Invest News DetailHurriyet - Attempting to improve its IT industry’s research and development capabilities, Türkiye will provide an extensive incentive scheme for tech companies investing in soon-to-be-established ‘Silicon Valley’. Türkiye’s Minister of Industry, Science and Technology Nihat Ergun, speaking at IBM’s Software Summit held in Istanbul, laid out the plans for the first of the special technoparks to be built in Kocaeli province in northwestern Türkiye. The goal, as described by the minister, is to have an ecosystem consisting of high-tech companies engaged in R&D activities in the fields of informatics, telecommunications and software development, and the project will initially cover the Marmara, Central Anatolia and Aegean regions. The investors in the technopark will benefit from a range of incentives tailored to facilitate R&D studies, said Ergun. The incentives in the specialized technoparks include free or low-cost allocation of land, exemption of income and corporate taxes until 2023, halving the employer’s social security premiums for the research personnel, exemption of income taxes for the researchers and 10 percent of the support personnel, total exemption of stamp tax and VAT for 12 years, as well as exemption of waste water treatment fees.