Bangladesh and Türkiye are often described as "new partners,” but the relationship is older than the headlines suggest. Bengali intellectual life was already watching the Turkish War of Independence with admiration in 1900. Bangladesh’s national poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam’s 1921 poem "Kemal Pasha,” referring to the country's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, captured the fascination with Türkiye's anti-colonial movement and independence struggle. Even today, the poem remains part of the readings of Bangladeshi students. Later, public symbolism followed statecraft. The Bangladesh government named roads after Atatürk. These cultural references are important because they show that the Bangladesh-Türkiye connection is not only transactional, but it has an emotional past and a shared vocabulary of dignity, sovereignty and resistance.

The formal diplomatic story begins after 1971, within the politics of recognition and alignment in the Muslim world. Türkiye recognized Bangladesh in 1974 at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) conference in Lahore, Pakistan. It opened its embassy in Dhaka in 1976. Bangladesh followed by opening its mission in Ankara in 1981. These steps helped anchor Bangladesh-Türkiye relations at an early stage of Bangladesh’s statehood. The path has not been smooth. There were moments of discomfort. In 2013, regarding the war crimes tribunals of Bangladesh, political and legal questions reverberated in the bilateral relationship. Yet after the 2017 Rohingya crisis, the relationship found a different kind of depth. Türkiye did not just issue statements, but extended humanitarian support to ease Bangladesh’s economic burden as a host country.

What future holds

To think about where this relationship might go, it helps to borrow more than one lens from International Relations. A realist lens focuses on security and geography aspects. Bangladesh sits in a sensitive corner of the Bay of Bengal, in a region where big powers compete for influence and where one of its neighbors, Myanmar, is in the middle of a civil war. In such a situation, security partnerships are not a luxury item for Bangladesh, but a form of insurance. For years, Bangladesh has depended on a small number of countries for defense supplies, which has created security vulnerabilities, from spare parts and training to political pressure. Türkiye’s rise as a credible defense producer, with systems tested in real conflicts, gives Bangladesh a chance to spread that risk. If Dhaka and Ankara are wise, they will treat this not as a shopping spree but as a long-term project.

A liberal and institutional reading draws our attention to markets, rules and shared economic interests. Trade between Bangladesh and Türkiye has grown, surpassing $1 billion (TL 41 billion) in 2024. The numbers are still modest compared to the potential. This is more like a starting point than a success story. Bangladesh has a young labor force and sits close to important markets in South Asia and beyond. Türkiye brings experience in manufacturing, midlevel technology and a network of companies that already play in global markets. If these strengths are matched properly, the partnership can move beyond simple buying and selling to the coproduction level.

There is another area where the two countries have already paid a heavy price and therefore have a strong voice – the politics of refugees and displacement. Türkiye has hosted millions of Syrians for years. Bangladesh has carried the weight of the Rohingya crisis with limited international support. This lived experience gives Bangladesh and Türkiye moral ground to discuss responsibility-sharing and, at the United Nations and within the OIC, coordinate to push for solutions that go beyond speeches.

A constructivist way of looking at the relationship reminds us that states are also communities. Hence, we need to look beyond the interest calculation. Bangladesh and Türkiye share Islam as part of their public life, and that shapes how people in both countries read each other’s history and politics. The idea of belonging to a wider ummah carries emotional weight. Turkish dramas dubbed in Bangla are now regular entertainment sources for many Bangladeshi consumers. Young people in Dhaka go out for Turkish food. Bangladeshi students travel to Turkish universities on scholarships and build friendships. Some even stay on in academic or professional roles. These may look small from the outside, but they build a people-to-people bridge that is harder to break than a diplomatic slogan. When political winds shift, as they always do, these human links often help to keep the relationship steady.

Multifaceted foreign policy

One worrying trend in recent years is the way some voices in Bangladeshi politics and social media try to frame Bangladesh-Türkiye ties as a choice against someone else, as if Dhaka has to decide between Türkiye and India, or between Türkiye and China. This may sound dramatic, but it is poor foreign policy thinking. Bangladesh is a sovereign country that needs different partners for different reasons. China has been central in financing and building infrastructure and has long supplied defense equipment. India is the neighbor that shares rivers, borders, transit routes and complex social ties across the frontier. Türkiye is a rising partner of Bangladesh with growing weight in defense production, humanitarian diplomacy and trade. These roles are not interchangeable. They are not competing brands on a shelf. When a relationship is pushed into a false binary, it reduces Bangladesh’s room for maneuver. Strategic autonomy grows when a country diversifies its options, not when it burns bridges to prove loyalty to one camp.

The most serious threat to a stable Bangladesh-Türkiye partnership is not external. It is domestic. Bangladeshi politics is shaped by different currents – Islamic-leaning, Bangladeshi nationalist, Bengali nationalist – each with its own reading of history and its own foreign policy preferences. Diversity of ideas is not the problem. The problem begins when foreign ties are used as sticks to beat political opponents. If ties with Türkiye become another tool in this internal political struggle of Bangladesh, the relationship may turn reactive and fragile. The more constructive path is to keep the focus on things that matter to ordinary people: employment, education, safe migration, fair trade, credible humanitarian action and transparent, accountable defense cooperation.

Looking ahead to the 2026 election and the possibility of political change in Dhaka, the keyword in the Bangladesh-Türkiye relationship should be institutionalization. Governments will come and go. States remain. If both partners want a serious partnership, they need habits and mechanisms that do not depend on who is in office at a particular moment. Bangladesh and Türkiye do not need a dramatic story or a common enemy to make their partnership matter. What they need is a realistic view.