- AI usage rate among Turkish citizens is 60%
- Only 7.5% in the business world
- National support for small and medium-sized enterprises is necessary
Turkish citizens have the highest understanding of artificial intelligence in the world, but the corporate sector lags behind, according to a new survey.
More than four-fifths of Turks have heard of AI, and its usage rate is nearly 60 percent, according to a report by the Turkish Artificial Intelligence Policy Association.
Although the survey participants had a high usage rate of AI platforms and chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok, the proportion decreased sharply in the Turkish business community, but gradually increased among the latter as awareness grew.
The findings are in line with statistics from the national agency Turkstat, which showed that the use of AI by companies will increase by more than half in 2025, after a low and declining trend in previous years.
In 2024, less than 5% of Turkish companies implemented AI, which was lower than in 2023. This decline will reverse in 2025, with Turkstat survey data showing that 7.5% of companies are using AI technology, which is well below the European Union-wide average of 20%.
At the individual level, AI interaction is strong, and Turkey also ranks highly in digitalization and e-commerce. However, Emrehan Aktug, a digitalization expert and assistant professor of economics at Sabancı University in Istanbul, said the majority of actors in the Turkish economy are isolated from this new trend.
“Companies with significant capital and established international connections are ready and able to undertake this transformation,” he said. AGBI.
“However, SMEs, which account for more than 50 percent of GDP and 72 percent of employment, will suffer from very low digitization rates… [and this] That means we are unprepared for AI. ”
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According to Turkstat, only 6.6 percent of small businesses with fewer than 50 employees use AI in their operations, compared to 24 percent of large businesses with 250 or more employees.
While the potential for AI adoption by businesses is high, without state support for small and medium-sized enterprises through incentives and technical assistance for digital transformation, Turkey risks widening the gap between companies leveraging AI and the remaining large companies, leaving the economy behind in the pace of the two, Aktug said.
