ANKARA
The Türkiye Tech Visa program officially approved 22 foreign startups to relocate their innovative projects to the country.
The General Directorate of National Technology has been restructured into the General Directorate of National Technology and Artificial Intelligence, according to the 2025 activity report by the Industry and Technology Ministry.
The restructuring is aimed at regulating AI development ethically while building the necessary data, infrastructure, and human resources capacity, and implementing projects to boost the country’s tech competence, develop its IT workforce, and drive digital transformation strategies.
A total of 667 companies earned the official “Tech Startup Badge” by the end of 2025. The certification system is designed to help innovative firms access public funding and investments.
The country’s badge portal, which verifies competencies, has issued 400,000 certificates and badges to 225,000 recipients, the report showed.
Thirty-five qualifying firms were accepted into the Turcorn 100 program, which helps rapidly growing tech startups to scale and enter global markets, by the end of the year.
The ministry’s Technology and Innovation Fund, valued at $10.8 million, invested $2.79 million into eight tech startups.
Ankara is working to develop integrated circuit design capabilities for the mobility, electronics, and defense sectors via a program for pre-emptive collaboration.
Applications were received under a call for developing sector-specific AI agents running a Turkish large language model (LLM).
Additional initiatives related to the projects include a map and navigation app development call and a nuclear reactor development project.
Meanwhile, a program to connect companies with universities called “the Sector is on Campus” (Sektor Kampuste) brought together 108 firms with 204 universities throughout last year, enabling 9,573 students to attend 330 specialized courses taught by industry professionals.
The National Technology Expertise Programs, aimed at giving AI training to students among other areas, accepted some 2,500 students for the 2024–2025 academic year.
The Deneyap tech workshops program currently operates 131 facilities across all 81 provinces of Türkiye.
The program has served 9,490 students since 2019 with its three-year curriculum covering 11 tech fields.
*Writing by Emir Yildirim in Istanbul