OTTAWA - Prime Minister Mark Carney plans to visit Turkiye this month to meet President Tayyip Erdogan in what would be the first dedicated bilateral visit to the country by a Canadian leader, four sources with knowledge of the visit said. One of the sources said Carney and Erdogan could discuss the free-trade talks they launched on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Ankara in July, as well as potential energy and defense cooperation. Canadian and Turkish trade ministers agreed this week to accelerate the talks ahead of the leaders’ meeting, two sources said. The visit would mark Carney’s latest break with Canadian diplomatic convention as he seeks to reduce the country’s reliance on the United States, by far its biggest trading partner, after a collapse in trade talks in August. Trade war Carney has vowed to double Canada’s non-U.S. trade over the next decade and has rushed to establish ties with a host of countries, including China and India, with which it had past strains. He has focused less on human rights than his predecessors to forge ahead, backed by polls showing strong support among Canadians for his efforts to reinforce the economy in the face of U.S. tariffs. Erdogan, Turkiye’s leader of 23 years — whom rights groups have criticized for a crackdown on the political opposition since 2024 — seeks new markets and collaboration for the regional military power’s burgeoning defense industry. Erdogan says an independent judiciary is probing the opposition and rejects claims it is politically motivated. Turkiye, an emerging market economy whose biggest trading partner is the European Union, also seeks partnerships and investment in energy, infrastructure and mining. The sources did not share the dates or agenda of the visit planned later this month. Carney’s office and Erdogan’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Less focus on rights Western powers have grown relatively silent on Turkiye’s rights record as it has become a leading defense-industrial power and a bulwark against Russian aggression. Since last month, a wave of arrests and restrictions has targeted Turkiye’s LGBTQ+ community in a probe the government says aims to protect children and family values, but which has drawn sharp criticism from rights groups and some European officials. No Canadian prime minister is known to have made a standalone bilateral visit to Turkey in recent decades, though they have met Erdogan and other Turkish leaders on the sidelines of multilateral gatherings, including NATO and G20 summits hosted by Turkiye. Modest bilateral trade At the NATO leaders’ summit in July, Carney and Erdogan formally launched negotiations for a free-trade agreement. That month, Turkiye agreed to join Canada’s Defense Security and Resilience Bank as one of 10 founding member nations of Carney’s multilateral “middle powers” bank. The two countries’ trade ministers met in June and planned to expand cooperation on renewable and nuclear energy, a Canadian government statement said, listing aerospace, defense and security as areas of potential new partnerships. Turkiye has held talks with Canadian engineering firm AtkinsRealis ATRL.TO as well as South Korea’s Korea Electric Power Corporation and China’s State Power Investment Corporation about potentially building its second and third nuclear power plants, and Russia’s Rosatom is building its first. An executive at AtkinsRealis, which holds the exclusive licence for Canadian-designed CANDU reactors, told Reuters this year that it anticipates Turkiye will complete an early review of its CANDU reactors following an information exchange, which may lead to concrete talks for a plant bid. In a step that helped thaw bilateral ties in 2024, Canada removed weapons-export controls on Turkiye, including on optical technology used in drones that Turkiye exports to dozens of nations. Yet bilateral trade is small. Turkiye accounted for less than 0.3 per cent of Canada’s total merchandise trade in 2025, or C$4.34 billion, compared with C$1 trillion with the U.S., Statistics Canada data shows. Canada mainly exports lentils, aircraft and electronics to Turkiye, and imports medical devices, fishing vessels, aircraft engines and jewelry. ($1 = 1.4227 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by Jonathan Spicer, Promit Mukherjee and David Ljunggren; Additional reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever in Ankara; Editing by Rod Nickel)
