Apple Executives Meet with Turkish President to Discuss $4.5 Billion iPad Education Initiative

Friday February 1, 2013 6:52 AM PST by Eric Slivka
As reported [Google translation] by Turkish blog Elma Dergisi, Apple executives including vice president for education John Couch met with Turkish president Abdullah Gül today to discuss several issues. The office of the Turkish president has also posted a photo and a brief video from the meeting.


Turkish president Abdullah Gül at far left, Apple VP John Couch at far right

Among the primary topics addressed during the meeting was Turkey's tablet initiative, a $4.5 billion program to provide as many as 15 million tablets to Turkish schoolchildren. Apple has reportedly been pushing for the contract, but negotiations are said to still be underway.

Also discussed was the layout of the older Turkish "F-keyboard" on iOS devices, which has several keys located in the wrong positions.

Apple has been making a significant push in Turkey, launching the iTunes Store for music and movies there in December and hiring for future retail stores in the country. Gül had visited Apple headquarters last May and discussed many of the same issues included in today's meeting with Couch and other executives.

Related Roundup: iPad
Tag: Turkey
Buyer's Guide: iPad (Neutral)
28 comments


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JaySoul
72 months ago
That would be a delight.
Rating: 5 Votes
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ghost187
72 months ago
Woot woot, for my nation of origin
Rating: 4 Votes
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ConCat
72 months ago
Crony capitalism.
Rating: 3 Votes
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Azathoth
72 months ago
A massive waste of funds, and the world's resources. Books are great: renewable, re-usable, don't use rare minerals (which we extract / exploit from African countries), don't become obsolete after a few years, don't get stolen, don't have screens to crack.

Hey, I'm a technology user, comp. sci. graduate, and currently an engineer working for a medical devices startup - but people, this insanity with making everything "digital" is costing us the world - literally and figuratively.

Turkey, nor any other country, needs iPads or much tablets in schools.

Of course Turkey is getting USD 1.14Billion in aid this year from the EU, so I guess they can use some of that money to buy iPads from Apple.

http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/instruments/funding-by-country/turkey/index_en.htm

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The general consensus where I'm from is that school is lame and boring, education is a vital part of our existence and its frustrating to see how terrible our system is, how badly it works and how little our Australian government cares about these issues.
I wish the Turkish people success, and hope that from it, others also see the importance of radically changing what needs to be changed.


So giving kids a new toy is going to make them behave?

Day one with iPad at school: "Cool we have an iPad"
Day forty with iPad at school: "Meh, school still sucks"

What needs to change is kid's perception and thereby parenting, not *giving* them more crap to fill up their lives.
Rating: 2 Votes
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92jlee
72 months ago
What a massive waste of public funds. They did a test in a British school and so many ipads were damaged, they are far too brittle and expensive to be used for education. Whats the point anyway? Its not like they will move on and get jobs in any area that will require use of an iPad!
Rating: 1 Votes
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Whaditis
72 months ago
Definitely good news, greetings from your friendly Greek neighbor.


Good move on Turkeys part. Wish it was the same for Ellas.
Rating: 1 Votes
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mrsir2009
72 months ago

What a massive waste of public funds. They did a test in a British school and so many ipads were damaged, they are far too brittle and expensive to be used for education. Whats the point anyway? Its not like they will move on and get jobs in any area that will require use of an iPad!


I don’t think the point is to teach kids how to use an iPad. It’s more like teaching kids the tradditional stuff THROUGH the iPad.

Oh, and about the damaging problem, they could just stick the iPads in heavy duty cases.
Rating: 1 Votes
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Xikum
72 months ago
I'd be furious if my country spent $4.5 billion on giving iPads to children. What a waste of money. I refuse to believe that giving kids iPads will somehow result in an improvement to their education.

Physical books, jotters and other learning materials are far cheaper, more reliable, and proper.
Rating: 1 Votes
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gnasher729
72 months ago

What a massive waste of public funds. They did a test in a British school and so many ipads were damaged, they are far too brittle and expensive to be used for education. Whats the point anyway? Its not like they will move on and get jobs in any area that will require use of an iPad!


There are countries where kids are taught to look after their stuff.

And it's quite daft to assume they would buy iPads to teach kids to use iPads. You use iPads to teach them maths, physics, languages, history, chemistry and so on and so on.
Rating: 1 Votes
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Unggoy Murderer
72 months ago

What a massive waste of public funds. They did a test in a British school and so many ipads were damaged, they are far too brittle and expensive to be used for education. Whats the point anyway? Its not like they will move on and get jobs in any area that will require use of an iPad!

British kids are ungrateful little swines, though. So it's not a good measurement of success. When I was on holiday in Turkey a few years back (had an awesome time by the way, wonderful country!) Turkish kids in the same resort all seemed to be very well behaved, in contrast to the British kids which were rowdy to say the least.

iPads in education are brilliant, I really hope that one day they become the standard.
Rating: 1 Votes
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