Antalya Technocity Director-General Cihangir İleri said yesterday there were 35 companies operating in the software sector in a techno-city in the southern province of Antalya, and they had set up a single company to be able to join international tenders.

Astec, the newly established joint venture, will open an office in Silicon Valley in December, said Ileri, and Akdeniz University, the owner of Antalya Technocity, would be the first Turkish university to enter Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley is a term that refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California in the U.S. The region is home to many of the world’s largest technology corporations. The term originally referred to the region’s large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers, but eventually came to refer to the high-tech businesses in the area. It is now generally used as a metonym for the U.S. high-tech sector.