CIO Excellence Awards & Symposium
IDC Predicts
By 2026, 40% of all G2000 job roles will involve working with AI agents, redefining long-held traditional entry-, mid-, and senior-level positions.
The CIO Excellence Awards & Symposium honors Türkiye's top technology
leaders driving digital transformation in AI, cloud, cybersecurity, and automation. Its highlight, “The Power 50,” recognizes CIOs delivering exceptional business impact. The event combines award celebrations with talks from industry speakers and IDC analysts, spotlighting the CIO’s expanding role in Türkiye’s digital economy.
What Will You Gain?
A gathering of tech leaders exploring digital innovation in Türkiye, celebrating excellence and the CIO’s growing strategic role.
The event will spotlight:
- Innovation at Scale
- Governance Beyond Compliance
- The New AI Value Playbook: Making AI Business Value Visible and Measurable
- The CIO–CDO–CAIO Power Trio: Aligning Data, Digital, and AI Strategies
Introducing CIO Excellence Awards
Through the IDC CIO Excellence Awards 2026, IDC intends to honor those organizations and IT leaders that have conceptualized and successfully delivered digital transformation initiatives that brought about tangible results.
The Power 50: Recognizing Excellence in IT Leadership
IDC Keynote
The Evolving Role of the CIO: From IT Leader to Business Strategist
The CIO is evolving from an IT operator into a strategic business leader — using technologies like AI, cloud, and analytics to drive growth, collaborate across the C-suite, and lead organizational change.
Eren Eser | IDC
Associate Research Director, Türkiye
Eren Eser
Eren is a seasoned analyst with 20+ years of experience in the ICT sector. He directs all IDC ICT research and consulting engagements in Türkiye, and all sustainability research and consulting projects across the Middle East, Türkiye, and Africa (META).
Based in Istanbul, Eren has been involved in projects ranging from market forecasts to strategic consulting engagements on market entry, competitive analysis, go-to-market strategies, technology marketing, and end-user studies. Eren’s vast experience in the IT services, cloud, software, and telecommunications domains helps IDC clients understand the impact of technology-enabled, sustainable transformation processes in the context of sustainable digital business strategies, operations, products, and services. In addition to his research and consulting activities, Eren is a speaker at industry events.
Prior to joining IDC in 2017, Eren spent more than a decade in IT industry roles spanning portfolio management, channel and business development, pricing, and software development at companies including Turk Telekom and TAI.
Eren earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronics engineering and an MBA focused on technology road mapping for strategy and innovation, both from Middle East Technical University. He received a master of science in information systems, with a thesis on modeling mobile telecommunications services, from Middle East Technical University. During his academic endeavors, he studied for one semester at the University of Copenhagen, and for one semester at Harvard University. He is pursuing a marketing PhD focused on sustainability.
Event Sessions
One Day Event 9:05 am
The Evolving Role of the CIO: From IT Leader to Business Strategist
The CIO is evolving from an IT operator into a strategic business leader — using technologies like AI, cloud, and analytics to drive growth, collaborate across the C-suite, and lead organizational change.
Yaman Acar
Gülsün Akhisaroğlu
Darço Akkaranfil
Enis Ozan Akkaya
Harun Yaşar Aksöz
Şirin Aktaş
A. Fahri Arkan
Vedat Arslan
Meltem Atay
Emrah Gökçe Aygün
Evren Ayorak
İsmihan Baysal Anderson
Tunç Bergsan
Güngör Bingül
Gungor Bingul studied Mathematical Engineering at Yıldız Teknik University and MBA at Yeditepe University. In 1997 he started his career as System Network Pecialist at BIM A.S., between 1998 and 2000 worked at Uzel Makina as SAP System Manager. Since 2004 Mr. Birgul is working at Korozo A.Ş. as CIO.
Serdar Birlikçi
Mehmet Bütün
He received his bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems from Boğaziçi University. He worked as Business Analyst & Project Manager in Turkcell and Türk Telekom (Avea). In 2010, he worked as a Business Development Manager and Miles & Smiles Loyalty Program & CRM Department Manager roles at Turkish Airlines. In 2012, he joined Teradata as Senior Industry Lead and managed Telecommunications and Media sector in Turkey as well as within EMEA region. In particular, he served in the area of large data and analytics solutions for more than 3 years, and was appointed as the Vice President of Digital Services at Turkish Airlines in 2016 January. He managed digital channels & services of Turkish Airlines and Anadolujet brands and the airport passenger systems. On November 1, 2018, he joined Vakıf Katılım Bankası as Chief Information Officer, responsible for information technology and digital banking.
Dr. Aslıhan Çandır
Yasin Çarkcı
Şevket Süreyya Çelikkanat
Serkan Demir
Metin Demirel
Serdar Dilmen
Dursun Dinçer
Mehmet Ufuk Dokuzluoğlu
Vefa Erdem
Metin Erhan
Gül Erol
Barış Fındık
Ersen Gelçin
Bilal Genç
İbrahim Gökalp
Gökhan Gökçay
Gökhan Gökçay is Senior Vice President responsible for Digital, Payments and Data Technology in Akbank. He considers ‘information’ as a shared corporate asset and aims to produce solutions generating value and actionable insight. Prior to Akbank, Gökhan was SVP responsible for Information, Customer and Workflow Management solutions in Yapi Kredi, and the head of Financial Services industry in NTT Data Turkey where he delivered transformation programs for leading banks and telcos. He also worked for other technology consulting companies such as CSC and Siemens Nixdorf, and served large corporates such as Lloyds Bank, Barclays Capital and Legal & General. Gökhan has Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Computer Science from Boğazici University.
Sabri Gökmenler
Sinem Gözaydın
Ali İnal
Tayfun İşbilen
Aykut Işık
Kemal Kaplan
Born in 1967 in İstanbul, Kemal Kaplan graduated from Akdeniz University Electronic Engineering department. He worked in Sony, Netaş, Pimaş and Yapı Kredi Bank as a specialists and in Esbank, Etibank, ZB and HSBC Bank as an administrative. He has participated in various projects about reconstruction, integration of financial organizations, call-centers, credit-cards, ATM and banking applications/technologies and health application/technologies. Besides his studies on mobile technologies, wearable technologies and Research and Development projects, during various seminars he has been sharing his experiences on health technologies with the industry. He works as a technological consultant in some public organizations on behalf of Acıbadem Sağlık Grubu. He’s a member of the Board of Management of Life Sciences and Information Technologies in Health Organization. He currently works as an Information Technologies Director in charge of technological management in Acıbadem Sağlık Grubu hospitals, university and all subsidiaries.
Önder Kaplancık
Yaşar Karadeli
Hayriye Karadeniz
Timur Karaman
Engin Kavas
Hilmi Koçak
Kaan Konak
Özgür Korkmaz
Köksal Küçükada
Koray Kurt
Korhan Kuyu
Berke Menekli
Funda Öney
Ege Örer
Mert Oruz
Şerafettin Özer
Sinan Erdem Özer
Sinan Özkan
Haldun Selik
Fahri Şengül
Altuğ Soydan
Orkun Soylu
Orkun Süer
Uğur Serkan Taşkın
Hakan Cem Topal
Ethem Topgül
Emel Tural
Kurtuluş Yavuz
Oğuzhan Yıldırım
Cihan Yıldız
Serdar Yılmaz
Kürşat Alp Yiğit
Murat Özkan
Knowledge Hub
Digital Fortresses in the Desert
Examines how Gulf nations are building sovereign cloud infrastructure and data centers, offering a blueprint Turkish enterprises can follow as they balance AI ambitions with data residency and sovereignty requirements.
CIO Readiness in the Face of the Middle East War: From Disruption to Resilience
Outlines how regional CIOs are strengthening business continuity, cloud resilience, and crisis response amid geopolitical instability, offering a practical readiness framework Turkish technology leaders can apply to their own risk planning.
Digital Sovereignty Across EMEA: What It Means for Telcos
Breaks down how tightening data sovereignty regulations are reshaping telecom and cloud strategy across EMEA, a trend directly relevant to Türkiye’s own data localization rules and growing infrastructure investment priorities.
EMEA IT Market 2026 – Q2 Updates: 5 Key Takeaways on AI, IT Spending and Market Trends
Summarizes the latest quarterly EMEA IT spending data, highlighting where AI investment is accelerating fastest, insight Turkish CIOs can use to benchmark their own 2026 technology budgets against regional peers and priorities.
From Connectivity to Intelligence: Telcos at the Crossroads of AI, Sovereignty, and Sustainable Growth
Explores how telecom operators across the region are shifting from pure network providers to AI-driven intelligence platforms, a transformation shaping Türkiye’s connectivity and digital infrastructure roadmap through 2026 and well beyond.
The Middle East Conflict Just Rewrote the Rules of Business Continuity
Details how regional geopolitical instability is forcing enterprises to rethink business continuity, cyber resilience, and supply chain risk, lessons directly applicable to Turkish organizations building resilience into their 2026 strategies now.