Turkiye restructures its AI governance with new decrees, aiming to accelerate public-sector adoption, strengthen infrastructure, and position itself as a global artificial intelligence player.
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| With new institutions and standards, Turkiye is moving from AI strategy to execution, prioritizing infrastructure, ethics, and public-sector coordination. Image: CH |
ANKARA, TURKİYE — December 27, 2025:
Türkiye has taken a decisive step toward institutionalizing artificial intelligence policy with a series of new decrees that expand state oversight, coordination and ambition in the rapidly evolving technology sector. Published in the Official Gazette, the measures reflect Ankara’s intent to move beyond long-term planning and into a phase of concrete implementation.
At the center of the changes is the renaming of the Directorate General of National Technology under the Industry and Technology Ministry, which will now operate as the Directorate General of National Technology and Artificial Intelligence. The expanded title is more than symbolic. According to Industry and Technology Minister Mehmet Fatih Kacır, the directorate will be responsible for developing and executing strategies to grow Türkiye’s data center and cloud computing infrastructure—key foundations for any competitive AI ecosystem.
The new directorate’s mandate also includes setting standards and certification criteria for data centers, a move aimed at reducing regulatory fragmentation and creating a more predictable environment for investment. By bringing infrastructure development, regulation and certification under one institutional roof, the government is signaling that AI competitiveness is inseparable from control over data and computing capacity.
Beyond infrastructure, the directorate has been tasked with ensuring that artificial intelligence technologies are developed and deployed in line with ethical and reliable principles. This includes expanding data availability, workforce capacity and research support, while also coordinating AI governance at the national level and strengthening international cooperation. The emphasis mirrors a global trend in which governments seek to balance innovation with oversight as AI systems become more influential in economic and social life.
In parallel, Türkiye has established a new Public Artificial Intelligence Directorate General under the Presidency’s Cybersecurity Directorate. This body is designed to guide and regulate AI use across government institutions, highlighting the state’s view of AI as both a productivity tool and a strategic asset with security implications.
The public AI directorate will lead regulatory work on government AI applications, help align national legislation with international frameworks, and define principles for data governance in digital government. It will also assess institutional needs, develop a shared data-space infrastructure, and set quality standards for datasets used in public-sector AI projects—areas that have long constrained effective digital transformation.
Together, the two new structures suggest a more centralized and coordinated approach to AI policy. While this could accelerate adoption and reduce duplication across institutions, success will depend on effective cooperation between the public sector, academia and private industry. As Kacır noted, strong stakeholder coordination will be critical if Türkiye is to achieve its goal of becoming one of the leading countries in artificial intelligence.
The reforms position Türkiye at a pivotal moment: translating political ambition into operational capacity. Whether these new bodies can remain agile in the face of fast-moving technological change will determine how far the country can advance from regional influence toward broader global relevance in AI.