Apple CEO Tim Cook To Visit Turkey Ahead Of Country's First Apple Store Opening
February 4, 2014
Apple CEO Tim Cook is scheduled to visit Turkey to meet with Turkish President Abdullah Gül.
As noted by MacRumors, the meeting has been confirmed through the president's official calendar published on the Turkish government's website. It's set to take place at 11 a.m. local time on Feb. 4 (1 a.m. PST the same day) at Çankaya Presidential Compound in the capital city of Ankara.
The meeting comes ahead of the opening of the first Apple retail store in Turkey, which was initially set for last month. The country got its own Apple online store in early November.
But perhaps the most important item in the agenda is the $4.5 billion initiative of the Turkish government that could lead to a landmark purchase of as many as 15 million iPads for Turkey's public education system.
Some of Apple's key executives had traveled to Turkey in February last year to meet with President Gül about the initiative. And in May, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Apple, among several other Silicon Valley companies, to give a major push to the project, which he himself launched.
The soon-to-be-held meeting between Cook and President Gül marks another important stop in the former's ongoing globetrotting travels. Just before the weekend, Cook took a trip to Ireland. And yesterday, he visited the U.A.E.
