Shortage of IT specialists slows Turkish business growth

Creative Commons/OCHA/Salih Zeki Fazlıoğlu

• 43% of companies struggle to hire
• Fall in ecommerce activity
• Education system inadequate

A shortage of trained IT specialists is slowing Turkish companies’ growth and their development of artificial intelligence applications, according to a new report. 

The report, issued by Turkey’s state statistics agency Turkstat, found some sectors had a strong uptake of ecommerce sales and services. Almost half of all accommodation and food service providers took advantage of IT, up from 36 percent in 2022. 

Most other sectors however reported a fall in ecommerce activity, including the information and communications segment itself. 

Underlying this dip was a shortage of skilled IT specialists, the report said. Among companies that recruited or tried to recruit expert staff over the past year, 43 percent of them had difficulties in filling positions.

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Central to this shortage is the failure of Turkey’s education system to meet the need for a workforce with specialised skills. It hasn’t adapted the curriculum to keep up with the rapid changes in the sector, said Ali Yazıcı, the vice general president of the Turkish Informatics Association. 

“Many universities providing these courses, but they are not producing qualified employees to meet the sectoral demand,” Yazıcı told AGBI. 

“To achieve this one either goes on to masters’ degree studies or on particular courses giving certificates in niche or vertical areas such as blockchain, or in the defence industry working on specific applications.” 

Another area of IT activity that was impacted by the shortfall in qualified personnel was AI. 

According to the Turkstat report, just 4 percent of Turkish enterprises made use of AI in 2024, down on the 5.5 percent posted the previous year. 

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Almost one in ten companies that did not use AI in their business said they were considering deploying it in future operations. But the lack of IT specialists was again cited as a stumbling block. 

Lack of relevant expertise within the staff of companies was given by 79 percent of respondents as a reason for not making use of AI. High costs were the next greatest impediment to using the technologies. 

Just one in five companies said that AI would not be useful in their operations, suggesting there was an appreciation that AI had something to offer Turkish companies, if it could be deployed. 

“Turkey is not far behind in AI but it has its weaknesses,” said Yazıcı. “It is applied in many sectors. But Turkey is applying rather than producing AI, so our problem is to produce associated new technologies.”