By Graham MacInnis
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday became the first Canadian prime minister to make a bilateral visit to Türkiye, launching a “strategic partnership” with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that commits the two NATO allies to free trade talks, defence-industry cooperation and more direct flights — the latest move in Ottawa’s campaign to lean less on the United States.
“We are in the midst of a rupture. The old order is not coming back,” Mr. Carney said in remarks alongside Mr. Erdoğan in Ankara. “The institutions that have ensured our security and prosperity for decades are under threat.”
“The most resilient countries bring together complementary strengths with trusted partners,” he said. “Our goal isn’t self-sufficiency. It is collective resilience.”
What the two leaders signed
According to a joint statement, the partnership is backed by a three-year action plan with four pillars: trade and investment, energy, defence and security, and government and people-to-people ties.
- Free trade: Negotiators will hold the first round of free trade talks in Ankara next month, Mr. Carney said.
- Export finance: Export Development Canada and Türk Eximbank will sign an agreement to help companies from both countries work together on projects in third countries, particularly in energy, infrastructure, transportation, mining and critical minerals.
- Defence: A defence sector partnerships memorandum between Global Affairs Canada and Türkiye’s Secretariat of Defence Industries is meant to connect Canadian and Turkish defence companies.
- Flights: An air transport agreement will raise passenger flights between the countries from 12 a week to 21, with no limit on cargo flights.
- Energy: The leaders agreed to advance cooperation on liquefied natural gas, civil nuclear energy, renewables and critical minerals.
Mr. Carney said trade between the two countries has grown by almost 50% in the past five years, and that International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu will lead a Canadian trade mission to Türkiye next year. He was scheduled to meet Turkish business leaders in Istanbul on Friday.
Mr. Erdoğan described the agreements as a new chapter. “We had diplomatic relations, but we had some kind of disconnect for a very long time now,” he said, CBC News reported. “And today we put an end to it. Now comes a new period, a new era for Turkey and Canada.”
The human rights question
The visit comes as human rights groups raise alarms over a sweeping Turkish crackdown last month on dissent and civil society, including the dismantling of LGBTQ and HIV-advocacy organizations, CBC reported.
“The prime minister has been very clear. We need to engage with the world as it is, not the way we wish it to be,” Energy Minister Tim Hodgson, who joined Mr. Carney for the talks, said before the trip. “Where we have differences of opinion, we discuss those in private.”
Thomas Juneau, a Middle East expert at the University of Ottawa, told CBC the government appears to have made a choice “not to restrict diversification efforts only to democracies, only to countries that have positive human rights records.” He added: “This is morally a difficult dilemma on the Canadian side, but the calculus appears on the part of the government that if Canada were to choose to diversify only with democracies the ceiling for success would be low.”
The defence pillar revives an old dispute. Canada imposed what amounted to an arms embargo on Türkiye after Wescam targeting cameras exported under a 2020 exemption ended up in Turkish Bayraktar drones used by Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh war; most of those measures were lifted in 2024. Sevag Belian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of Canada, told CBC: “We have established through parliamentary investigation that the Turkish side clearly lied.”
Why it matters on this side of the border
For Western New York, where the economy is stitched to Ontario through the Peace Bridge and the Niagara crossings, the Ankara trip is another marker of how quickly Ottawa is building trade relationships that do not run through the United States. Much of that effort has gone into Europe and the Indo-Pacific, CBC noted; now it extends to a NATO ally with a market of more than 85 million people and, in his words, “a network of 24 free trade agreements.”
Türkiye remains a small partner next to the U.S., which still buys the overwhelming share of Canadian exports. But the direction is clear. Mr. Carney closed his remarks with a line meant for audiences at home and in Washington: “In this time of rupture, Canada honours that example: strength at home, partnership abroad.”
Mr. Erdoğan has accepted an invitation to visit Canada at a date to be set, according to the joint statement.
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