As I have discussed in my previous op-eds in Daily Sabah throughout the year, 2025 has marked a decisive inflection point. Technology is no longer a vertical policy; it is the system’s new gravity. Global competition has consolidated around artificial intelligence (AI), indigenous computing, semiconductor independence, cyber-AI defense stacks and the ownership of strategic data flows. When historians look back, 2025 may well be remembered as the year the technopolar world moved from metaphor to material reality.

This technopolar world, a term I have advanced in earlier writings and in my recently published book, "Cognitive Diplomacy and Digital Autonomy: Statecraft in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” describes an order where state power is co-produced and constantly contested by technological capacity, algorithmic ecosystems, chip supply security and cross-border data infrastructures that rival physical frontiers in strategic importance. In such an environment, sovereignty must be recast through what I conceptualize as Digital Autonomy, the ability of a state to command its own data, run resilient AI models on domestic compute, produce or secure trusted chip pipelines and engage diplomatically with AI not as a consumer but as a shaping force.

The Westphalian ideal assumed authority was spatial and exclusive. 2025 has shown that authority is computational and recursive. AI systems optimize, adversaries iterate, alliances form around shared datasets and chip corridors and national doctrines increasingly embed algorithms. The old geopolitical adjacency of neighbors and rivals is now mirrored by algorithmic adjacency: who trains with whom, on which data, and atop which chips matters as much as shared borders once did.

AI ecosystems, chip bottlenecks

Across 2025, ministries of foreign affairs, defense organizations, multilateral bodies and global platforms have entrenched AI as the new coordinating substrate. AI governance discussions expanded well beyond labs into presidential communiques, G-20 language and multilateral task forces. The core takeaways are clear: inclusion and capacity building for emerging economies, responsible and ethical frameworks, preventing algorithmic harm and a call for fairer participation in AI innovation.

Yet, beyond the principles, 2025’s deeper story is not moral language alone. It is the acceleration of AI into national strategic playbooks. AI is the infrastructure of cognition in diplomatic engagement, defense planning, media ecosystems and economic signaling. The countries that have invested early in AI strategy orchestration are graduating from capability acquisition to governance, optimization, resilience and diplomatic influence.

Furthermore, beneath the high politics of AI, 2025 has highlighted a physical reality: The algorithmic ambitions ultimately run on silicon. Compute clusters are gated by chip access, and chip supply chains have geo-economic choke points. This makes chip autonomy, in other words, cognitive resilience, not a slogan, but a condition. States unable to secure stable chip pipelines experience AI power as mediated by external supply, and mediated power is contingent power.

Several regions, from East Asia’s fabrication dominance to Western export control regimes, have demonstrated that chip geopolitics shapes AI geopolitics. Domestic processors, trusted semiconductor sourcing, or strategic chip partnerships are the scaffolding of real digital autonomy. AI is fast, but silicon is scarce by design.

Türkiye’s 2025 position

As the international system endures this algorithmic transformation, Türkiye steps into this new order not from zero, but from a decade of intentional policy sequencing, rooted in its National Technology Move and anchored by institutions that directly couple innovation to strategic resilience. 2025 has seen a visible maturation across several layers of Türkiye’s technological statecraft.

First, AI-enabled defense architectures moved from prototypes into integrated national doctrine design thinking. Indigenous systems like the layered Steel Dome air defense concept, the development of Kızılelma’s aerial autonomy pipeline and the family of Ulaq unmanned maritime platforms illustrate how Türkiye couples AI with deterrence stacks that are locally produced or deeply localized in supply trust. The emphasis on domestic components matters strategically. Autonomy that cannot scale domestically cannot anchor diplomacy.

Second, Türkiye has strategically leveraged its geography to create digital connectivity corridors. Regional fiber networks, cross-continental subsea cable participation, and the expansion of data center ecosystems demonstrate that Ankara’s policy doctrine views data flows as strategic arteries. Türkiye frames these corridors not only for commercial bandwidth, but for algorithmic training, economic ties, and digital resilience alliances that bring Africa, Central Asia and the broader Global South into shared innovation conversations.

Third, 2025 has underscored Türkiye’s intentional pivot from "implementation lighthouse” to "governance leadership” in AI diplomacy. Through Cognitive Diplomacy, a functional triplex model I have proposed in my latest book, diplomatic influence in the AI era is built via presence, practice and resilience. Presence refers to cognitive visibility through publishing, agenda setting and institutional convening. Practice encompasses the ability to operationalize AI partnerships, deploy models and secure real-world algorithmic outcomes. Resilience denotes systemic immunity, achieved by safeguarding models, chip supply trust and strategic data corridors against coercive dependency, bias manipulation and cognitive interference. Today, Türkiye’s academics, institutions, and policy bodies have broadened the AI debate across many fields and diplomatic alignments. Practice is advancing through AI-enabled defense tech, data partnerships, and techno-norm entrepreneurship that move beyond adoption into contribution. On resilience, chip trust partnerships, fiber networks, peering stacks and domestic compute investments are gradually reducing mediated dependency.

Moreover, Türkiye’s strategic position in 2025 in technology sits atop an important diplomatic advantage: she is not located at the core bottleneck of chip fabrication dominance, nor is she locked into the narrow consumer lane of global AI. This creates geopolitical maneuvering space for inclusive technology leadership rather than exclusionary technology rivalry.

As African capitals, Turkic republics, and emerging Global South partners have increasingly entered AI discussions, Türkiye’s balanced global positioning gives it legitimacy to lead debates on inclusive AI, fair data corridors, ethical regulation and shared algorithmic training partnerships without being perceived as acting for a narrow techno-national bloc.

2026 lesson: Sovereignty needs silicon

The lesson of 2025 for global governance is equally the lesson for Türkiye’s 2026 goals: AI strategy without a chip strategy is architecture without a foundation. Chip strategy without data corridors is fabrication without circulation. Data corridors without cognitive diplomacy are connectivity without influence.

Türkiye’s relative gains in 2025 already reveal the outline of a competitive 2026 posture: its air-AI defense integrations are strengthening, data center ecosystems are regionalizing influence, diplomatic institutions are engaging AI governance normatively, and academic outputs have built visibility. The next step is to weave these layers into strategic coherence.

As the world moves into 2026, statecraft will increasingly become algorithmic, but sovereignty will remain anchored in trusted compute and chip pipelines. Diplomacy will not be measured by communiques alone, but by cognitive presence, ethical practice and end-to-end resilience.

As Türkiye’s diplomatic approach is always driven by solidarity, responsibility and equality, I believe Türkiye meets 2026 not as an adopter standing at the threshold of AI, but as a contributor strengthening its digital autonomy, deepening trust in its chip supply security and scaling its cognitive diplomatic influence responsibly. This growing proficiency, carefully and systematically built in Türkiye, will also generate meaningful pathways for sharing technological know-how with brotherly and allied countries, supporting their capacity development in parallel.

From this perspective, Türkiye’s technological advancements are not unfolding in isolation; they also help mitigate the digital asymmetry faced by technologically underdeveloped states that continue to endure conditions of techno-dependence and external compute reliance. In the long term, Türkiye’s progress contributes to a fairer and more balanced digital order by reducing the strategic risks of entrenched techno-dependence for partner countries and empowering them as stakeholders rather than bystanders in the AI era.

As our President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has firmly stated, "a fairer world is possible,” Türkiye not only advocates this vision through its peace-promoting and mediation-oriented diplomacy, but also strengthens it through technological advancement, expanding the democratization of critical technologies to nations and societies that have historically struggled to access them.