TÜBİTAK 1832 Green Transformation in Industry: How Our Project Earned Support

The 1832 Green Transformation in Industry Call (Sanayide Yeşil Dönüşüm Çağrısı) is a TÜBİTAK (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye) funding call that aims to take technologies that improve industrial environmental performance from the lab to the market. It funds neither pure research nor off-the-shelf equipment purchases; it targets the difficult zone in between — you have a technology, but not yet a sellable product. The call's most distinctive feature is that its funding comes not from the national budget but from the World Bank.

The call runs under the World Bank Türkiye Green Industry Project. According to TÜBİTAK, the project has a total size of USD 450 million and a duration of 6 years, with implementation shared between TÜBİTAK and KOSGEB (Türkiye's SME development agency). The budget allocated to the part run by TÜBİTAK is USD 175 million.

Legal basis of the call

1832 does not have implementation principles of its own. The call is run under the 1801 Implementation Principles for the Repayable and Grant Support Program for Industrial R&D Projects. Wherever the call announcement is silent, the 1801 principles and other relevant TÜBİTAK regulations apply.

In practice, this means preparing your application from the call text alone is not enough. The decisive rules on topics such as cost eligibility, personnel person-month calculations, reporting and collateral obligations are defined on the 1801 side. Applications that don't read these two documents together risk becoming internally inconsistent.

Policy background

The rationale for the call stems from Türkiye's EU alignment agenda. Article 2.1.9 of the Green Deal Action Plan calls for using international financing sources and IPA (EU Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance) funds wherever possible for activities and projects that help industry transition to a green and circular economy and reduce emissions; responsibility for this action was assigned to the Ministry of Industry and Technology. Within this framework, the Ministry of Industry and Technology is the coordinator, and TÜBİTAK is the partner responsible for implementing the project's R&D components.

Current program parameters

• Technology readiness level: R&D work in the TRL 3–9 range is supported, and the project is expected to finish at TRL 7 or higher. Both ends of the band are closed: anything below the lower bound counts as basic research, while work starting at TRL 8 or above is considered to have already completed most of its R&D.
• Scale-up is mandatory: The project must include scale-up activities for the technology or prototype being developed.
• Project duration: Up to 24 months.
• Support rate: 80% for SMEs and 70% for large companies, rising to 90% for SMEs in the earthquake-affected region.
• Type of support: Interest-free repayable support for incorporated companies; at most half (50%) of the amount disbursed is paid back. Repayment begins 1 year after the project ends.
• Who can apply: SMEs and large companies; joint (consortium) applications are also possible.

Which thematic area should the project fall under?

The proposed project is expected to fall under one of the following themes: Climate Change, Environment and Biodiversity; Clean and Circular Economy; Clean, Affordable and Secure Energy Supply; Green and Sustainable Agriculture; Sustainable Smart Mobility.

Which component does 1832 belong to?

TÜBİTAK's support under the Türkiye Green Industry Project is offered through three components. Choosing the right component for your company's maturity level is the first decision to make before applying:

• Component 1 — Green Innovation Technology Mentoring Support: For SMEs still at the "we don't know what we need to do" stage. It funds the process of identifying which technology and which innovation the company needs for its green transformation and turning that into a roadmap. TÜBİTAK has announced that support under this component will be provided through a call to be opened under the 1601 Program run by TEYDEB (TÜBİTAK's Technology and Innovation Funding Programs Directorate).
• Component 2 — Green Transformation in Industry Support: You already have a technology past the conceptual stage; the next step is to validate it and bring it to market. The 1832 Green Transformation in Industry Call was opened under this component.
• Component 3 — SAYEM Green Transformation Support: For work that exceeds the capacity of a single company and requires multiple actors to come together. It targets innovation platforms jointly established by the private sector, universities and the public sector; the 1833 SAYEM Green Transformation Call was opened under this component.

Note: The parameters in this guide are based on the current information on TÜBİTAK's 1832 call page. Limits, rates and conditions are updated from one call period to the next; before applying, always rely on TÜBİTAK's announcement for the relevant period.

Companies that looked at 1832 before and set it aside as "not a fit for us" should take another look, because several of the call's most restrictive conditions have been removed. The changes below directly affect anyone who planned around the old conditions.

• The requirement to build on a previous R&D project has been dropped. Previously, the project had to be structured as a continuation of R&D work the company had already carried out. This condition has been removed; applications can now be submitted independently, without being tied to an earlier project. This is the single most important change, opening the door for companies with no prior TÜBİTAK project history.
• The TRL band has been widened: the scope moved from TRL 5–9 to TRL 3–9. In return, the project is expected to finish at TRL 7 or higher, and scale-up activities are now mandatory.
• Budget ceilings have been raised substantially (see the figures in the financing section below).
• The "maximum 2 projects" limit has been removed. World Bank-funded support used to be capped at two projects per organization; this has been replaced by organization-level budget tracking. The limit is now about the amount, not the number: a company can run more than two projects as long as it has not used up the program limit for its size. The remaining limit is shown in PRODİS (TÜBİTAK's online project system) when submitting a new application.
• Thematic areas have been expanded — the Green Transformation R&D and Innovation areas covered by the call are now more diverse.
• The additional 20% grant for successfully completed projects has been discontinued. This is a cutback that directly affects financial planning; companies that factored this extra grant into their earlier calculations need to update their models.

In July 2026, the project we submitted to the TÜBİTAK 1832 Green Transformation in Industry call under the World Bank Türkiye Green Industry Project was selected for funding. The rest of this guide is not a theoretical walkthrough of an application; it is an account of what we actually did during that process and what worked.

Project partnership

The project will be carried out by a partnership of three organizations:

• Mazlum Motor Demiryolu Makinaları ve Gemi San. Tic. Ltd. Şti. — the industrial partner, specializing in railway maintenance machinery
• CNC Center — the manufacturing and machining technologies partner
• On Yazılım — optimization, remote monitoring and control, and artificial intelligence work

The project's application area is railway maintenance processes, with a focus on efficiency, digitalization, energy optimization and green transformation. The component we at On Yazılım have taken on is the digital backbone of the process: optimizing maintenance operations, remotely monitoring and controlling equipment, and building AI models that turn this data into value.

Budget and expected impact

The budget to be provided under the project with World Bank support is approximately 30 million TL. We expect this funding to deliver a threefold impact: stronger technological and organizational capabilities for the project partners, the development of domestic railway maintenance technologies, and the resulting contribution to the national economy.

Why was this project a good fit for 1832?

Three things aligned the project with the program. The first is maturity: 1832 supports the commercialization-oriented technology validation stage, and railway maintenance is not a research field starting from scratch but an application area built on established industrial practice. The second is measurability: the program expects concrete improvements in environmental indicators, and energy optimization and efficiency lend themselves well to quantifiable outputs. The third is structure: the program allows joint projects, and the industry–manufacturing–software trio provides, for every part of the work, a partner who actually works in that field.

The following sections explain both how this framework is defined in the official call text and the points we worked on most while preparing the application.

The call is aimed at incorporated companies established in Türkiye — more specifically, those engaged in green innovation, developing a green technology, product or production process.

Eligible applicants include both SMEs and large companies; company size determines the budget ceiling and support rate, not eligibility. Joint applications are also allowed.

Company eligibility criteria

• Company age: The company is expected to have been registered for 2 years or more. Spin-offs and companies founded with TÜBİTAK 1512 or 1812 support are exempt from this requirement.
• Ownership structure: The lead organization must be at least 75% privately owned. In joint projects, this condition does not apply to the partners — so working with a university or a partner with significant public ownership doesn't rule you out.
• Financial capacity: For each organization, the average total assets or net sales over the last three years must exceed the amount of repayable funding requested. In practice, this is one of the most frequently overlooked reasons for elimination: a technically strong project gets stuck at the eligibility stage if the company's financial scale can't carry the requested support.
• Bank Reference Letter: You need a reference letter from your bank when applying, and it must cover the full amount (100%) of the repayable support you are requesting. In other words, the process with your bank needs to be built into your application timeline.
• Environmental and Social Risk requirements: Because the funding comes from the World Bank, the organizations involved in the project are subject to an environmental and social risk framework. The documents required under occupational health and safety legislation (risk assessment, emergency action plan, annual plans, etc.) must also be submitted as attachments to the Environmental and Social Declaration Form.

Project eligibility: technology readiness level

The call defines a clear maturity band: TRL 3–9. The expected type of work is commercialization-oriented technology validation: building a new prototype on a technology that has moved beyond the conceptual stage, advancing or improving an existing R&D prototype, or running tests to validate or certify the prototype. In addition, scale-up activities are mandatory for the technology or prototype being developed, and the project is expected to finish at TRL 7 or higher.

The band rules out projects at both ends from the start. Work below the lower bound is considered basic research and doesn't qualify; projects starting at TRL 8 or above are considered to have completed most of their R&D and fall outside the scope.

Mandatory Green Transformation Indicator

Another non-negotiable part of eligibility: by the end of the project, at least one of your targeted Green Transformation Indicators (YDG) must be achieved. The call defines four indicators:

• YDG 1 — electricity: at least a one-tenth reduction in electricity consumption per unit produced
• YDG 2 — water: at least a one-tenth reduction in water consumption per unit produced
• YDG 3 — waste: at least a 10% reduction in non-recyclable waste
• YDG 4 — technology: development of an innovative green technology solution

The project proposal must specify which indicator is targeted, as well as under which work package and by which method achievement of the target will be verified. The project's success is measured within this framework, and whether the target was met is reported to TÜBİTAK in the final monitoring report. You don't have to do the verification yourself: you can procure the service from expert institutions and organizations and include the cost in the project budget.

A common eligibility mistake

The mistake we see most often in our consulting work is trying to present an energy-efficiency investment as an R&D project. Buying a more efficient compressor for your plant may be environmentally valuable, but it is not an R&D project eligible under 1832. The distinction is this: if you're buying an existing product, it's an investment; if you're developing something to solve a problem that existing solutions can't, it's R&D. Projects that don't draw this distinction clearly in the application struggle at the evaluation stage.

If your company hasn't yet clarified its green transformation needs, building a roadmap with the mentoring support under Component 1 may be a more productive starting point than applying directly to 1832.

This is the most misunderstood part of 1832. The program is not a direct grant program. Support for incorporated companies is interest-free and repayable, and at most half (50%) of that amount is paid back. In practice, half of the support stays with the company and half is returned without interest.

Project budget ceilings

In the current call, project budget ceilings are defined by company size as follows:

• Micro / small: 14,000,000 TL
• Medium: 22,500,000 TL
• Large: 48,000,000 TL

Support rate: how much of the budget is covered?

Part of the approved project budget is covered by TÜBİTAK; the rest is the company's own contribution:

• Large companies: 70% support — 30% own contribution
• SMEs: 80% support — 20% own contribution
• SMEs in the earthquake-affected region: 90% support — 10% own contribution

These rates are often described as "grant rates," but the amount disbursed at this stage is repayable. It's important not to confuse the two: the support rate tells you how much of the budget comes from TÜBİTAK, while the repayment rate tells you how much of that amount must be paid back.

Repayment schedule

Repayment begins 1 year after the project ends. This one-year gap is room for commercialization to start generating cash; your financial model should place this buffer correctly.

The additional 20% grant has been removed

There is a significant cutback: the additional 20% grant for companies that successfully complete their project has been discontinued. Companies that reviewed the program earlier and built their models on the assumption that "if we finish successfully, our repayment share will drop" need to update their figures. The framework in force today has a single tier: a maximum of 50% repayment.

Collateral requirement

Collateral is a natural consequence of the repayable structure, and it's not a small item: it is calculated on the full amount (100%) of the repayable support requested, not just part of it. Two separate documents are required at two stages:

• At application: a Bank Reference Letter from your bank
• At contract signing: a Letter of Guarantee

This should be at the center of your pre-application financial planning. Budgets designed without calculating collateral capacity can stall at the contract stage, after the funding decision has already been made. Remember, too, that the Bank Reference Letter is listed separately among the eligibility criteria: if it's missing, the application is automatically ineligible.

This section is not a summary of the call text; it's a rundown of the areas we worked on most in our own application. A 1832 application differs from a classic R&D proposal in two respects: environmental justification and the discipline of international financing.

1. Tie the indicator to a work package

The Green Transformation Indicator isn't a sentence to dress up the application; it's the yardstick the project's success is assessed against. The call asks for two things: which indicator is targeted, and under which work package and by which method achievement of the target will be verified.

Our approach has three parts: the current state (baseline), the target value and the measurement method. If you're targeting a 10% reduction in electricity consumption — per which production unit, from which starting value, verified by which meter or calculation method? One of the typical rejection reasons we encounter in evaluations is that the chosen indicator can't be linked to project activities — in other words, the indicator is written down, but the work that will produce it isn't shown.

2. Prove you fit within the TRL band

The call accepts the TRL 3–9 range but expects at least TRL 7 at completion and makes scale-up mandatory. These three conditions must be read together: where you start, how far you'll take it, and where scale-up sits in the project. If the starting level is poorly justified, the project slides toward basic research; if it's positioned too far along, it slides toward "there's nothing left to develop." Showing scale-up as a separate work package is the cleanest way to demonstrate that this condition is met.

3. Don't hide the R&D uncertainty

Working at the commercialization-oriented validation stage doesn't mean "the work is done, it just needs to be implemented." Even at this stage, the technical uncertainties that need to be resolved must be stated clearly. Uncertainty usually arises when moving a solution that works in the lab into real field conditions: the noise of an industrial environment, data quality and continuity, the system's long-term reliability. Rather than hiding uncertainty, the right approach is to define it and show how it will be addressed — reviewers are looking for exactly this section.

4. Take the financial structure as seriously as the technical content

When interest-free repayable support, 100% collateral, an own contribution and a repayment schedule starting one year after project completion come together, the budget stops being an appendix to the technical text and becomes a planning exercise in its own right. How and when the own contribution will be covered, how the collateral will be provided, and how repayment will affect cash flow should all be modeled from the outset. Don't forget the financial capacity requirement either: average total assets or net sales over the last three years must exceed the amount of repayable funding requested.

5. Divide work packages realistically among partners

A common weakness in joint projects is partners who exist on paper but don't show up in the work packages. Each partner should be matched to the work package it is responsible for, the output it will produce and the capability it has to do so. In our own project, the partnership was built on the logic of giving each component to the party that actually does that work; at On Yazılım, we took on the optimization, remote monitoring and control, and AI work.

It also helps to remember that the 75% ownership requirement applies only to the lead organization — which leaves room to maneuver when choosing partners.

6. Read the 1801 principles alongside the call text

Wherever the call announcement is silent, the 1801 implementation principles apply. Most of the details on topics such as cost eligibility, personnel person-month calculations, subcontractor limits and reporting obligations are defined on the 1801 side. Applications prepared from the call text alone risk inconsistencies in these areas.

Green transformation calls require more layered preparation than classic R&D programs. The discipline of an international funding source, measurable design of environmental indicators and financial modeling of the repayable structure all have to be handled together.

At On Yazılım, we bring both sides to these processes: incentive and project consulting and technical expertise in software and data. In our own 1832 project, having both sides at the same table was decisive — the team that defined the environmental indicator was the same team that would build the system to measure it.

What we handle end to end

• Selecting the right support program and component, and eligibility analysis (including company age, ownership structure and financial capacity)
• Developing the project idea, TRL positioning, and defining the R&D uncertainty and the Green Transformation Indicator
• Economic feasibility and budget design; modeling the cash-flow impact of the own contribution, collateral and repayment schedule
• Setting up the partnership structure and allocating work packages among partners
• Preparing the application file, responding to reviewer questions and following up on committee processes
• Post-award implementation, monitoring, reporting and close-out
• On the technical side: optimization, remote monitoring and control, data analytics and AI development

Beyond TÜBİTAK, we take the same approach to KOSGEB, TKDK/IPARD, TAGEM (General Directorate of Agricultural Research and Policies), regional development agency, Ministry of Industry and Technology and Ministry of Trade support programs, as well as Investment Incentive Certificate processes.

In our view, the formula for success in an internationally funded call like 1832 comes down to four points:

• Align the program's logic with the project's logic. A strong project submitted to the wrong program gets rejected. 1832 looks for a specific maturity band (from TRL 3 to at least TRL 7), mandatory scale-up and measurable environmental improvement; rather than forcing a project into this framework, you need to apply with a project that genuinely fits it.
• Tie the indicator to a work package. Meeting at least one Green Transformation Indicator by the end of the project is mandatory. An indicator written without a baseline, target value and verification method leaves the project's success assessment up in the air.
• Accept from the start that this is not a grant program. Support is provided as interest-free repayable funding, collateral is required for the full amount, and up to 50% is paid back. Also factor in the removal of the additional 20% grant.
• Go into the review process with your technical team. Reviewer questions point to the weak spots in the text; giving generic answers instead of closing the gap with concrete data wastes that opportunity.

We are delighted that this project — focused on efficiency, digitalization, energy optimization and green transformation in railway maintenance — was selected for funding, and we thank TÜBİTAK for its assessment. We wish the project success for all our stakeholders and for our country.

If you have a project idea on the green transformation agenda, or you're not sure which program is right for you, we can work through the whole process with you — from eligibility analysis to the application file and implementation.

Sources: the official TÜBİTAK 1832 Green Transformation in Industry Call page and TÜBİTAK's overview of the Türkiye Green Industry Project. Numerical parameters may change by call period; always rely on the current official announcement before applying.