The Anti-US Trend and Türkiye

Impact

With the second Donald Trump era, significant changes are taking place in US foreign policy. The new administration turning its back on traditional allies like Europe and Canada, and making territorial demands from them, has caused a deep rift and outrage. The impact of this situation has begun to be felt in the tech world.

Furthermore, we have witnessed that US-based global tech giants can be used as tools for sanctions by the US government.

The most concrete example of this occurred at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Following the US administration’s sanction decisions against ICC personnel, the Microsoft email account and cloud access of ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan were suddenly shut down. The realization that even one of the world’s highest independent international judicial bodies risks being rendered dysfunctional overnight simply because it relies on US-origin infrastructure has sounded a massive global alarm.

Incidents such as Microsoft suspending many of its services in Russia, Adobe restricting the use of its products in Venezuela, and platforms like Github restricts accounts belonging to countries the US disfavors were already well known.

News regarding efforts to block chip sales to China and lobbying activities by US companies against privacy-focused laws in EU countries have also been circulating for years.

Reaction

All of this has demonstrated that relying on US technology is an issue of security and digital sovereignty. This awakening has sparked a massive wave of awareness and a search for alternatives to US-origin products in many countries, particularly in Europe.

• In April 2026, the French government took a massive step toward ensuring its digital sovereignty and ending its reliance on US licenses. It announced that it would abandon Windows and Microsoft Office on the computers of 2.5 million public employees, fully transitioning to Linux and open-source alternatives.
• Also in France, at the beginning of 2026, the use of US-origin applications like Zoom and Microsoft Teams in government institutions was banned for security reasons, and a complete transition was made to Visio, a domestically produced and open-source video conferencing platform.
• In April 2026, the Dutch Central Bank, citing geopolitical risks, began looking for a Europe-based cloud alternative to Amazon, Google, or Microsoft, and selected the Stackit cloud platform developed by the Schwarz Group, the parent company of the famous supermarket chain Lidl. The fact that a nation’s central bank entrusted its data to the IT subsidiary of a supermarket chain rather than US tech giants became the clearest indicator of how vital escaping the US tech monopoly is perceived to be.

It is not just public institutions; tech-savvy individuals and communities have also begun to take a stand against this monopolization by embracing “Anti-US”, “Anti-Big Tech”, and “Self-Host” movements.

For instance, apps have been released in Denmark that scan product barcodes to determine whether they are of US origin. They are being used to effectively boycott US products. Similarly, websites like european-alternative.eu are being utilized to discover European alternatives to US companies.

At the point we have reached today, Europe-based or self-hostable alternatives to the services provided by US tech companies are being rapidly developed.

Türkiye

Unfortunately, Türkiye’s dependence on the US for technology, software, and cloud infrastructure remains at a very high level. From public institutions to the private sector, the Microsoft ecosystem, AWS/Google cloud infrastructures, communication tools like WhatsApp, and social media platforms are integral parts of daily operations.

• In the financial sector, the TROY payment system, developed as an alternative to Visa and Mastercard, is noteworthy.
• On the communications front, although apps like BİP have emerged as alternatives to WhatsApp, they are deemed untrustworthy in terms of privacy due to government control and are therefore not widely preferred by the public.
• The surge in investments in local data centers under the vision of “Türkiye’s data must stay in Türkiye,” along with legislation prompting companies to prefer domestic data centers, represents a significant step.
• Unfortunately, efforts to popularize the open-source National Operating System, Pardus, in the public sector have not reached the desired level. Pardus, which was well on its way to becoming a highly successful operating system in the 2000s, was derailed by the infiltration of Gülenists (FETÖ) into TÜBİTAK. The high-caliber experts who left the project during those years could not be replaced, leading to its current obscure state.

In summary, there is still a long road ahead for Türkiye to achieve digital independence in both the public and private sectors.

Personal

As a software developer, I view dependence on the services of US tech companies as a risk. For this reason, I am not only turning to alternatives that will reduce this dependency, but I am also personally developing alternative software.

I would like to mention the applications I have developed:

• With the Vinen Notes app, I created a notepad that respects personal data. It is currently live for both Android and iOS, though it is still in a very basic state. I need to add more features.
• We published the Parentara app to assist parents in raising their children. It is available for both iPhone and Android devices. I hope this app, into which we have poured a lot of effort, will be of some benefit to all of humanity, however small.

It is debatable how effective software and application-level independence can be without first achieving hardware and operating system-level independence. However, rather than doing nothing at all, I still find it beneficial to create alternatives to the best of my ability.

In my next blog post, I will list alternatives to US tech products. I will introduce alternatives across multiple categories, such as phones, browsers, email, and more.