Our report "Civil Society and Artificial Intelligence in Türkiye", prepared as part of the gov2ai Türkiye project, is out. It brings together field evidence on where and how rights-based civil society organizations use AI, where they struggle and which risks they see.
The research is based on a survey of 45 organizations from 10 provinces. The median organization in the sample has 4 paid staff, so the findings reflect the everyday reality of small teams without a separate legal or IT unit.
Key Findings
- 96% of organizations use AI in at least one area.
- Only 14% have built AI into their core work.
- 95% have no written rules on copyright and intellectual property.
- 56% have no ethical framework for assessing their AI use.
- The most common barrier is finding the right area of use (53%), followed by implementation cost (44%).
According to the report, the key question is no longer whether AI is used, but where it is used and who decides on that use. When a staff member opens a tool for meeting notes or a translation, the organization has in effect decided what information is shared, even without a written rule. In short, safeguards are not being put in place at the same pace as use.
Toolkits for CSOs
Alongside the report, we prepared two free documents that bring its findings into the everyday work of a small CSO. Both are in Turkish; make a copy and fill it in for your own organization.
- AI Safeguards Toolkit: fillable templates to decide in a single meeting which tools you use, what information never goes into any tool and who checks texts before they go out.
- AI Governance Implementation Guide: a guide to which uses are fine, which need approval and which are off-limits, and how to verify outputs.
Read the full report and find the toolkits at cdr.technology/gov2ai-turkiye.
