OECD Survey on the STI policy responses to Covid-19

 

Turkey


Updated on: 2020-04-10

Response
Q1A. What arrangements, if any, do you have in place to ensure scientific advice informs national policy and decision making in relation to Covid-19? The Coronavirus Science Board, a Health Ministry taskforce dedicated to fight against the outbreak, was established immediately after the outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Turkey. The board is comprised of medical experts mainly focusing on infectious diseases and public health. The Board regularly holds meetings headed by the Minister of Health and gives government scientific advice on measures to tackle the outbreak. The Board created a 'Pandemic Action Plan', which is a document that is updated regularly in line with the recommendations of the scientific board. The Action Plan includes all necessary measures to tackle with the pandemic while mainly focusing on healthcare issues. Plans for healthcare facilities that would serve as quarantine centres, guidelines for relevant operational and organizational plans to avoid the spread of the COVID-19 infection and plans for the stocks of required serums and antiviral drugs are examples to the content of this Action Plan.

Turkey has also formed a second science board to tackle the social impacts of the measures taken in the fight against the coronavirus. This new board announced recently and it will include experts in the field of psychology, sociology and statistics. The new board will work on future aspects of the process and will ease the life for society and individuals by making suggestions on social life.
Q1B. In what ways, if any, are you coordinating on Covid-19 STI responses at international level? The International Cooperation Department of TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) coordinates STI cooperation for Covid-19 responses. The Department continues its efforts in order to facilitate and support international collaborative RDI projects in the fight against COVID-19. Turkey is already associated to the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Programme, within the scope of which calls have just been opened. Researchers and the private sector in Turkey have and express intense interest in joining the international consortia for these RDI projects, which are focused on the spread of the virus, diagnosis and treatment methods; preventive vaccines, community protection and epidemic control.

Moreover, TÜBİTAK, as part of a more proactive approach, has initiated bilateral and multilateral cooperation actions to support joint RDI projects that will bring together Turkish researchers and researchers from countries with strategic importance in the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, initial contacts have been made with TUBITAK’s counterpart bodies in China, South Korea, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands, Thailand and France. Calls for joint RDI support will be launched as part of the bilateral cooperation agreements with China and Thailand.

In addition, TUBITAK plans to launch a multilateral call that is focused on the private sector, in collaboration with Canada, Germany, Austria, Spain, France, the Netherlands and South Korea. The objective of this call will be to improve disease monitoring technologies utilized in personal protective equipment, disinfection materials, diagnostic and test kits and other therapeutics in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Q2.Do you have dedicated arrangements in place for communicating science advice and for refuting misleading information to the public on Covid-19? The most trustworthy information, data and knowledge are provided by the Ministry of Health, and in terms of Covid-19 R&D activities, the most credible information and data are provided by the Covid-19 Web Portal of TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey). The portal has been launched by the Ministry of Industry and Technology with TUBITAK.

The statistics on COVID-19, are updated daily and shared on the portal. The statistics include current developments, scientific resources, data sets, useful links; as well as the latest scientific developments in clinical studies, methods of prevention and treatment. The national and international calls for RDI projects are also provided on the portal. Since its launch, within a week, the portal has been visited by approximately 120 thousand people and has reached more than 1 million page views.
Q3. What new STI policy measures, if any, is your country taking to respond specifically to the Covid-19 crisis? Co-creation Mechanisms to Cope With COVID-19:
- Policy measures in the field of STI are been mainly built upon facilitating co-creation among actors from different institutions and the private sector. Existing competences and research capacity in Turkey have been taken into account and collaborative funding mechanisms have been utilized to reach immediate solutions to tackle COVID-19 infection in the fields of drugs, vaccines, diagnostic kits and intensive care devices.
- In the area of drugs and vaccines, all relevant actors in Turkey have been gathered and a COVID-19 Technology Platform was created. TÜBİTAK mobilized an existing support mechanism, namely “High Technology Platforms (TUBITAK 1004)” to provide required funding for this initiative. TÜBİTAK funded a bundle of research projects, which are being implemented in accordance with the roadmap and strategic milestones of the COVID-19 Technology Platform. A common sense of strengths and challenges have been developed by the actors who are involved in this network for co-creating high value-added products to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. The roadmap is composed of 15 different projects including biotechnological and chemical drugs and vaccines for SARS-COV-2 virus. The Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Institute of TÜBİTAK has been given the role of coordinating this platform. There are 225 researchers coming from 25 different universities, 8 public bodies and 8 private sector organisations. The roadmap including 15 projects was written in only 10 days thanks to existing research competences in Turkey. All of the projects are planned to be finalized in nine months.
- There is also a coordination between TÜBİTAK and the Directorate of Health Institutes (TÜSEB). TÜSEB is responsible for supporting clinical trial phases of these projects. Toxicity testing and validation studies in animal models will be accomplished immediately and the results will be transferred to TÜSEB for clinical trials.

Fast Tracked Support for Private Sector:
- TÜBİTAK has also provided specific funding opportunities to the private sector in Turkey that has been fast-tracked at this challenging time. TÜBİTAK opened a specific call, namely “Struggling with COVID-19”, dedicated to private sector on 26 March 2020. This call focused on topics such as intensive care devices, diagnostic kits, masks, protective clothing, computing applications for tracing the spread of COVID-19, disinfectant, vaccine and drugs. The call ended on 2 April 2020 and 444 applications were received. All relevant projects will immediately start in April.

Young Researchers as a crucial part of the Struggle with COVID-19:
- TÜBİTAK has opened a specific scholarship call, namely “STAR- Intern Researcher Fellowship Programme” dedicated to young researchers who are willing to take part in COVID-19 projects. The call will stay open between 8-19 April 2020. This support mechanisms is designed in response to the high demand received from undergraduate, graduate and doctorate students and post-doc researchers to contribute to the national struggle with COVID-19.

Coronathon and Support for Entrepreneurs:
- The Ministry of Industry and Technology together with the private sector organized a Coronathon event for entrepreneurs who have potential to provide technology based solutions for COVID-19 pandemic. This event was held on 21-22 March 2020. More than 150 projects competed and more than 150 mentors took roles to help entrepreneurs.
- TÜBİTAK is providing complementary support to the awardees of this Coronathon competition in collaboration with some of the selected Technology Transfer Offices. Technology transfer offices (Boğaziçi University TTO, İTÜ Çekirdek and METU TTO) will use a top-up fund provided by TÜBİTAK in order to support entrepreneurs through their accelerator programs. These technology transfer offices also act as implementing bodies evaluating the business plans of young and innovative candidate entrepreneurs in the Techno-Entrepreneurship Support Program of TÜBİTAK.
Q4A. At national level, what mechanisms are you developing or relying upon to bring together different STI actors (researchers, industry, government, health sector, foundations, etc.) to effectively collaborate on responses to Covid-19? The COVID-19 Technology Platform has been established in the area of drugs and vaccines with the participation of all relevant actors in Turkey. This platform is supported by TÜBİTAK to develop domestic technology based solutions to cope with the COVID-19 infection. This platform constitutes a good example for a co-creation research hub. There are 225 researchers coming from 25 different universities, 8 public bodies and 8 private sector organisations. TÜBİTAK is providing grants to 15 projects, 8 of which are dedicated to drug development, while the rest are dedicated for development of vaccines for the SARS-COV-2 virus.
Q4B. At international level, what mechanisms are you developing or relying upon to bring together different STI actors (researchers, industry, government, health sector, foundations, etc.) to effectively collaborate on responses to Covid-19? TUBITAK has initiated bilateral and multilateral cooperation actions to support joint RDI projects with the aim of facilitating scientific collaboration between Turkish researchers and their colleagues in other countries. Joint RDI project calls with China and Thailand are at the stage of mutual agreement on topics; more joint calls are intended with South Korea, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands and France. Within the scope of these bilateral calls, research projects that qualify for providing immediate solutions will be supported with a maximum duration of 9-12 months. The collection of project proposals and evaluation procedures will be much more rapid than the conventional agenda of calls; the intention is to start all projects in mid-June 2020.

TUBITAK also plans to launch a multilateral call that focuses on the private sector, in collaboration with Canada, Germany, Austria, Spain, France, the Netherlands and South Korea. The objective of this call will be the improvement of disease monitoring technologies utilized in personal protective equipment, disinfection materials, diagnostic and test kits and other therapeutics in the COVID-19 pandemic. This international call will focus on RDI projects of SMEs and large industrial organizations and the support will be provided for a maximum of 9 months. Intense efforts are being made to open this call at the end of April 2020.
Q5. What novel approaches, if any, is your country using to address the coronavirus crisis (e.g. use of machine learning, open science initiatives boosting access and sharing of data and research results, development and use of prediction models, etc.)? TUBITAK’s (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) ULAKBİM (National Academic Network and Information Center) currently provides a "National Academic Network" service with a capacity of 140 Gbps as the global Internet connection and European Academic Network (GEANT) connection service to Turkish researchers. In the period of combating COVID-19, researchers' access to information from virtual media has become a key issue. Moreover, with the measures taken for COVID-19, our universities will continue their spring term education as distance/open/digital education, which has resulted in the need to increase internet capacities and bandwidth demands. In order to meet these needs, ULAKNET has been working with the Turkish major telecom company, Türk Telekom, to open new ports on the main backbone circuits, consisting of Ankara, Izmir and Istanbul. In this context, the capacity of approximately 100 ULAKNET circuits has been increased by an average of 60%. Approximately 160,000 researchers and over 7 million university students; 210 different institutions and sub-units including all public universities, some private universities, National Library, Council for Higher Education benefit from this service. Until now, all the requests from universities in terms of internet capacity increase have been met.
Considering the distance education services provided through cloud services, a significant number of universities currently offer distance education via ULAKBulut. In this sense, a video conferencing system has been established to meet the needs of universities. Additional backbone networks such as the one in İzmir, are planned to be opened soon.
Q6A. What impact on the STI system do you anticipate in the short-, medium- and long-term, and what measures are you implementing to address those? In the scope of RDI support mechanisms and programs, priority has been given to themes related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides the calls published on vaccines, therapies, drug design and biomedical equipment, one of the high technology platforms funded by TUBITAK has been assigned to Covid-19 drug and vaccine development. Another call will be launched on the socio-economic, societal and industrial effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Deadlines of calls within RDI support programs, scholarship programs, STI human resources development programs, and science and society activities have been postponed. Digital systems for online project proposal evaluation, peer review and panels have been established. It is foreseen that the procedures for support programs will continue digitally until the effects of the pandemic subside.
Q6B. Is support of the STI system part of planned stimulus packages aimed at supporting the economy? The stimulus package for supporting the economy do not have an RDI pillar. However, the budget for public support for RDI has mostly been allocated to Covid-19 RDI activities.
Q7. Is there anything else regarding the STI policy response to Covid-19 in your country you would like to mention? [Left blank]