It is expected that by 2018 fifty billion machines will be communicating with each other. The amount of data is astonishing.

The world’s population is around seven billion. Out of this, 1.2 billion have Facebook accounts. One billion use Youtube and Google. There are 500 million Twitter accounts, with 200 million actively tweeting. Three hundred million people save and share their documents in the Cloud. We know what others like, wonder, and follow. POS devices connect companies. They can learn instantly what store is on which street, what products are sold faster or what the best location for setting up your supply chain is. That’s not all. The electricity and water meters in your home are now able to communicate with each other. Your mobile phone constantly gives signals about where you are and what you are doing. Your cardiologist directly follows the signals of your pacemaker. Even your herniated disc can be followed up externally. It is the turn of a new era in which individuals and machines are interconnected. It is expected that by 2018, 50 billion machines will be communicating with each other. The amount of data is astonishing.

Unfortunately, neither Turkey’s SMEs nor its politicians are aware of this new era. Let me rephrase it: we are at the front door of a new era in which SMEs can internationalize at a blink and build production facilities above the clouds. Turkey’s population is highly active in Internet usage, yet  its companies trail behind in ICT-based innovations. We are perfect at individual usage of technology, but disastrous in transferring it into business practices. We love social media, but we do not attempt to make use of it in business. And the government’s latest decision that puts the electronic payments system exclusively in the banks’ hands is proof that the politicians ars not aware of this new era, either.

Let me start with SMEs and the expanding set of capabilities and mobility for them. Take any Anatolian city in Turkey, say, Konya. For an SME based in Konya, the only market was Konya. It could grow only as much as Konya. Then, some companies started shifting production from the west to the east. I think this is what has happened in Turkey lately. Today, Konya’s SMEs know that there is a bigger world beyond Konya. But they know as much as the companies based in Istanbul tell them. In this new era, everyone will be aware individually of what is going on in the farthest and tiniest place on earth. It will be much easier to access and analyze the data on market possibilities. This is what I meant with the internationalization of SMEs.

From here on out, SMEs will be able to put a production facility in the clouds. In the present era, even a small enterprise, if develops a wide strategy, can go global on its own. In this present era, everyone is able to reach the market, make a product designed in offices in a distant part of the world, send the prototype sitting at home via a desktop 3D printer, rent factory hours for production at any other location, and instantly control the flow of goods with GPS.

But Turkey’s numbers are just poor. Here are some figures compiled by TEPAV research associate Bilgi Aslankurt: there are thirty-two million Facebook users in Turkey. Broadband penetration rate is around the OECD average. Forty-two percent of the Internet users, however, have never used the attachment feature while sending an e-mail. We use e-mail as a messaging service, not for information sharing. The rate of users who have never used attachments is twenty-two percent in Europe. Only fourteen percent of the registered patents by Turkish firms are in ICT-related fields compared to the OECD average of thirty-four percent. The OECD countries use the Internet to produce technology; we use it to chat. They are aware; we are not. This is the first point.

Second, with a provision in a recent regulation concerning electronic payments, payers were required to work with banks. The interest lobby of banks got the best in the blink of an eye. Letting banks monopolize the payment system hampers new ICT-based innovations. This new regulation just shows that the politicians are not aware of what is going on in the world. Neither are you, nor the politicians!

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 02.08.2013