Turkey creates new AI-focused directorates to modernize public sector

Turkey’s decision to spin up AI‑specific directorates inside its industrial and public‑sector apparatus is part of a broader wave of “AI ministries by stealth” across middle‑income countries. Rather than creating a standalone AI ministry, Ankara is embedding AI mandates into existing structures—here, by upgrading a national technology directorate into a combined technology‑and‑AI body with explicit responsibility for cloud, data‑center and standards policy. ([fr.businessam.be](https://fr.businessam.be/la-turquie-accelere-le-developpement-et-le-deploiement-de-lintelligence-artificielle-dans-le-secteur-public/))

For the AGI race, this is less about Turkey training frontier‑scale models and more about building a domestically governed substrate—compute, data centers, procurement standards—on which AI applications can spread through government services. That still matters: as more countries set their own technical baselines and certification schemes, global AI companies will need bespoke compliance strategies, especially around hosting and data residency. The move could also create space for local AI vendors to win government contracts under rules tuned to domestic infrastructure.

Strategically, Turkey is positioning itself as a regional AI hub that can serve public‑sector modernization across health, transportation and administration, while keeping a firm hand on ethics and sovereignty. If the new directorates can translate mandate into execution—real budgets, real pilots, real procurement reforms—they’ll become important gatekeepers for any AGI‑adjacent systems Turkey eventually imports or co‑develops.