ANKARA – Turkey's Middle East Technical University's (METU) Technopark, the country's first science and technology park, located in Ankara, is set to expand to the United States.

METU's Technopark President Mustafa Kızıltaş said that by opening its first U.S. office in San Francisco, Technopark aimed to create selling opportunities for innovative Turkish high-tech products to buyers across the world. "San Francisco has commercial perspective as well as being a place with technological depth," said Kızıltaş. "Therefore, we intend to take advantage of these two aspects.
We aim to transform the technological knowledge from the Technopark into sellable technological products."

He said 10 U.S.-based companies with Turkish-American owners already opened research and development offices in the Technopark, adding that Turkey needs to create companies whose technology is current and able to sell their products.

As well as expanding into the United States, Kızıltaş confirmed Technopark had plans to open an incubation center in Istanbul. Established in the late 1980s, METU's Technopark was the first technology park in Turkey for creating synergy between industry and universities. The Technopark now hosts 300 firms, more than 60 percent of which were set up in the facility. Threequarters of these firms are small- and medium-sized enterprises, employing more than 4,400 personnel and carrying out research and development activities in a 120,000 square metered area.