In Ankara, the two leaders signed a three-year action plan covering trade, defence, energy and people-to-people ties — with a first target of lifting two-way trade from $3 billion to $5 billion, and a promise that the upgrade “will not remain only on paper”.
Published 22 October 2026 · 17:20 GMT
In Ankara, the two leaders signed a three-year action plan covering trade, defence, energy and people-to-people ties — with a first target of lifting two-way trade from $3 billion to $5 billion, and a promise that the upgrade “will not remain only on paper”. On Thursday 22 October 2026 in Ankara, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced the elevation of bilateral relations to a strategic partnership, backed by a three-year action plan. The plan rests on four pillars: trade and investment; defence and security; energy; and ties between peoples.
The factual core is undisputed across every source — on Thursday 22 October 2026 in Ankara, Prime Minister Mark Carney and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced the elevation of Canada-Türkiye relations to a strategic partnership, backed by a three-year action plan resting on four pillars: trade and investment; defence and security; energy; and ties between peoples.
The scale and durability of the defence reset. Erdoğan heralded a “new era” and signed memoranda; the written joint statement commits only to an “intent to deepen” cooperation.
Canadian analysis (CGAI) warns the January 2024 rupture was never truly settled — so whether today’s memoranda write down enforceable terms, or rest on goodwill, is unknowable until contracts appear.
On Thursday 22 October 2026, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appeared before the cameras in Ankara, after bilateral and inter-delegation talks, and announced that Canada-Türkiye relations were being elevated to a strategic partnership backed by a three-year action plan. Erdoğan called it the day’s most important result; Carney — on the first bilateral visit to Türkiye ever made by a Canadian prime minister — answered with a line aimed beyond the room: “There is a lot Turkey and Canada can do together. You can trust Canada as a partner.”
The joint statement framed the moment as necessity, not ceremony: “In an increasingly complex global security environment, rising geopolitical uncertainties, and evolving humanitarian challenges, a strong and resilient Canada-Turkiye partnership is essential, providing a foundation to mitigate shared threats and capitalise on new opportunities.” The plan rests on four pillars: trade and investment; defence and security; energy; and ties between peoples.
Erdoğan supplied the headline number: trade of around $3 billion would rise “to $5 billion initially and then to $10 billion through the steps we will take”. He confirmed defence memoranda of understanding had been signed “a short while ago”, flights between the two countries would double, and the label “will not remain only on paper”. “We have today overcome the disconnect that had persisted between Turkiye and Canada for many years,” he said. “Now we are launching a new era between Turkiye and Canada.”
On trade, the leaders agreed to “work toward successful conclusion of a Canada-Turkiye Free Trade Agreement” and to expand trade and investment in energy supply, defence production, aerospace and artificial intelligence. Negotiators meet in Ankara next month for the first round of trade talks. The track is not new: Carney and Erdoğan formally launched FTA negotiations on 7 July 2026 at the NATO summit in Ankara, after their trade ministers opened exploratory talks in Ottawa in June; Canadian public consultations concluded last month.
On defence and security, the statement “underlined their intent to deepen bilateral and multilateral cooperation” — covering the Euro-Atlantic, Ukraine, the South Caucasus and the Middle East, “in particular Gaza”. The memoranda signed before the press conference are the first written instruments of that intent, though their contents are unpublished. The Gaza language ties the partnership to the region’s live dossier — the same one where Qatar and France’s demand for a real Gaza ceasefire was issued days earlier — and the defence-industry dimension echoes the ‘Badr’ defence pact signed in Doha between Türkiye, Qatar, Pakistan and Indonesia.
On energy, ministers will work on LNG, nuclear and critical minerals. Türkiye is weighing Canadian CANDU technology for its second and third nuclear plants — Russia’s Rosatom is building the first — and AtkinsRealis told Reuters this year that Ankara was completing an early review of the Canadian design, a possible prelude to a bid.
The label itself, which unlocks ministerial machinery; the November trade round in Ankara; the fresh defence memoranda; and Carney’s Istanbul leg, where he pitches Canada to Turkish business leaders in energy, aerospace, advanced technologies — the AI boom’s global reckoning is the backdrop every government now plans against — and mining. The people-to-people pillar opens with doubled flights: concrete and checkable.
The defence memoranda’s contents, value and timelines are undisclosed — the “new era” in defence industry is, for now, a signed envelope with no visible letter. The $5 billion then $10 billion targets carry no date or mechanism: two-way merchandise trade was C$4.34 billion (about $3.05 billion) in 2025, under 0.3% of Canada’s total, so $10 billion means roughly tripling a flow that is today a rounding error in Ottawa’s trade book. The FTA has no conclusion date — “work toward successful conclusion” is the language of process. And the three-year plan itself is unpublished, so the benchmarks for judging it in 2029 do not yet exist.
Nothing about this visit is about Türkiye alone. Carney is on a self-declared trade blitz to buffer Canada from a US trade war — President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, Canadian retaliation, open questioning of Canadian sovereignty — and has vowed to double non-US trade within a decade after talks with Washington collapsed in August. As Bessma Momani of the University of Waterloo told Reuters: “This trip is part of the geopolitical necessity of signaling to Americans that we are not sitting around waiting for them.”
Türkiye is a deliberate choice: a NATO ally, a G20 economy, a rising defence-industrial power whose own balancing act — a Russian-built nuclear plant plus talks with Canadian, South Korean and Chinese vendors for the next ones — mirrors Ottawa’s new doctrine of dealing with everyone. In July, Türkiye joined Canada’s proposed Defence Security and Resilience Bank as a founding member — Carney’s multilateral vehicle for defence financing among middle powers. Ankara is one node in an architecture Ottawa is assembling at speed.
The economics are modest; the geometry is the point. A Canada pointing to a strategic partnership on NATO’s south-eastern flank — defence production, LNG, nuclear, critical minerals — is a Canada with options. Whether options become contracts is the test the next three years will grade.
The essential backgrounder is the Canadian Global Affairs Institute’s paper on the defence reset: within a decade, Canada has been the Turkish drone programme’s supplier, sanctioner and prospective customer in turn. The rupture — Ottawa’s controls on optical technology used in Turkish drones — went unmentioned by design when the reset came in January 2024 through alliance diplomacy, part of the bargain that secured Sweden’s NATO entry. Ottawa tightened what it controls — notice of re-export outside the alliance — but the underlying disagreement was never settled. The paper’s warning hangs over the ceremony: leaving the rupture unspoken entrusts the relationship to goodwill, “the most perishable footing a defence relationship can have”. Cooperation built issue by issue endures only when the parties write terms that survive changed circumstances.
Because Türkiye is the NATO ally that buys from everyone and lectures no one: a defence market where Canadian firms sell without the political costs of the American market, on a stage Washington cannot ignore. Carney’s “You can trust Canada as a partner” was addressed as much to watching Americans as to the Turks present. The risk — noted even in pre-visit Reuters reporting — is the one Ottawa left unmentioned: Western powers have gone quiet on Türkiye’s rights record as its defence industry rose, and a recent wave of arrests targeting the LGBTQ+ community drew sharp rights-group criticism. Partnerships built on silence have their own perishability — and this time the silence is bilateral.
Near-term winners: Canadian aerospace, mining and AI firms with a new ministerial tailwind; AtkinsRealis, whose CANDU review could mature into a reactor bid; Turkish defence exporters regaining a Western customer; carriers if doubled flights materialise. Watchers: Moscow — Rosatom builds Türkiye’s first plant while a Canadian rival circles the next two; Washington, reading each diversification headline as a verdict on its tariffs; the Gulf, where the ‘Badr’ defence pact signed in Doha shows Ankara collecting partnerships the way others collect summits.
The costs are political and diffuse: Ottawa’s human-rights credibility, thinned by the 2024 controls removal, thins further with each unmentioned crackdown. The FTA’s “successful conclusion” will eventually force the hard talk — agriculture, standards, procurement — that exploratory rounds defer. And the AI pillar will test export-control regimes both governments are still writing, against the backdrop of the AI boom’s global reckoning.
November 2026: the first round of trade talks in Ankara — the first checkable deliverable of the “new era”. First, Carney’s Istanbul leg with Turkish business leaders, where energy, aerospace, advanced-technology and mining pitches either produce memoranda or don’t. The energy ministers’ LNG–nuclear–minerals track needs terms of reference. The unpublished defence memoranda will be judged by the first contract announcement — or its absence. And the Gaza, Ukraine and South Caucasus language will be tested the next time those crises demand more than a communiqué; Qatar and France’s demand for a real Gaza ceasefire remains the region’s live wire, and both leaders have signed it.
West: Ottawa’s diversification story, told against Washington The Western wire, via Reuters, framed the visit as Carney’s push to ease US dependence — first bilateral visit by a Canadian leader, a four-area declaration, the sub-0.3% trade share laid bare. Canadian analysis digs into the unfinished business: the Canadian Global Affairs Institute traces a decade in which Canada was in turn the Turkish drone programme’s supplier, sanctioner and prospective customer, and warns the January 2024 reset — lifting weapons-export controls in the bargain that secured Sweden’s NATO entry — left the original rupture unspoken. The western lens reads Ottawa managing its American problem through Ankara, and asks whether the memoranda finally write down terms goodwill alone could not hold.
East: no eastern byline yet — a file the region is watching No East Asian outlet had reported the partnership as of publication — for now, an Ankara-Ottawa affair carried by Turkish, Canadian, Qatari, Indian and Western wires. The eastern reading is therefore labelled analysis, not reported coverage: Beijing and Seoul are both courting Ankara on nuclear and infrastructure, with China’s State Power Investment Corporation racing South Korea’s KEPCO for Türkiye’s second and third reactors. An Ottawa-Ankara defence axis, a CANDU review in train and a Canadian-Turkish FTA track are data points every Asian capital with nuclear-export ambitions will log.
South: Ankara reads a new era; the rest reads the method The Turkish press carried Erdoğan’s framing verbatim — “new era”, $5 billion then $10 billion, defence memoranda signed, flights to double — while TRT World underlined the first-bilateral-visit milestone. The Times of India read method over mood: the memoranda, the founding seat in Carney’s defence bank, the 2024 thaw — a template for middle powers hedging against great-power tariffs. Al Jazeera carried the joint statement’s Gaza, Ukraine and South Caucasus language in full — the paragraphs that matter most to the region, and the ones that will be quoted back at both leaders when those crises next demand more than words.
It is a formal upgrade of the relationship, not a treaty: it creates standing ministerial machinery, regular consultations and — here — a three-year action plan with named pillars. The label signals that both capitals treat the other as a priority partner across trade, defence and energy, and it unlocks bureaucratic follow-through that ad-hoc cooperation lacks. Its worth is proven only by deliverables.
Small in absolute terms: C$4.34 billion (about $3.05 billion) in two-way merchandise trade in 2025, under 0.3% of Canada’s total — against roughly C$1 trillion with the United States. But it has grown nearly 50% in five years. Canada mainly exports lentils, aircraft and electronics; it imports medical devices, fishing vessels, aircraft engines and jewellery. Erdoğan’s $10 billion target would roughly triple it.
On 7 July 2026, on the margins of the NATO summit in Ankara, the two leaders formally launched negotiations toward a comprehensive Canada-Türkiye free-trade agreement, following exploratory talks their trade ministers opened in Ottawa in June. That same month Türkiye joined Canada’s proposed Defence Security and Resilience Bank as one of ten founding members. Public consultations in Canada on the FTA concluded in September.
Ottawa imposed weapons-export controls on Türkiye, including on optical technology used in Turkish drones exported worldwide — making Canada, in one decade, the drone programme’s supplier, sanctioner and prospective customer. The controls were lifted in January 2024 as part of the alliance bargain that secured Sweden’s NATO entry, with new Canadian conditions on re-export. The original disagreement was never fully settled.
The first checkable milestone is the first round of trade talks in Ankara in November 2026. Before that, Carney’s Istanbul meetings with Turkish business leaders and investors. Then: terms of reference for the energy ministers’ LNG–nuclear–critical-minerals track, publication (or not) of the defence memoranda’s contents, and the first defence contract announcement — the true test of the “new era” claim.
