(Bloomberg) -- Starting in the 1940s, Turkey, wary of Moscow, positioned itself as an ally of the US and soon after joined NATO, the military alliance founded to protect Europe against Soviet attack during the Cold War. Since coming to power in 2003, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gradually reinvented Turkey as a power in its own right that’s free to make new friends even if it upsets the old ones. In the past decade, it’s been courting a number of US adversaries — China, Russia and Iran — as distrust of Western powers propelled its search for new partnerships. Now it’s seeking to join those three countries in the BRICS group of emerging-market nations.
Why is Turkey seeking to join BRICS?
Citing frustration over a lack of progress in its decades-old bid to join the European Union, Turkey has formally asked to join BRICS. The aim, according to people familiar with the matter, is to bolster Turkey’s global influence and forge new ties beyond the country’s traditional Western allies. Officials in Erdogan’s administration say that the geopolitical center of gravity is shifting away from developed economies and that joining BRICS could improve Turkey’s economic ties with Russia and China.
The BRICS grouping — named for the earliest members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — includes some of the biggest emerging economies and touts itself as an alternative to what its participants see as Western-dominated institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. New members can potentially broaden their political and trade relationships and get access to financing through the group’s development bank. Four new members — Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Egypt — joined at the start of 2024. Erdogan is scheduled to attend the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia starting Oct. 22.
What’s Turkey’s beef with the West?
During much of the Cold War, Russia was the hostile neighbor that motivated Turkey to seek powerful allies to help defend its territory. But Turkey’s ties with its Western allies began to deteriorate a decade ago. Erdogan accused Western governments of backing anti-government protests in Turkey in 2013 in the wake of the Arab Spring revolts. When the US in 2014 began to supply weapons to Kurdish militants in Syria who were helping in the effort to combat Islamic State, Turkey — which is fighting its own conflict with affiliated Kurdish separatists — saw the move as a betrayal.
Turkey’s sense that it must take its defense into its own hands was deepened in October 2015 when the US and then Germany withdrew air defenses from Turkey following Ankara’s crackdown after a surge of Kurdish militant violence. A month later, under pressure from the US Turkey canceled its plan to buy a missile-defense system from a state-run Chinese company that had been sanctioned by the US for alleged missile sales to Iran.
Erdogan’s anti-Western rhetoric escalated following a failed attempt by followers of a US-based cleric to topple his government in 2016. The same year, negotiations on Turkey joining the EU stalled. A year later, Turkey purchased an advanced Russian missile defense system, the S-400. It took delivery of it in 2019 after dropping talks to acquire a comparable US system, the Patriot, because of Washington’s refusal to share technology. Following the S-400 deal, the US barred Turkey from buying F-35 fighter jets out of concern the Russian system could be used to collect intelligence on their stealth capabilities. The US later imposed sanctions that effectively cut off Turkey’s top defense procurement agency from US financial institutions, military hardware and technology.
Further complicating Turkey’s relations with Western partners are Erdogan’s growing anti-Israeli rhetoric and criticism of US arms supplies to the Jewish state amid its punishing military campaign in the Gaza Strip against the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Erdogan has embraced Hamas, which the US and EU consider a terrorist organization.
What new ties is Turkey nurturing?
Turkey has opened dozens of diplomatic missions in Africa and Latin America as Erdogan seeks a major role in world affairs. He’s even vowed to make Turkey the first NATO member to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a China-led international security group that originally focused on Central Asia but is now expanding toward the Middle East.
Russia has become a major economic partner, supplying 42% of Turkey’s natural gas imports and 6.3 million tourists to the country last year. Russian state company Rosatom is building a $24-billion nuclear power station on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, and Turkey’s government has asked it to construct another.
Turkey is in talks with China to build a third nuclear power plant. It seeks to secure more Chinese investment in plants making electric vehicles as well as a partnership with China to process a deposit of rare earth elements.
What’s at stake?
Erdogan’s balancing act challenges Western efforts to forge a unified front to persuade Moscow to stop its war against Ukraine. In July, Erdogan cautioned fellow NATO members against taking steps that could drag the alliance into the war.
US officials have repeatedly warned that Turkish entities run the risk of running afoul of American sanctions against Russian entities and Hamas. But if the US pushes Erdogan too hard, it could jeopardize relations with an important partner in the volatile Middle East. Turkey hosts US nuclear warheads at an air base close to Syria and an early-warning radar that’s part of NATO’s ballistic-missile defense capabilities. It’s also absorbed millions of refugees from the Middle East and Asia and acted as a buffer for that flow to Europe.
Turkey, too is keen to avoid any move that could endanger it’s most important military alliance and scupper a deal to buy US-made F-16 warplanes and upgrade other military equipment.
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