Mark Carney’s trip to Türkiye Wednesday marks the first ever bilateral visit to the country by a Canadian prime minister.
Carney will sit down with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara Wednesday, before heading to Istanbul for a series of business meetings. His office is not releasing who else he plans to meet with ahead of the trip.
While Reuters reports Canada and Türkiye will sign a joint declaration aimed at deepening ties in four areas including defence and energy, senior officials repeatedly declined to say what announcements are expected, beyond that something would be announced.
Another government source suggested what’s in the works is not finalized enough to the point of being able to share.
Officials did say the areas of trade focus include defence, energy, mining, tech and agriculture.
University of Ottawa international affairs Prof. Thomas Juneau calls Türkiye a “competitive autocracy” – too far removed to be considered a democracy.
The former Middle East policy analyst for the Department of National Defence agrees with the Carney government calculus that diversifying trade away from the United States requires going beyond dealing with pure democracies.
“The challenge, if, on moral grounds, we decide to limit our diversification efforts to democracies, is that there’s just not that many of them,” Juneau said.
“If we are to be serious in really being successful in diversifying our partnerships, trade and security, we simply must go beyond the small number of democracies, and that includes countries like Saudi Arabia, like Türkiye, with whom we do have common interests, but with whom we also do have serious disagreements,” Juneau told CTV News.
“Canada certainly engages with countries where we do not share 100 per cent of the values in all ways,” said one senior official at the briefing.
In July, speaking in Saudi Arabia on the same G20 trip that saw him visit Ankara, Carney said he believes “lecturing countries from afar is an ineffective strategy.”
At the G20 summit, Canada and Türkiye announced they were formally launching talks towards a free trade agreement.
Deepening ties with Türkiye has faced criticism, especially from Canada’s large Armenian diaspora.
“As Canadians, we’re very supportive of the government’s efforts to diversify trade relations. We just do not believe at all that Türkiye is the right partner,” Sevag Belian of the Armenian National Committee of Canada told CTV News, specifically mentioning human rights concerns and the country’s “destabilizing role” in the region.
Belian says the community is reacting to the trip with “alarm and concern.”
He says the biggest worry is that as part of the deepening of ties, Canada may reverse its stance on recognition of the Armenian genocide. Canada officially recognized the Armenian Genocide in 2004.
“We are very fearful that the Turkish side will put this issue on the table. But we are hopeful that the Canadian side won’t budge,” Belian says.
The University of Waterloo’s Bessma Momani doesn’t think the issue will be reopened.
But she tells CTV News, for the cost benefit analysis of dealing with Türkiye to be worth it, the trip must amount to more than a series of photo-ops.
“The way to make this worth it is to actually sign some real deals, investment, have corporations, both Canadian corporations investing in Türkiye, and similarly Turkish companies investing here-that will be the proof of success,” Momani said.
This summer, the government ran consultations allowing Canadians to weigh in on a potential free trade deal with Türkiye. While the processed wrapped up Sept. 14, a summary of what they found has not yet been released, and officials at the briefing declined to share a sense of the findings.
The defence relationship has been rocky, with Canada suspending arms export permits in 2020. A government report found evidence the country was using Canadian military technology, specifically sensors used on Turkish drones, in the conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.
That ban was lifted in 2024, with Canada now assessing exports on a case-by-case basis.
“We are in a position to resume a more regular export relationship, and we will continue to monitor,” a government official said.
Carney will be joined on the trip by Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson. Anand visited Türkiye in March, and hosted her counterpart in Canada in June.
Canada has faced criticism for not specifically condemning the ongoing crackdown in Türkiye on LGBTQ2S+ groups. Anand has said that shouldn’t be interpreted as a lack of solidarity with oppressed people.
Tuesday, senior government officials pointed to Canada signing on to this Equal Rights Coalition statement condemning the persecution of LGBTIQ+ activists globally as a violation of human rights. It doesn’t specifically mention Türkiye.
Hodgson’s presence underlines the significance of Canada’s energy sector to the burgeoning trade relationship, though government officials would not say whether any deal to purchase Canadian CANDU reactor or SMRs was in the cards for this trip.
Türkiye is “desperate for energy,” says Momani, pointing to its reliance on “not trustworthy” countries like Iran and Russia in the past.
“They would very much like to have Western, NATO members to procure as much energy as possible, whether it’s nuclear or LNG or any other clean tech, all of it is something that I think Türkiye is desperately in need of,” she said.
