Zeynep Aziz
ISTANBUL, Oct. 10, 2026 — President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused what he called “techno-oligarchs” of targeting Turkey’s young people, linking a recent wave of violence in schools to harmful ideas he said were spread by powerful technology elites.
Speaking on Saturday at the 75th anniversary gathering of the İlim Yayma Cemiyeti, an education and civil-society organisation founded in 1951, Erdoğan said technology leaders wanted to shape not only today’s society but also its future according to their own interests and worldview.
“Recent tragic incidents at our schools have shown us how dangerous the poisonous seeds sown by this mentality can be,” Erdoğan said, accusing those elites of encouraging racism and hedonism and of recognising no moral limits.
His remarks came four days after a 15-year-old student armed with knives attacked children at a middle school in Istanbul’s Başakşehir district on October 6. Ten-year-old Eslem Sare Bulut died of her wounds and seven other students were injured. The suspect and the suspect’s parents have been arrested, according to Turkish media.
Erdoğan did not name any specific companies or executives, nor did he set out a direct connection between the attacks and the technology sector. He presented the generation associated with Teknofest, Turkey’s aerospace and technology festival, as the country’s answer to the challenge.
“The Teknofest generation will be our greatest assurance against the domineering mentality of techno-oligarchs who commodify people, nature, the sky and even space,” he said, calling for young people who use and develop technology with a human-centred approach while preserving national and spiritual values.
The Başakşehir attack is the latest in a series of shootings and stabbings at Turkish schools over the past year, several of them carried out by minors. The incidents have fuelled public debate over school security, young people’s access to weapons and the role of online content, and pressure is growing on the government to set out concrete measures beyond rhetoric.
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Featured photo: Press Service of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0) (file photo, illustrative).
