 So, hello everyone, my name is Urs Koster, I'm with the Berkeley Plain Center for Internet and Society. I'm also involved with the Global Network of Internet and Society Centers. And today I have the great pleasure to be in conversation with two colleagues from Turkey, from Istanbul, Leila Kezer and Bedi, who are both at the Bilgi IT Law Institute and I've been collaborating with the NOC for a couple of years. And it's so good to see you, although it would be much better in person, of course. Hi Leila, hi Bedi. Hi Urs, thank you so much. Very good. So I was hoping that we could just maybe get started by hearing from you a little bit what the century is about, what some of the areas are that you're focused on currently, how we work together. I think Bedi just joined us as a director. So it's great to meet you and just, you know, start us off with sharing maybe a broader view of what's happening also in Turkey and the Berkeley. So over to you guys. Urs, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having us and this great opportunity to introduce our institute a bit more for other NOC members. As you may know, we established in 2010 and actually we closed our IT Law Research Center, which has been established in 2004. So we can say we transformed our IT Law Research Center into Institute. And we have two layers within the institute. We have education part and research part. Concerning the education part, we have IT Law Master's program since 2010. And as of this academic year, we have 67 students. And we have also courses for undergrad students. Actually, since 2015, IT Law is one of the core course of the low faculty at Istanbul Bay University. And concerning the research part, except BD and me, we have PhD researchers and also already mentioned master program students. And one of the aim of our institute is we we gather all related stakeholders such as private sector companies, governmental institutions, NGOs, tech people and academic people on internet related matters. And we call that multistakeholder working model. And we did together wonderful things in Istanbul and starting from 2013. And in 14, we did two different events in Istanbul. And as you already mentioned, we have Istanbul Privacy Symposium since 2017, which is an which is an NOC event and open for all NOC members. What we are doing, except the research part, as an academic institution, we have public institutions, particularly on digital government, digital transformation, information society. And we help preparing IT laws and regulations. We provide input for different projects under the topic digital transformation, et cetera. And so the IT law is overarching and our research topics are very broad. We deal with internet governance. BD is number one in that regard. And online content management is very hot topic in the EU and also in Turkey. AI and it is implications, but we prefer to focus a bit AI and legal tech and how AI will transform legal sector. On the other side, AI and ethics and AI and liability or AI and fairness are other topics. And we work also on e-health, which is very important during COVID time. And electronic communication law, e-commerce, data protection and e-privacy, which is another draft regulation in the EU and has important implications for Turkey. We work on that. We focus also on child and youth privacy. And this year we started that project, but we keep continued work on that topic in 2022. And we work on FinTechs, blockchain and online advertising, cybersecurity and trust, the open banking or platform banking, data economy and data governance. And under that topic, data governance, we focus privacy and dancing technologies, differentiation between non-personal data and personal data, and differential privacy and homomorphic encryption, which is important to create data economy. And the OT security and data protection. And lastly, digital services tax, which is also important for online platforms. And as Institute, we organize several seminars, trainings, conferences, webinar for the community. And I would like to mention again, this year we organize third edition of the Istanbul Privacy Symposium. And this year we focus AI emerging topic and regulatory issues, which will be held on for December this year. So I would like to back to Bedi and maybe he could add something. Thanks for this great overview. Yeah, this is fantastic, such a broad range of topics. And I've always enjoyed participating in the events you've organized and can confirm that you have really pulled off quite wonderful and very productive, multistakeholder meetings. And I've always left very impressed and also learning from our Turkish friends and colleagues. So Bedi, maybe you have additions or things you want to highlight from your work. Thank you. Thanks for this opportunity. It's a great, it's great to see you and hope to see you in person whenever we overcome this COVID epidemic. In addition to data, we also started having visiting researchers within our institution. So it's a development from our part. And another important development has been in 2018. IT law has been an independent department. We had our very first chair at our faculty. And the good thing is that we have inspired other universities to follow us and major public universities. Also, they have started establishing IT law departments. So this has been, I think, the biggest achievement of our institution as setting the stage for IT law teaching and IT law research. And also, as Lila mentioned, we are organizing IT talks. The good thing about these IT talks is that we are keeping updating the sector, academia and kind of our social responsibility and provides a kind of stakeholder engagement since we invite people from practice and academia. And aside from the research, we are also collaborating with public as well. Particularly, we have provided input for a general network and information security law, which will evolve into a kind of cybersecurity act. So in addition to other research, we are also trying to at least setting the stage for a legislative framework, trying to provide input to legislative processes. So that's the news from my side. And again, it's really nice to see you again. Very good to see you. Just maybe, as you were describing, Lila and also Betty pointed it out, a lot has happened over the past few years in the space of Internet and Society, research centers and academic institutions. And Betty just mentioned by example that there are many more institutions and, you know, centers and departments that are focusing on digital issues, which is great. That is the capacity building that we also hope to contribute to. I was just wondering, Lila, if you reflect a little bit on the past few years, you mentioned that the center was founded a couple of years ago. And now, you know, a few back then, we had different types of conversations where the, you know, AI wasn't a big thing for many of us in the policy space. So of course, AI has been around for a long time among experts. And I was just wondering specifically also considering Turkey as a country and, you know, all the complexities around it, what's your sense? What has evolved? What has changed? How have the, you know, topics or interactions you have evolved over these years? Yeah, thank you, Urs. Maybe I could give a bit over with the events we held. The events will reflect the important topics for Turkey. For example, the last IT talks we organized was on about online content moderation and data localization around the globe. The topic is really important and Turkey also changed. It is Internet Glove and added a few provisions in line with the German content moderation law shortly, NET-STG. And this is the really current and hot topic and we would like to discuss with the community. It has implications and the legal framework, et cetera. And we also discuss, since we also discuss the European Union approach and also Council of Europe's approach and also other countries approach, the regulatory approach on AI. This was also another IT talks we organized. And another important topic is trust. Under that heading, we deal with trust services and particularly EID and blockchain use case. And in that regard, we invited one of our colleagues from Europe and we discussed EID and blockchain and also new trust services. And it is an effect to Turkish law system. We also discussed with the community what would be the IP intellectual property problems when it comes to AI applications. And on the other side, we are talking about data economy and they try to do something in order to reach that. But on the other side, we put into practice different laws and regulations which blocks, which impede that AI. And we wanted to discuss that point and we organized on March 2020 this year a conference in collaboration with the EU Commission and Council of Europe. And they discuss free flow of data, digital trade and data protection laws and regulations, and it is an effect on digital economy. We also wanted to highlight the importance of net neutrality and we prepare the report and also organize another conference. Just because in Turkey we don't have clear rules on net neutrality, but in practice we have net neutrality. We also wanted to highlight that point and show it as implications, possible implications to the community. We invited also another colleague of us and we discussed data privacy, security and monetization, global trends. And also we discussed, we also organized a round table on interplay between privacy and data economy. Then we wrote a book with one of my colleagues at the Institute, Ms. Aritabey. The child abuse, child particularly sexual abuse on the internet is really still a big problem. And we thought that as an academics, we should have to do something on that point. And we decided to write a book on that and I would love to send a copy to you. Except that book, we decided to start a project called Child and Youth Privacy. And under that topic we conducted surveys and over 1000 people, including kids and young people. After that survey, we prepared one pages or booklets and tried to tell them how they protect themselves against the risks and threats on the internet and social media platforms, etc. That's already a wonderful, wonderful overview of some of the trending topics and also gives the sense how the issues have evolved. If I may just add another some sort of angle to the discussion. I was wondering whether you could comment a little bit what's happening in Turkey, particularly in Istanbul, but also in other cities in terms of entrepreneurship and local startups. I remember from my past visits that there is a real excitement also developing new business models and coming up with digital services. I was just curious to hear how that ecosystem is developing and also perhaps where you see the role of regulation that can maybe play a role in helping to develop the digital economy. Maybe BD, you can add something about it. Thanks again. Before proceeding to that question that we also add that there's also an increasing trend in judiciary part for using online dispute resolution. Also, there is an ongoing project for electronic proceedings litigation, so it's also a very hot issue, and we also have some projects on that. We are also monitoring what's keeping going these tasks projects. So, we can say that these COVID epidemic has facilitated these digital transformation and we managed to us to overcome certain prejudices. This is the very first part. When it comes to your question, there are different kind of incentives and also there are also ongoing construction in different parts of Turkey with regard to techno part we call them and a very specific regulation providing incentive in terms of employment in terms of taxes social security benefits etc is going very well and also there are some companies even unicorns that has been sold in game sector product you have also had seen at the news and they are all has emerged from these techno parks and in relation to this pandemic, there has been some incentives to work from remote working. There are some kind of specific regulations trying to make the environment more friendly for particularly software developers. And again, there are further tax reductions and incentives for employment and social security benefits. So I can say that it's going very well, particularly, we can say that there's a new area of startup low companies that are really interested they are really investing in this area and in overall economy also we can see that traditional companies are also have started their projects for IT transformation or making investment in tech industry also trying. It's a really good thing to see that there is a transition going and at that level, which is also supported by the public policies. I cannot say it's perfect, but we have really good case cases really good stories success stories so this is the story from that is our news from that part. Very helpful. Thank you. Another, maybe a question also looking at the work you're in suit what you're doing. And you described it before you do a lot of comparative research right you're looking at Europe and what do you also looking at other global developments and I was just wondering, overall, what's your sense. You know, often there is a very simplified some sort of narrative that says on the one hand side there's China with, you know, one particular approach to digital technology and, you know, a rule by law and so an own interpretation of what is going on. Then there is the US with a strong emphasis on innovation and letting you know, lead by technology and some sort of look at law, maybe not as the first first place to go. And essentially Europe with a slightly different approach and some some people call it the third way, where it's about, you know, obviously GDPR being a great example and where it's more about human centric technology and the focus on using law as some sort of a tool to put in safeguards and make sure you know human rights get protection and the like. So I was just wondering, as you do so much comparative work in different areas, where do you see some of the interesting or most influential things happening, whether it's in financial service regulation that you mentioned or whether it comes to privacy. Are you mostly looking to Europe or are there other places where where your work picks up some interesting trends and developments. I can say the most we follow up very closely to the Europe. There is certain strategies and plans declared by the government and or law system. We follow the EU legislation and the harmonize or law system with the EU. Therefore, the first point is EU. What's going on the before would be do anything else to be analyzed what's going on. For example, the digital services act, and also still the draft data act or data governance act, etc. These are important to us. So therefore, first we look at what's going on at the user. But on the other side, we need to know what is going, what the people think, for example on AI or facial recognition or other kind of privacy issues in different geographies. To that extent, NOC is one of the wonderful platform to gather all kind of information to learn different thoughts, opinion of the people from different locations. And I'm always happy to ask NOC, the friends, what is the situation in your country, and would you like to share with me the laws and regulations or your approach or strategic reports or whatever else. It is a wonderful tool and platform to know and to gain 360 degree view on on related matters. Therefore, thank you so much in 2012 you established NOC and you include all related centers and institutions under that umbrella. And so whenever we work on related topic, we also use we also ask NOC people and try to understand their approach and combine the combine all related information, then try to find our way, our own way. What a wonderful way also to conclude our conversation and I'll give you the last word baby just in a second. Building upon the NOC and as a platform and the community of for knowledge sharing. I was wondering, what are the best ways for centers or individual researchers who want to learn more about the work your centers, your institute is doing, but also, you know, maybe learn more about developments in Turkey. What are the best ways to follow your work is it, you know, joining your online events now that we're in this mode, or is it to, you know, to check out your website what would you recommend and of course also if the upcoming third post will be virtual. I'm wondering whether there is a way to be a fly on the wall. Yeah. Our website is publicly available and we have English version and we also as an institute try to publish more English documents. Therefore, it is important to publish to share the knowledge or opinion with others. Therefore, we publish several English written reports or documents, and we use social media very active or institutes. We have accounts on LinkedIn. We have accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. And it is the easiest way to follow up and see members using social media and also using their websites, etc. But on the other side, we are very collaborative community. Whenever I ask something or email to other NOC members, they are very helpful and they are they, they answer my questions or they try to help me. They do everything in that regard. So therefore, there are several ways to reach us and several ways to know what's going on at the related institutes or research centres. Great. Bede, you want to add a few sentences. Yes, we our website is active. We are trying to publish everything in English and also we have also decided to contribute to international literature. So we are trying to translate within our institutions a major laws for at least to provide an overview of what's keeping going in terms of legislative level in Turkey. Our social media account is also active. We are also collaborating through these accounts. Our website, we publish everything in PDF in electronic form. We are trying to avoid classic traditional publishing so that we are trying to make our works accessible. So these are also our priority so that we can keep in touch. We can collaborate and we can work together. Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you so much for this conversation. Time was too short as ever. But just wonderful to hear what you're up to these days and get a few samples of the work ahead. Thank you so much for your time and again, I hope we'll see each other in person before too long. In the meantime, my best wishes and thanks for all your contributions. It's good seeing you. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you.