Mark Carney arrived in Ankara on Thursday to meet Recep Tayyip Erdogan, making the first dedicated bilateral visit to Turkey by a Canadian prime minister. The two-day trip forms part of Carney’s effort to broaden Canada’s trade relationships as its relationship with Washington grows more adversarial amid a damaging trade war.
At a ceremony in Ankara, Canada and Turkey elevated their relationship to a strategic partnership. The joint effort has four pillars, covering trade and investment, defence and security, energy, and social and diplomatic ties, alongside a three-year action plan.
Canadian and Turkish ministers signed cooperation agreements on energy, defence and air transport. Carney was accompanied by Foreign Minister Anita Anand and Energy Minister Tim Hodgson, who was to lead the energy discussions.
The partnership is intended to give substance to a relationship whose trade has risen by nearly 50% in the past five years. Erdogan said the countries aimed to take trade volume from $3 billion to $5 billion, then to $10 billion.
Erdogan, who has led Turkey for 23 years, said at the signing: “today, we have alleviated the long-standing Turkey-Canada disconnect”. He praised Carney for “common-sense and acumen” on the world political stage.
He also said the two countries had “overcome the disconnect that had persisted between Turkiye and Canada for many years” and were “launching a new era.”
Canadian and Turkish negotiators will begin the first round of free-trade talks next month in Ankara. Carney and Erdogan had launched negotiations for a free-trade agreement at the NATO leaders’ summit in July, when Turkey also agreed to join Canada’s Defence, Security and Resilience Bank as a founding member.
Energy is set to be a central test of the new arrangement. Turkey’s energy minister, Alparslan Bayraktar, told Kanal 7 on Sunday that energy, particularly nuclear power, would be among the leading items on the agenda. The two countries’ energy ministers will work on liquefied natural gas, nuclear energy and critical minerals.
Ankara expects the talks to cover possible Turkish purchases of liquefied natural gas from Canada and critical minerals. A working group is expected to examine whether Canada’s CANDU could bid to build a planned nuclear plant on Turkey’s Black Sea coast.
Defence discussions are expected to centre on drones and naval cooperation. Canada removed weapons-export controls on Turkey in 2024, including controls on optical technology used in drones.
Carney is pursuing the partnership while seeking to reduce Canada’s exposure to the US, where President Donald Trump has applied sweeping tariffs. In the last year, Canada has signed more than 20 trade deals as Carney pursues a goal of doubling non-US exports in the next decade.
Carney has described the aim as “not self-sufficiency; it is collective resilience” through deeper partnerships with reliable partners. He was scheduled to travel to Istanbul on Friday for talks with Turkish business leaders.
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