A country's technological future is determined less by the factories and laboratories it possesses than by its people's confidence in their own intellect and ability to create. For many years, when it came to critical technologies, the first question was always, "Where can we get this from?” However, the Teknofest generation asks, "Why shouldn’t we make this ourselves?”

This shift in self-confidence and mindset represents a transition from a consumer society to a productive one. This transformation is known as the "National Technology Initiative,” whose vision is symbolized by the "Red Apple,” "Kızılelma" in Turkish, a concept that has traditionally represented the ultimate goals in Turkish collective memory.

To explain it in greater detail, the Red Apple has been less a geographical destination than an ideal, one that transforms into the next milestone as each goal is achieved. In sociologist Ziya Gökalp's words, it is the ideal that unites a nation in a common purpose. It is therefore fitting that Türkiye chose this ancient concept as the name for its first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

The Bayraktar Kızılelma, which made its maiden flight in 2022, has entered series production. In 2025, it carried out a beyond-visual-range autonomous launch using the Gökdoğan missile, achieving the world’s first autonomous close-formation flight between two UAVs. By 2026, it had been inducted into service. However, the truly important thing is not so much the aircraft itself, but the mindset that made it possible.

National Technology Initiative

The National Technology Initiative demonstrates a commitment to transforming the country from one that purchases critical technologies from abroad into one that designs, manufactures and exports them using its own resources. The 2023 and 2030 Industry and Technology Strategies provide an institutional framework for this ambition. However, while strategies point the way, it is people who must walk that path. Technology can be transferred, and factories can be built in a few years, but people with the ability to produce technology can only be nurtured.

This is precisely where Teknofest comes in. Starting as a festival in 2018, Teknofest has evolved into the initiative's human resource infrastructure. A total of 1.6 million participants and 730,000 teams from 81 provinces and 97 countries applied for the 2026 competitions across 54 technology fields. The decision to hold the festival in Şanlıurfa in 2026 also symbolizes the spread of technological production beyond a few major centers and across every corner of Anatolia. The National Technology Initiative is the path; the horizon is represented by the Red Apple concept; Teknofest is where the generation that will walk this path is being nurtured.

At Teknofest, young people don't just watch rockets, drones, electric vehicles and artificial intelligence applications; they design, code, build and test them themselves. If a rocket fails to fly, they redesign it. If an algorithm does not work, they rewrite the code. They present their projects to the jury and learn to work as a team with friends from different disciplines. Through this process, they learn to break problems down into parts, manage resources, make decisions under time pressure, and persevere after failure. In this way, they evolve from passive recipients of knowledge to active creators of it.

The real reward that Teknofest offers young people is not a trophy or a prize, but the knowledge that they can achieve anything they set their minds to. Of course, not all young people are expected to build rockets or drones. It is about nurturing a generation that, when faced with a problem, asks "How can I contribute to the solution?" rather than "Who will solve this?"

Success story from Samsun

Samsun University was founded on May 18, 2018, the same year as the inaugural Teknofest. Despite being in its infancy, the university's students took second place in Türkiye in the high-altitude category at the inaugural Teknofest with the "Kızılırmak" and "Yeşilırmak" rockets they had developed over eight months. They could have been told to finish their laboratories first, but instead they chose to create rather than wait. This is the very essence of the National Technology Initiative: creating the conditions to bring about maturity rather than waiting for conditions to mature.

This success marked the beginning of a long journey. The rocket teams were followed by those specializing in electric vehicles, Hyperloop, UAVs, jet engines and AI. Between 2021 and 2025, 405 teams from the university took part in Teknofest. At Teknofest Black Sea in Samsun in 2022, the university alone fielded 106 teams. Teknofest 2026 in Şanlıurfa yielded a total of 12 awards: two national first prizes, three second prizes, three third prizes, one special award, two honorable mentions and one bronze medal at the international invention fair.

The Mizan-ı Sema team took first place in the Combat UAV category by using 33,000 lines of original code to detect and track an aerial target without human intervention, precisely the problem that engineers developing Kızılelma are grappling with today. Spectraloop, which made it onto the podium in four Hyperloop competition categories, and Ikarus Jet, which took second place in the Turkish jet engine category, are also products of this culture.

This journey does not end at the competition arena. Students from Samsun University’s first Teknofest cohort are now employed in research and development and production roles at Baykar, Roketsan, DeltaV and other aerospace companies. The links in the chain that make Kızılelma fly are forged in university clubs and on Teknofest runways.

Winning the first-place trophy is the result. The real rewards are the thousands of lines of code written, the determination to start afresh after failed tests, and the confidence that "we can do this."

Path to Kızılelma

Every milestone reached brings with it a new responsibility. Currently, the project culture is largely sustained by the dedication of volunteer academics and students, yet many award-winning prototypes are shelved once the festival ends. To transform this energy into sustainable capacity, team mentoring should be reflected in academic incentives and promotion criteria. Teknofest projects should be recognized as final-year projects, work placements and course credits. Award-winning projects should also be channelled into technology park incubator programs and industrial partnerships.

Samsun University's journey, which began with the Kızılırmak and Yeşilırmak rockets and culminated in 12 awards in Şanlıurfa eight years later, is a small yet genuine reflection of the bigger picture. A nation’s technological independence begins with its young people believing that "we can do it, and we can do it better than anyone else," and then transforming that belief into knowledge, hard work and production.

An ideal only becomes a reality when a generation is willing to take it on. The legacy of Nuri Killigil, Vecihi Hürkuş, Nuri Demirağ and Özdemir Bayraktar, who built factories, designed airplanes and defied the odds by declaring "we can do it too,” is now in the hands of the young. The Teknofest youth are following in the footsteps of these pioneers, marching confidently towards the goal of a "Fully Independent Türkiye" and along the path to the Red Apple.