I. What Happened?
On December 25, 2025, two Presidential Decrees have been published in the Official Gazette:
- Presidential Decree No. 192, amending the institutional framework governing the Cybersecurity Presidency, which was established at the beginning of 2025. The Decree primarily covers amendments to:
- Reorganize the institutional structure of the Cybersecurity Presidency,
- Expand its mandate to explicitly cover digital government,
- Establish new general directorates, and
- Redefine its duties, powers, and staffing structure.
- Presidential Decree No. 191 introduced significant structural changes to the Ministry of Industry and Technology to centralize the governance of AI and digital infrastructure.
II. Reorganization of the Cybersecurity Presidency Structure
As part of the restructuring of service units, the following general directorates were newly established:
- Public Artificial Intelligence General Directorate,
- Digital Government General Directorate,
- Management Services General Directorate,
- Strategy Development Department,
- Office of the Private Secretary.
III. New Duties and Responsibilities of the Cybersecurity Presidency
In general, the amendments clarify that responsibilities previously falling within the duties of the Presidency’s Digital Transformation Office (“DTO”), such as the delivery of public services through digital channels (i.e. e-Government), the digitalization of the public sector, the public sector’s use of artificial intelligence, and data governance, have now been transferred to and consolidated under the Cybersecurity Presidency.
Accordingly, in addition to the duties assumed for the cybersecurity field, now, the Cybersecurity Presidency is tasked with the following duties:
- IT Procurement and Use of Public Institutions and Organizations:
- Determining procedures, principles and standards regarding administrative, financial, and technical characteristics of IT products, services and systems that will be supplied or developed by public institutions and organizations.
- Determining project management principles, procedures and principles regarding the IT projects of public institutions and organizations and providing opinions to the Strategy and Budget Presidency on their financial and technical aspects.
- AI & Data:
- Contributing to national policies, strategies and actions plans to be prepared in the field of AI.
- Contributing to the works on the harmonization of the national legislation with international regulations.
- Conducting legislative work on public-sector AI applications, which indicates that Türkiye is beginning to differentiate between regulatory expectations for public administrations and those that may later apply to the private sector.
- Establishing principles, procedures, and standards for data governance covering the management of data in the context of digital government and the use of AI technologies in the public sector, from its creation to its destruction.
- Pioneering AI applications in the public sector, identifying the relevant requirements in collaboration with the relevant institutions, implementing a common data infrastructure, determining the quality criteria and standards for data to be used in applications, and ensuring compliance with these criteria and standards.
- Digital Government:
- Conducting legislative work in the field of digital government, preparing national strategies and action plans, and coordinating and monitoring their implementation.
- Establishing the digital government institutional architecture.
- Developing and operating the e-Government Gateway and determining principles and standards for system integration and service delivery.
IV. General Directorate of National Technology and Artificial Intelligence of the Ministry of Industry and Technology
Presidential Decree No. 191 renames the “General Directorate of National Technology” as the “General Directorate of National Technology and Artificial Intelligence” (“Directorate”), which is granted with expanded mandates to oversee the strategic development of AI, data center and cloud ecosystems in Türkiye.
The responsibilities of the newly restructured Directorate include the following duties:
- AI:
- Establishing necessary legislative regulations for AI.
- Ensuring that AI technologies are developed and utilized in accordance with reliable and ethical principles.
- Developing and implementing national policy proposals and strategies
- Enhancing data, infrastructure and human resource capacity for the advancement of AI technologies
- Providing support for startups and R&D activities within the field of AI
- Developing international cooperation frameworks for AI
- Ensuring governance and coordination at a national scale, including contributing to AI projects conducted across various public institutions.
- Data Center and Cloud:
- Undertaking the development of data center and cloud computing infrastructure in the country, formulating and implementing policy recommendations and strategies in this field, establishing criteria and standards for data centers, and implementing regulations for certification and authorization.
