Turkey wants to give each of its 70 million citizens an email address (and a search engine too.)

Turkey’s Informational Technology Watchdog today announced its intentions to allocate an e-mail address to each of its 70 million citizens.

The project, called Anaposta, has reportedly already been developed and tested and will allocate a 10GB storage quota to its entire population, with ambitions to build an email network to match its current mobile network.

“Every child will have an email address written on his/her identity card since birth” said Tayfun Acarer, chairman of Turkey’s Information Technologies and Communications Authority Board.

The network would also replace foreign mail networks such as Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail in Turkey, Acarer was quoted as saying.

This news comes on the back of Turkey’s aim to create its own internet search engine in 2010, one that meets Turkey’s needs and security concerns.

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“All major search engines used worldwide are based in foreign countries, which can not meet Turkey’s needs and could bring security problems,” said Tayfun Acarer, chairman of Turkey’s Information Technologies and Communications Authority Board.

“I believe that our search engine will be popular in Turkic and Muslim countries and I am confident that these countries will trust our search engine,” Acarer added.