Overview
- Canada’s prime minister will travel to Ankara and Istanbul later this month for meetings with President Tayyip Erdogan and Turkish business leaders, making this the first dedicated bilateral visit by a Canadian PM to Turkey.
- Carney will press priorities that include energy, aerospace, advanced technologies, mining and critical minerals and will promote Canada as an investment destination.
- The trip builds on steps taken at the NATO summit, where Canada launched free-trade talks with Turkey and invited Turkey to join its Defence Security and Resilience Bank to deepen security cooperation.
- The visit is a visible element of Ottawa’s broader strategy to reduce reliance on the United States and expand non-US trade through new bilateral and multilateral partnerships.
- Canadian officials face domestic coordination and international hurdles, and advocacy groups have criticized Ottawa’s stance on human-rights issues in Turkey, a set of tensions that could shape outcomes from the visit.