Turkish business use of AI lags public uptake
- Turkish citizen use of AI at 60%
- Just 7.5% in corporate world
- State support for SMEs needed
The Turkish public’s understanding of artificial intelligence ranks among the highest in the world, according to a new study, but the corporate sector is lagging.
More than four-fifths of Turks have heard of AI, with usage rates of almost 60 percent, the report by the Turkish Artificial Intelligence Policy Association showed.
Although survey participants had high usage of AI platforms and chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok, this fell away sharply within Turkey’s business community but was slowly rising among the latter as awareness increased.
The findings echoed statistics from state agency Turkstat, which showed corporate use of AI rising by more than half in 2025, though from a low and declining base the previous year.
In 2024, under 5 percent of the Turkish corporate world deployed AI, which was less than in 2023. This decline reversed in 2025, with Turkstat survey data showing 7.5 percent of businesses using the technology, but the number is considerably short of the European Union-wide average of 20 percent.
There is strong AI interaction at the individual level, with Turkey also rating highly for digitalisation and ecommerce. But Emrehan Aktuğ, an expert in digitalisation and assistant professor of economics at İstanbul’s Sabancı University, said the majority of players in the Turkish economy are isolated from this emerging trend.
“Companies with high capital and well-established international connections are ready and can undertake this transformation,” he told AGBI.
“However, small and medium-scale enterprises, which account for more than 50 percent of GDP and 72 percent of employment, will struggle with their very low digitalisation rates… [and this] means a lack of preparedness for AI.”
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Just 6.6 percent of enterprises falling into the SME category and employing fewer than 50 staff use AI in their work, compared with 24 percent of large-scale businesses – those with 250 or more employees – according to Turkstat.
While the potential for AI deployment by business is high, without state assistance for SMEs through incentives and tech support for digital transformation, Turkey risks a two-paced economy with a widening gap between those utilising AI and the larger remainder being left behind, Aktuğ said.
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