TÜBİTAK 1511 — Research, Technology Development and Innovation Projects in Priority Areas

TÜBİTAK 1511 — Priority Areas Industrial R&D Grant (Seed)

Supports Turkish industrial projects in priority themes including energy, cybersecurity, space, and advanced materials.

TÜBİTAK 1511 is the Priority Areas Industrial R&D Grant, which funds industrial R&D and innovation projects in technology domains that TÜBİTAK designates as national priorities on a call-by-call basis. Unlike TÜBİTAK 1501, which accepts open-topic R&D proposals from Turkish companies, 1511 is topic-gated: each call specifies a defined thematic area — drawn from sectors such as artificial intelligence, energy, cybersecurity, aerospace, space, and defense — and applicants must align their project with that active topic to be eligible. Companies proposing work outside the declared call topic are not eligible regardless of technical quality. Applications are submitted through the e-TEYDEB portal in Turkish on a rolling basis tied to each thematic call's schedule.

Eligible applicants are for-profit Turkish companies, both SMEs and large firms, registered and operating in Türkiye. Universities, non-profits, and research institutes are not eligible as lead applicants. Each 1511 call publishes its own funding pool, per-project award ceiling, and deadline; amounts are denominated in TRY and vary significantly across call topics. No fixed award parameters are stated across calls in advance. Evaluation criteria focus on alignment with the declared priority topic, technical quality of the proposed R&D, and the commercial pathway for the result.

The 1511 program reflects TÜBİTAK's mechanism for directing industrial innovation investment toward state-identified strategic technology areas, making it the highest-profile route for Turkish companies working in domains such as defense electronics, AI-enabled systems, energy storage, or space subsystems. Applicants should monitor TÜBİTAK's call calendar for newly announced 1511 topics, confirm project-topic alignment before investing in proposal preparation, and review current call documentation on the e-TEYDEB portal for call-specific funding levels and evaluation rubrics.