Erdoğan Reshuffles Turkish Cabinet

- The new Justice Minister, Akın Gürlek, previously served as the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor and has a history of leading politically sensitive cases, including those against opposition figures like Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu. His appointment is viewed by the opposition as a continuation of a political crackdown. - Mustafa Çiftçi, the new Interior Minister, is a career bureaucrat who previously served as the governor of Erzurum. His background is in provincial administration, security, and disaster management. - No official reason was provided for the departure of the former ministers, Yılmaz Tunç and Ali Yerlikaya, beyond the statement that they "requested to be relieved" of their duties. - This cabinet change is the first since the mid-2023 elections and is seen by some analysts as signaling a potential "new wave of lawfare" and increased pressure on the political opposition. - Turkey's National Artificial Intelligence Strategy aims to increase AI's contribution to GDP to 5% and grow the number of people employed in the sector to 50,000. The government is actively supporting AI startups through various initiatives and funding mechanisms. - In 2025, Turkish startups in the diaspora raised $1.1 billion across 41 funding rounds, producing three new unicorns. The domestic startup ecosystem is also growing, with a significant number of new AI startups founded since 2020. - The Turkish Central Bank cut its benchmark policy rate to 37% in its first meeting of 2026, a smaller cut than anticipated, signaling a cautious approach to monetary policy amid ongoing inflation. - Recovery efforts from the February 2023 earthquakes are ongoing, with the disaster having caused a direct economic loss of $104 billion and indirect costs of $150 billion. Three years after the earthquakes, hundreds of thousands of people still reside in container housing, and unemployment in the affected regions remains higher than the national average.