Türkiye aims to boost AI competitiveness with new action plan

Türkiye plans to unveil a new national artificial intelligence vision and action plan on June 13, Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz said Friday, outlining the country’s ambitions to strengthen its position in the rapidly evolving field of AI.

Speaking at the “AI Tomorrow Summit 2026” in Istanbul, Yılmaz said the new road map would be announced by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and would focus on developing human capital, high-performance computing infrastructure, data ecosystems, sector-specific applications and governance mechanisms.

“We consider artificial intelligence not merely as a technological tool but as one of the fundamental components of our development and competitiveness policies,” Yılmaz said during a session titled “Artificial Intelligence in the Century of Türkiye: Strategy and Vision.”

The summit, organized by the Artificial Intelligence Policies Association (AIPA), brought together leading AI experts, government officials, academics, entrepreneurs and technology executives.

Yılmaz said Türkiye had made notable progress since the launch of its first National Artificial Intelligence Strategy covering the 2021-2025 period.

According to the vice president, Türkiye ranked 44th in global AI indices in 2021, the year the strategy was introduced, but rose to 34th place by the end of 2024.

“This demonstrates that Türkiye has gained significant momentum, but we believe we must reach an even better position,” he said.

Yılmaz said the new strategy would address emerging global trends such as agentic artificial intelligence systems, sovereign AI approaches, data sovereignty and next-generation model architectures.

He also emphasized the importance of strengthening institutional structures to support AI-driven transformation.

As part of those efforts, Türkiye has established the Directorate General for National Technology and Artificial Intelligence within the Ministry of Industry and Technology, as well as the Directorate General for Public Artificial Intelligence under the Presidency of Cybersecurity.

Yılmaz underlined that the government attaches strategic importance to ensuring that Turkish is strongly represented in AI systems and large language models.

“We see the strong representation of Turkish in artificial intelligence models as a strategic issue,” he said. “For this reason, we attach great importance to Turkish large language model initiatives.”

He added Türkiye aims to support the development of domestic AI solutions trained on local data and tailored to national needs, particularly in strategic sectors.

The government is promoting AI applications across a wide range of fields, including health care, finance, education and telecommunications, with the goal of increasing both economic productivity and social benefits.

Yılmaz said strengthening research and development capacity would remain a priority as Türkiye seeks to advance its National Technology Initiative and position itself as a more competitive player in the global AI landscape.

He expressed hope that the summit would foster new ideas and partnerships that contribute to the country’s long-term artificial intelligence goals.

DAILYSABAH