technology products, but critical components of national security.
Domestic chip technology
As Aselsan CEO Ahmet Akyol has emphasized, the project is not simply about economic localization. At its core lies the question of digital sovereignty. Artificial intelligence will serve not just as a tool in this journey, but as the backbone of the entire ecosystem, from design and manufacturing to maintenance and cybersecurity.
At the center of every digital independence debate stands the same hard reality: domestic chip technology. If the chip inside a device remains foreign-made, full technological sovereignty cannot be achieved, regardless of how localized the software layer becomes.
For this reason, the first and most critical task facing the ecosystem architects is the development of a domestic system-on-chip (SoC) architecture. Foreign chip platforms such as Qualcomm, MediaTek, or Apple Silicon carry potential hardware backdoor risks, remain vulnerable to supply-chain disruptions and can destabilize entire ecosystems if licensing conditions change.
A domestic SoC, by contrast, could directly integrate features such as crypto accelerators, trusted execution environments (TEE) and true random number generators (TRNG) at the hardware level. Neuromorphic processing units capable of running large language models and image-processing algorithms directly on the device, without relying on cloud infrastructure, could also be optimized around a national architecture.
From fabless design to manufacturing partnership
Aselsan's experience in military communications and spectrum management could be directly transferred into civilian modem design.
A country capable of developing its own chips would also gain greater freedom from export restrictions such as ITAR controls and European dual-use regulations.
Türkiye currently does not possess domestic 5nm or 7nm semiconductor fabrication plants, and that reality cannot be ignored. However, the fabless design model offers a pragmatic starting point.
Chip architectures could be fully designed by Turkish engineers while production is outsourced to foundries in partner countries such as TSMC or Samsung.
At the same time, developing domestic foundry capacity for 28nm and more mature process technologies could become a medium-term national objective.
Aselsan's experience, having produced more than 1 million communications systems, provides a valuable engineering culture and quality infrastructure for such a transformation.
The integration of domestic chips, a national operating system and AI technologies is envisioned as the foundation of a fully independent digital ecosystem across consumer devices, institutions and infrastructure.
The broader goal is to move Türkiye from being a technology consumer to becoming a technology producer and exporter, while also extending the ecosystem to regional partners across the Turkic world to achieve greater scale.
National operating system layer under development
The operating system that will run on domestic chips represents the ecosystem's second critical layer.
Beginning with a derivative built on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) would provide the fastest path toward application compatibility and developer adoption. Over the longer term, however, Türkiye is expected to require its own secure operating system kernel.
The envisioned platform would include encryption standards approved by national cryptographic authorities, including AES-256 and domestic algorithms such as KUZEY, alongside hardware-based secure boot mechanisms.
A Türkiye-based application marketplace is also planned as an alternative to Google Play and Apple's App Store, featuring certified domestic applications for banking, healthcare, e-government and communications services.
The operating system layer is expected to include an integrated AI inference engine with speech recognition, natural language processing and personalization capabilities built directly into the platform.
The broader architecture would additionally require end-to-end encrypted storage and communications systems, alongside data localization rules ensuring that user data is stored exclusively within data centers located in Türkiye.
New era begins in AI-powered search
Google is rolling out the most sweeping transformation to its search engine in more than 25 years, fundamentally redesigning the search experience.
The company is moving beyond a system that only answers questions toward an agent-based era in which AI actively performs tasks on behalf of users.
Next-generation search technologies are undergoing a profound shift driven by artificial intelligence. At the center of this new phase is a redesigned intelligent search box powered by Gemini 3.5 Flash, capable of anticipating user intent and helping shape queries in real time.
Users are no longer limited to text-based searches; they can now search using images, documents, videos and even open Chrome tabs.
At the same time, personalized AI agents operating continuously in the background are able to monitor selected topics, including news updates, price changes and real estate listings, and notify users instantly when developments occur. Searches can now generate custom charts and simulations tailored to complex questions while also creating persistent dashboards that allow users to continue recurring workflows directly within the search interface.
In addition, the new "Personal Intelligence" layer, expected to launch across roughly 200 countries and 98 languages, will allow users to securely connect Search with Gmail, Google Photos and soon Google Calendar, enabling far more contextual and personalized results.
Era of Universal Cart
Google also introduced the Universal Cart feature as the core infrastructure behind its agent-based commerce strategy. Products added while browsing Search, Gemini, YouTube or Gmail can now be collected into a single intelligent shopping cart.
The Universal Cart monitors discounts in the background, checks inventory availability and even warns users when incompatible products, such as mismatched computer hardware components, are selected, while suggesting alternatives. Through integration with Google Wallet and the Universal Commerce Protocol, purchases can be completed securely with a single click.
4 times faster performance
Many of the announcements introduced at Google I/O 2026 are also being rapidly deployed in Türkiye. The new Gemini 3.5 Flash model, which Google says operates four times faster than previous generations, is now available in Türkiye through both AI Mode in Search and the Gemini application.
The redesigned intelligent search interface and its generative capabilities are likewise becoming available to users in Türkiye starting immediately.
Smart glasses to launch this fall
Google also announced that its AI-powered smart glasses, designed to provide contextual assistance without disconnecting users from the physical world, will launch this fall.
Developed in partnership with Samsung, Qualcomm, Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, the glasses will be offered in two primary versions: an audio-focused model and a display-equipped version.
Without taking their phones out of their pockets, users will be able to activate the system with voice commands such as "OK Google" to ask questions about surrounding objects, receive navigation guidance or perform real-time voice translation.
The glasses will also integrate Google's Nano Banana model, enabling users to capture humorous or edited photos through voice commands directly on the device.
Digital footprints and rising wave of personal data exposure
A silent threat is growing behind screens. Whether through digital stalking or data exposure attacks, the outcome is often the same: a person's most private information ends up in someone else's hands without consent.
A global report published by Kaspersky this month illustrates the scale of the problem with concrete figures. According to the study, conducted among 7,600 people across 19 countries, 8.5% of respondents said they had been victims of digital stalking, while 5.4% reported that their personal information had been exposed online through doxing.
At first glance, those figures may appear relatively small. But when applied to the scale of the global internet population, they point to an enormous number of affected individuals.
Growing number of threats
Personal data exposure is rarely a single, isolated incident. More often, it is the outcome of a gradual process that typically begins with surveillance.
Hidden tracking applications known as stalkerware are generally installed after physical access is gained to a victim's smartphone. Once installed, these tools operate invisibly in the background, allowing attackers to remotely monitor location data, text messages, photos, voice calls and browsing history.
Kaspersky's data covering the 2024-2025 period shows that 33 previously unseen stalkerware families were identified during that time, with victims spread across more than 160 countries. Earlier reports from 2023 indicated that the number of people affected globally by stalking software rose 5.8% year-over-year to 31,031 individuals.
Türkiye ranked among the top five countries on that list, with 1,063 affected users.
Deepening invisibility problem
The expansion of the threat is driven not only by technology itself, but also by the absence of a shared language for defining these crimes.
Leonie Maria Tanczer, associate professor at the UCL Computer Science Department, argues that technology-enabled abuse is still not sufficiently recognized as an independent category of harm.
According to Tanczer, one of the main reasons is the lack of a common understanding of which behaviors fall within that definition.
In practice, this gap has serious consequences: many experiences go unreported and never reach formal support mechanisms.
Unlike traditional forms of abuse, these crimes often leave no visible physical trace. Because stalkerware operates silently in the background, victims may remain unaware that their messages are being read, their locations monitored, or their photos accessed by attackers.
Research conducted jointly by UCL and Refuge, a domestic violence support organization, found that reports related to technology-enabled abuse rose 207% between 2018 and 2024.
The increase reflects not simply greater awareness, but the growing scale of the threat itself.