Türkiye AI Opportunities Radar
A demand-first map of where Türkiye and its SMEs can sell into the global AI economy now, organised by the five AI value chains. The instrument operationalises the TBMM AI Commission Report No. 260 (March 2026) — turning its strengths, constraints and recommendations into winnable, sequenced entry wedges for government and industry alike.
Where value is created — and where an underserved economy can win
Chains 1–2 are capital-, compute- and chip-heavy: mostly consume, with selective sovereignty plays. Chains 3–5 are the export sweet spot — the on-ramp is Services, the margin is Products, the moat is Knowledge & Governance.
Foundation AI
Frontier models & research. Capital, compute, elite talent.
Consume · sovereigntyAI Infrastructure
Compute, cloud, chips, data centres.
Consume · enableAI Products
SaaS, platforms & agents. Scale & margin.
Sell · exportSolutions & Services
Integration, automation, consulting. The on-ramp.
Sell · fastest entryKnowledge & Governance
Evaluation, compliance, data & trust. The moat.
Sell · differentiateWhere the winnable opportunities sit
Vertical: opportunity strength (export reach + strategic value). Horizontal: time to first revenue. Bubble size: scale of demand. Colour: value chain. Notice chains 1–2 land slow & capital-heavy; 3–5 cluster in the winnable zone.
The wedges
Fourteen entry points across the five value chains. Each names its buyer, its Türkiye fit, the binding constraint the TBMM report flags, the real government lever, the SME first move — and the parliamentary recommendation it operationalises.
Signals since last edition
TBMM AI Commission Report No.260 published
923-page parliamentary report sets the 2030 vision and recommends a Türkiye AI Agency, a Türkiye Data Agency, a framework AI Law with a regulatory sandbox and trustworthy-AI stamp, plus a national AI-in-agriculture roadmap.
Public AI Directorate created
A dedicated Public AI Directorate plus a renamed National Technology & AI directorate — mandated for data centres, shared data-space and public-dataset standards.
Kumru-2B: first from-scratch Turkish LLM
VNGRS open-sourced a 2B Turkish model with a 500 GB corpus; T3AI (T3/Baykar) and Trendyol's 7–70B models round out a real local stack.
Draft AI law tracks the EU AI Act
Türkiye's draft AI legislation is aligned to the EU AI Act — turning regulatory adjacency into an exportable compliance service before the market matures.
How to read the radar
The instrument inverts the usual telescope. Readiness reports start from a country's maturity and grade the gaps. This starts from live global demand and asks what Türkiye can supply into it, fastest, with the assets it already has — then checks that against the constraints the TBMM report names honestly.
The two axes
Export reach + strategic value. Higher = further up.
How fast a Turkish SME banks the first contract. Faster = further left.
Scale of addressable demand — niche to very large.
Why chains 3–5
Foundation (1) and Infrastructure (2) are gated by capital, compute and chips — the very things the report flags as Türkiye's weaknesses, so they read as slow, strategic bets to consume and selectively build for sovereignty. The exportable value sits in Products (3), Solutions & Services (4) and Knowledge & Governance (5) — enter via 4, scale via 3, defend via 5.
Discipline & honesty
Each wedge carries a confidence tag and, crucially, a binding constraint drawn from the TBMM report's own weakness analysis — because a decision-grade instrument shows its risks rather than hiding them behind a score.
- High — active market with a Turkish base already visible.
- Medium — credible fit, execution unproven at export scale.
- Emerging — market being created now; early-mover upside, higher risk.
On defence
Defence & autonomous systems is a genuine national strength (ASELSAN, HAVELSAN, TUSAŞ) and a stated priority, but it is prime-contractor-led, dual-use and export-controlled. The wedge here is scoped strictly to civilian / dual-use supplier adjacencies — simulation, test, cyber-assurance, embedded microelectronics — not weapons or autonomous-targeting capability.