TÜİK: the share of people using generative AI in Türkiye rose to 37.6% in one year
Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) figures for 2026 show that 37.6% of people aged 16-74 say they use generative AI, up from 19.2% a year earlier. Among enterprises with 10 or more employees, AI use climbed to 14%, and the firms that use it apply it to marketing or sales more than anything else.
Individual use almost doubled in a single year
TÜİK released its AI Statistics for 2026, and Anadolu Ajansı, Bloomberg HT and Cumhuriyet (carrying a DHA report) published the figures on October 2, 2026. The bulletin looks at two separate groups: individuals aged 16 to 74, and enterprises employing 10 or more people. For individuals, the headline measure is generative AI. The share who reported using it went from 19.2% in 2025 to 37.6% this year.
The enterprise measure is broader: use of any AI technology at all. That figure stood at 7.5% in 2025 and reached 14% in 2026, against 2.7% back in 2021. So the two headline numbers are not like for like. One tracks generative AI among people, the other tracks any kind of AI inside companies.
Young people and large firms lead, marketing comes first
The gender gap is small: 37.2% of men and 38.1% of women. Age matters far more. The 16-24 group sits at 64.9%, the 25-34 group at 55.7% and the 35-44 group at 38.1%. By education, university graduates lead at 62.7%, followed by high school or vocational high school graduates (45.4%), primary or middle school graduates (35.5%) and primary school graduates (8.5%). Among users, 86.4% said they used it for private purposes, 37.3% for work and 32.6% for formal education.
Company size draws a clear line. AI use reached 12.8% in firms with 10-49 employees, 17% with 50-249 and 37.1% with 250 or more, compared with 2.3%, 3.6% and 9.6% in 2021. Telecommunications, programming and IT is the leading sector at 63.7%. Among AI-using enterprises, marketing or sales is the most common purpose at 51%, ahead of research and development or innovation (46.3%) and production or service processes (43.4%). Some 67.8% use open-source and 49.1% closed-source software, whether free or paid. External providers built the systems for 46.5% of them, while 32.1% built them in house. And 16.6% said they process personal data such as gender, age, address, purchase records or facial images with these tools.
Use is more widespread among customers than in small firms
Use roughly doubled in a year among both individuals and enterprises. Yet 37.6% of individuals use generative AI, while any AI use among firms with 10-49 employees stands at 12.8%. The measures differ, but in our reading the gap suggests customers are reaching these tools more widely than small businesses are. The fact that AI-using firms turn to marketing or sales first also suggests where a small business could start. One caveat matters here: the 51% describes enterprises with at least 10 employees that already use AI, not every business.
The barriers come in a clear order too. 8.3% of enterprises do not use AI but are considering it (7.4% of firms with 10-49 employees, 12.2% with 50-249, 14.9% with 250 or more). For this group the biggest obstacle is a lack of relevant expertise (72.3%), followed by legal uncertainty about who is liable if something goes wrong (66.4%) and worries about data protection and privacy breaches (65.4%). These percentages apply only to firms in that considering group. All three top reasons relate to know-how and governance rather than the technology itself.
The news is Türkiye data, the rest is our commentary
This time the Türkiye section rests directly on the sources. Generative AI use among 16-74 year-olds is 37.6% (19.2% in 2025). Use of any AI technology among enterprises with 10 or more employees is 14% (7.5% in 2025, 2.7% in 2021), and 12.8% for firms with 10-49 employees. Marketing or sales is the top purpose among AI-using firms at 51%. For firms considering AI, the top three barriers are expertise (72.3%), legal liability uncertainty (66.4%) and data protection and privacy (65.4%). We took these figures from the three news reports that carried the bulletin, not from the TÜİK bulletin itself. Firms with fewer than 10 employees fall outside the enterprise survey.
What follows is UNALSOFT commentary. When more than a third of people aged 16-74 use generative AI, a business's website, product information and contact channels are increasingly read through those tools as well. The barrier list can double as a roadmap for a small firm: first decide who owns the work, then which data may go into which tool, and only then pick the tool. This dataset is separate from the different survey we covered on September 24; the two sets of figures should not be combined.
The UNALSOFT view
Two lines in the bulletin stand out for us: AI-using firms apply it to marketing and sales more than anywhere else, and firms still on the fence name missing expertise as their first barrier. For a small business, the practical starting point is not a large transformation project but one repetitive task, such as answering incoming customer questions, preparing quotes or drafting campaign copy. With 16.6% of AI-using firms processing personal data, it also pays to write down early which data may go into which tool. That is why our agentic AI work defines the process and the data boundaries before choosing any tool.
Which part of your business should try AI first?
A short conversation is enough to pick one repetitive marketing or sales process together and set clear data boundaries for it.