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Türkiye’s Cybersecurity, Critical Infrastructure, and National Resilience in a Technopolar World Order

In an era where cybersecurity has become a defining element of global power competition and national security, Türkiye is developing its cyber capabilities to protect its critical infrastructures, ensure national resilience, and assert its strategic autonomy. As the international landscape shifts toward a technopolar world order, Türkiye aims to protect its national resilience from cyber threats from state-sponsored and non-state actors. In this context, this article examines Türkiye’s cybersecurity policies. It focuses on its strategic efforts to secure critical infrastructure, strengthen cyber resilience, and navigate the complexities of cyber governance in an evolving geopolitical environment. In addition, the article explores Türkiye’s approach to strengthening its digital sovereignty through national cybersecurity legislation, a Cybersecurity Presidency, the establishment of other key defense agencies, and investments in local technologies. It assesses the resilience of key sectors such as energy, finance, transportation, and defense against cyber threats, and analyses the role of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity in mitigating risks. Finally, the article analyses Türkiye’s cybersecurity trajectory against other emerging powers and highlights its evolving role in shaping global cyber governance.

Türkiye s Cybersecurity Critical Infrastructure and National Resilience in a
 

 

Introduction

 

The development process of cybersecurity, which began with information security, has expanded over time to encompass many areas. While information security aims to protect information and its environment independently, cybersecurity expands this concept and aims to protect not only information and information systems, but also individuals and other digital assets of society in the cyber environment. In other words, cybersecurity goes beyond information security and covers the protection of individuals and societal values against digital threats.1 Therefore, it is now generally accepted that cybersecurity is both an important issue of international politics and a part of the severe competition and cooperation dynamics between great powers.2 At this point, beyond the great powers, international politics has also become an environment of competition by giant tech companies.

Therefore, it is observed that the complex nature of cybersecurity is increasing. Cybersecurity is not only a technical issue; it is much more than that. It is a political issue. Thence, cybersecurity is a process that involves not only technical solutions but also social and political factors.3 It is not only a critical concept used in the defense of cyberspace, but also the protection of everything operating in cyberspace and all assets that can be accessed through cyberspace.4 However, today, the transformation of cyberspace into an ever-growing domain, such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud systems, and intelligent robots, poses new challenges in ensuring the security of this area. With the increasing use of Large Language Models (LLM) in recent years, the risk of misuse of LLM, especially for disinformation and cyber-attacks, poses serious threats, which raises the idea that ethical and security standards should be strictly followed. Their capacity to generate persuasive content and automate attacks increases these risks.5

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