Bonum Certa Men Certa

Cablegate: As Gates Goes Lobbying for Microsoft Lock-in Among Turkish Youth, the Protesters Are “Fringe Parties” According to Istanbul Consulate

Cablegate



Summary: Bill Gates goes to lobby many parties (including dinner with Prime Minister Erdogan) and dissenting voices of Turks receive no weight at their nation's consulate

TECHRIGHTS has covered the mischievous lobbying of Microsoft and the Gates Foundation, which often lobby in tandem. The following Cablegate cable provides interesting reading.



The Istanbul Consulate acts more like a cheerleader and hardly as an office genuinely concerned with the Turkish people.








UNCLAS ISTANBUL 000124

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ECON, ETRD, EINV, ECPS, TU, Istanbul SUBJECT: MICROSOFT TARGETS TURKEY

Sensitive but unclassified - not for internet distribution. This message was coordinated with Embassy Ankara.

1. (U) Summary: In his third trip to Turkey in a little over a year, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates met in Istanbul with senior Turkish government and business leaders and announced a range of new initiatives aimed at increasing internet penetrationin Turkey. These included a new Turkey web portal (in cooperation with Turkey's leading media group, Dogan Holding) and a "My First Computer" campaign in partnership with Intel and Turk Telecom. The extensively publicized January 28-30 visit included a dinner with Prime Minister Erdogan and a town-hall meeting with 2500 students. In his public comments, Gates praised Turkey's progress in combatting pirated software. While not announcing any specific investment plans, he highlighted the fact that Istanbul serves as Microsoft's regional headquarters for 79 countries in the Middle East and Africa, and predicted that its footprint here will continue to grow in the years ahead. End Summary.

2. (SBU) In addition to its Turkey-centered events, Microsoft had initially planned to take advantage of Gates' presence to organize a summit of business leaders from throughout the Middle East and Africa. Following the outbreak of avian influenza in Eastern Turkey, it put those plans on hold, and instead targeted local business leaders and students. In addition to his meeting with Prime Minister Erdogan and Transport and Communications Minister Yildirim, Gates met with Microsoft's partners here (including notably Dogan Holding), and spoke to students (a town hall of 2500 students from a range of schools gathered at an urban campus in Istanbul), journalists, and Turkish business leaders.

3. (SBU) While there was no announcement regarding the planned "Techno-city," which Prime Minister Erdogan announced last year and which Microsoft has indicated in general terms that it will support, Gates did announce a range of new initiatives, including a "My First Computer" project, in cooperation with Intel and Turk Telecom. Noting that Turkey lags behind other developed countries with an internet penetration rate of 16 percent (an estimated 10 million people using 750,000 computers), he said the project targets to reach 80 percent of Turkish households through the new PC, which will be introduced this spring and will cost around 300 USD. Gates said this project will build on Microsoft's work in partnership with Turkey's Ministry of Education, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and local NGO's, which has succeeded in bringing internet access to public spaces in most Turkish communities.

4. (SBU) Gates also met with Dogan Holding Chairman Aydin Dogan to announce that the two companies will work together to launch a local search engine to challenge Google's dominance in the Turkey. The portal will also provide internet telephone services (VOIP), and will utilize Microsoft's technical expertise and Dogan's experience in the local market.

5. (SBU) Speaking to the press, Gates praised Turkey's progress in reducing the level of pirated software, and noted Microsoft's own efforts in this regard, in cooperation with other IT partners in the local Business Software Alliance (BSA). He underlined the potential Turkey offers with its young and dynamic population, and highlighted Microsoft's decision to use Istanbul as a base for its regional operations in the Middle East and Africa. While disclaiming any specific investment plans, he predicted the company's footprint will grow as its activities in the region continue to expand.

6. (SBU) Comment: While his presence attracted a handful of protestors from fringe parties, Gates was enthusiastically welcomed by most Turks, and his visit won wide coverage. (The fact that Dogan Holding dominates local print and broadcast media didn't hurt.) Even Istanbul's normally tough press corps appeared overawed, lobbing mainly softballs in Gates' extended press conference. While Techno-city is not on the immediate horizon, Gates made clear that Turkey figures in Microsoft's future plans. End Comment. JONES







How charitable. Notice how the Ministry of Education is among Gates' targets, probably because it can help Gates indoctrinate the young at taxpayers' expense.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

People's Understanding of the History of GNU/Linux is Changing
RMS is not a radical, he's just clever enough to see and foresee what's going on
Microsofters Were Scheming to Take Over This Entire Web Site (in Their Own Words!)
Money gets spent censoring/deplatforming people who speak about real issues; no money gets spent actually tackling those underlying issues
Bicycles for the Minds and the Story Harrison Bergeron
"The goal of having people in charge of the tools they use and that the tools should amplify ability" has long been abandoned
[Video] Cory Doctorow Explains DMCA: DRM in the Browser (or Webapp) Will "Make It a Felony to Protect Your Privacy While You Use It."
Pycon US Keynote Speaker Cory Doctorow
 
Links 29/05/2025: Chinese Cracking Against EU Institutions (Prague), More Assaults on Media and Its Funding Sources
Links for the day
EPO Workers Caution That the Officials Are Still Illegally Trying to Replace Staff With Slop (to Lower Quality and Validity of European Patents)
Nobody in Europe voted for any of this
Links 29/05/2025: US Health Deficit and Malware Disguised as Slop Generator
Links for the day
Links 29/05/2025: Turtle Roadkill, Modern 'Tech' as a Sting
Links for the day
Thanks for All the Fish, Linux Format
people who once wrote for it (or for other magazines) comment on the importance of this news
Links 29/05/2025: YouTube Problem and Giant Privacy Hole in Microsoft OneDrive
Links for the day
United States Courts With Sworn Testimonies Are on Our Side, We'll Present the Same Here
Chronicling what happened is a moral imperative
Serial Sloppers Ruin and Lessen the Incentive to Cover "Linux"
The Serial Sloppers (SSs) ought to be named and shamed, but almost nobody does this
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Links 28/05/2025: 'Emulation Layers' (Measurements and Linguistics), Libraries, and Discomfort
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: More Arrests for Bitcoin-Connected Torture and Prosecutions for Dieselgate-Linked Executives
Links for the day
Even Microsoft (MSN) Covers Richard Stallman's Public Talk in Milan 2 Days Ago
He spoke in Spanish earlier this month (Alicante)
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Techo-authoritarianism With Slop Plagiarism and "No Online June" (Going Offline)
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: GitHub MCP Exploited and MathWorks Discovers Huge Windows TCO
Links for the day
Very High Attendance Level at Richard Stallman's Talk Shows People Can Relate to His Message
Smear campaigns have their limits
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Celsius-Fahrenheit, Endless Scrolling/Infinite Scrolling, and Trapping LLM Slop Bots
Links for the day
Prison gate backdrop to baptism by Fr Sean O'Connell, St Paul's, Coburg
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
More Photos From This Week's Milan Talk by Richard Stallman
The posts are in Italian, not English
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 27, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Links 27/05/2025: Science Defunded, India Arrests an Academic
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/05/2025: From Celsius to Fahrenheit and Deleting Social Control Media
Links for the day
Microsofters Have, in Effect, Attempted Extrajudicial Action Against Us
Courts and Judges (or Masters) don't exist to facilitate this kind of "bro" culture
UK High Court Masters Are Not Your Jesters, Microsoft
Judges aren't there for "funny" spectacles, they're there to act as arbiters in critical cases, not SLAPPs
Links 27/05/2025: Mass Layoffs at Volvo and More Evidence of 'AI' (Slop) Being a Passing Fad
Links for the day
The Code of Conduct (CoC) Gaslighting Phenomenon
There are still many people and projects foolish enough to outsource their labour to Microsoft via GitHub
They're Very Jealous of Richard Stallman and His Freedom (or Simple Lifestyle)
Jealousy is toxic because it can cause rational people to act irrationally and even severely harm themselves
Akira Urushibata on GNU coreutils
new message
Anouk Rozestraten (Deputy Director) Appears to Have Left the Free Software Foundation
Let's hope Rozestraten is still using and promoting Free software
There's Nothing Funny About Lawbreaking
There's plenty of room in society for humour, but "hacking" the state by breaking laws isn't cool or hip
More Mass Layoffs Coming Soon to Microsoft, Just a Question of When and How Many
Numbers from Washington were close to 5% and judging by prior rumours, it would be 5% + 5% (total 10%) at a later month
Links 27/05/2025: Bikes, Ideal Computers, and BYO
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 26, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 26, 2025
Richard Stallman's Milan Talk (Public Presentation) Was Packed, Video Available Soon
Looks like they even ran out of seats