- AI usage by Turkish citizens reaches 60%
- Only 7.5% in the business world
- State support for SMEs is necessary
The Turkish public’s understanding of artificial intelligence is among the highest in the world, but the business sector is lagging behind, according to a new study.
More than four-fifths of Turks have heard of AI, with usage rates of almost 60%, according to the report by the Turkish Association for Artificial Intelligence Policy.
Although survey participants were heavily using AI platforms and chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok, this phenomenon has declined sharply within the Turkish business community, but has gradually increased among them as awareness has increased.
These findings echo statistics from state agency Turkstat, which show that business use of AI increased by more than half in 2025, albeit from a low and falling base the previous year.
In 2024, less than 5% of Turkish companies have deployed AI, lower than in 2023. This decline reversed in 2025, with Turkstat survey data showing that 7.5% of companies are using the technology, but this figure is considerably lower than the European Union average of 20%.
There is strong interaction with AI at the individual level, with Turkey also ranking highly in digitalization and e-commerce. But Emrehan Aktuğ, a digitalization expert and assistant professor of economics at Istanbul’s Sabanci University, said the majority of players in Turkey’s economy are insulated from this emerging trend.
“Companies with high capital and well-established international relationships are ready and can undertake this transformation,” he said. AGBI.
“However, small and medium-sized businesses, which account for more than 50 percent of GDP and 72 percent of employment, will face difficulties due to their very low rate of digitalization… (and this) means a lack of readiness for AI. »
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Only 6.6 percent of companies falling into the SME category and employing fewer than 50 employees use AI in their work, compared to 24 percent of large companies – those with 250 or more employees – according to Turkstat.
Even though the potential for AI deployment by businesses is high, without state assistance to SMEs in the form of incentives and technological support for digital transformation, Turkey risks ending up with a two-speed economy with a growing gap between those using AI and the larger rest who are left behind, Aktuğ said.