A Turkish neuroscience and neurotechnology research centre has been admitted to NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) test network. Türkiye’s Council of Higher Education (Yükseköğretim Kurulu, YÖK), led by President Erol Ozvar, announced the admission on 23 August 2026 and confirmed that the Neuroscience and Neurotechnology Center of Excellence Joint Application and Research Center (NOROM) is the first and only Turkish test centre admitted to DIANA in the fields of neuroscience and neurotechnology.
NOROM
NOROM is described by YÖK as Türkiye’s first neuroscience centre operating through an inter-university joint research model. The three founding universities are Gazi University, Ankara University, and Middle East Technical University (METU). NOROM opened in 2023.
NOROM’s director is Hayrunnisa Bolay Belen. The deputy director is Meltem Bahcelioglu. Named researchers in YÖK’s announcement include Hulusi Kafaligonul and Umut Aygun.
Per YÖK, NOROM’s scope covers seven areas: human-centered neurotechnology, brain-computer interfaces, cognitive performance assessment, brain imaging, neuromodulation, robotic systems, and artificial intelligence-assisted signal analysis. Researcher Umut Aygun named clinical application areas that NOROM’s robotic systems are being evaluated for: rehabilitation of children, social participation of people on the autism spectrum, and arm rehabilitation after stroke.
BCI is one of NOROM’s seven listed areas rather than the centre’s exclusive focus. NOROM is a neuroscience-neurotechnology centre of which BCI work is one component.
NATO DIANA
DIANA is a NATO organisation set up to find and accelerate dual-use defence and security innovation across the Alliance. Per DIANA’s own materials, the accelerator is headquartered in London, with a regional hub in Tallinn and a North American office in Halifax. The DIANA network comprises more than 200 test centres and 16 accelerator sites across 32 Allied markets. DIANA offers innovators contractual funding, accelerator programme access, test-centre access for de-risking dual-use technology, mentoring, an investor network, and operational-environment demonstration.
DIANA is a NATO-wide accelerator and test infrastructure that plugs Allied innovators into a shared capability pipeline, rather than a research funder in the DARPA sense. Neurotechnology is one of the technology categories DIANA works with. NOROM’s admission is Türkiye’s first neuroscience-neurotechnology test-centre position inside that network.
Operational implications
Admission to the DIANA test network gives NOROM access to test infrastructure, mentoring, and the DIANA-adjacent investor network for dual-use neurotechnology projects. NOROM will be positioned as a testing and validation site for prototypes and dual-use neurotechnology, and Turkish researchers gain a formal channel to collaborate with Allied scientists on neurotechnology projects routed through DIANA.
NOROM’s governance sits in the university-and-research channel under YÖK, not the Turkish defence-industrial channel (the Presidency of Defence Industries or SSB). That routing shapes how neurotechnology maturation will move through the Turkish system: it starts inside the academic and clinical research base rather than the defence-industrial procurement base. DIANA is designed as a dual-use pipeline, so NOROM’s clinical work in paediatric rehabilitation, autism support and stroke rehabilitation sits inside the same infrastructure as the defence-adjacent neurotechnology work.
Where NOROM sits alongside the US federal neurotechnology layer
InsideBCI covered DARPA’s SHINE Special Notice on 11 August 2026 (Defense Sciences Office, program manager Robin Bonomi, five-modality-domain non-invasive neuroplasticity for injury recovery). InsideBCI covered DARPA’s Firefox programme on 20 August 2026 (Biological Technologies Office, program manager Dr Pedro Irazoqui, 100-channel non-invasive coherent-optical BCI), based on The Sociable’s 17 August 2026 reporting. SHINE and Firefox are US federal research programmes with specific technical scopes.
NATO DIANA and NOROM are structurally different. DIANA is an Alliance-wide accelerator and test-centre network, rather than a research programme with a specific technical objective. NOROM is a test and validation site inside that network, rather than a research team pursuing a defined SHINE-style or Firefox-style objective. Reading NOROM as “the NATO version of DARPA SHINE” would collapse the structural distinction. NATO and the United States are both building formal defence-adjacent neurotechnology infrastructure in the same August 2026 window, on different institutional models.
For the four-jurisdiction regulatory posture map that Issue 01 of the Dargentic Intelligence Report classified (Rights-First Chile, Horizontal Regulator EU, State-Patchwork US, Industrial Builder China plus South Korea), the NATO-plus-Türkiye layer is a distinct alliance-tier dimension that operates across national jurisdictions rather than inside a single national regulatory posture. Türkiye specifically is a NATO member positioned between the EU regulatory space to the west and the Middle East to the south, with an independent defence-industrial posture (Baykar in unmanned systems, ASELSAN in defence electronics) that has moved Turkish dual-use technology onto the international market at scale over the past decade.
Not disclosed
The budget envelope of NOROM’s DIANA-associated work is not disclosed in the announcement. Dual-use neurotechnology projects NOROM will validate through DIANA are not named. Any Turkish commercial BCI operators that may plug into NOROM’s DIANA-linked pipeline are not named in the announcement. Prior Türkiye-NATO neurotechnology collaboration history is not addressed. Whether NOROM’s DIANA admission will draw federal research funding from the Turkish Ministry of Health, TÜBİTAK, or SSB is not addressed.
What to watch
The first named NOROM-DIANA validation project. A specific prototype or dual-use technology entering NOROM’s test pipeline with DIANA sponsorship will be the first operational signal beyond the admission announcement.
Whether other DIANA member countries admit neurotechnology test centres in the coming months. Poland, Netherlands, Germany, France, Estonia, Italy, and Canada have active defence-innovation ecosystems and existing DIANA presence. If NATO’s neurotechnology test-centre footprint expands from one Turkish site to a multi-country cluster within the coming year, that indicates DIANA is treating neurotechnology as a category-tier priority rather than a single-country accession.
Whether any Turkish commercial BCI or neurotechnology operator publicly plugs into NOROM’s DIANA-linked pipeline in the coming months. Türkiye has invested in dual-use defence technology at scale but has not yet produced a globally named commercial BCI operator. A DIANA-adjacent Turkish neurotechnology start-up emerging from the NOROM ecosystem would signal the accession is generating downstream commercial activity, not only academic collaboration.