President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan flew to Tatarstan’s Kazan in Russia on Wednesday to join leaders and top officials from BRICS nations for the bloc’s summit that brings together major powers mainly in Asia. Erdoğan, who is later scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, is expected to reiterate Türkiye’s adherence to maintaining good ties with all members of the international community in a polarized world.
Türkiye’s overtures toward BRICS may be a first for a NATO member, but experts say the move is economically driven and aligns with Ankara's desire for "strategic autonomy.”
Erdoğan will be at the summit as a guest of Putin and meet leaders of India, China and South Africa. His visit comes one month after officials announced that Ankara asked to join the group of emerging market nations. If admitted, it would be the first NATO member in a bloc that sees itself as a counterweight to Western powers.
Most of the BRICS members are sharply at odds with the West over the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and in the case of Beijing and Moscow, also its stance on the Ukraine war.
BRICS is an acronym for its five founding members, although the alliance added four nations this year, three from the Middle East, including Iran, which the West says is supplying Russia with drones to use against Ukraine.
Experts said Türkiye’s bid to join did not mean it would turn its back on the West, nor on Ukraine, whose top diplomat visited on Monday, let alone NATO.
"The government is continuing to deepen its ties with countries that are not members of the Western alliance, in line with the strategic autonomy that (Türkiye) is pursuing," Sinan Ülgen, a researcher at the Carnegie Europe think tank, told Agence France-Press (AFP). "But the initiative is also partly economic: it's expected to have a positive impact on bilateral economic relations."
The BRICS nations represent just under half of the world's population and around a third of the global gross domestic product. As a "platform," it does not impose binding economic obligations on members as does the European Union, at whose door Ankara has been knocking since 1999.
Erdoğan raised a similar point last month. "Those who say (don't join BRICS) are the same people who have kept Türkiye waiting at the EU's door for years," he said.
"We cannot cut ties with the Turkic and Islamic world just because we are a NATO country: BRICS and ASEAN are structures that offer us opportunities to develop economic cooperation," he said.
Ülgen said it was clear the two issues were connected. "Türkiye would not have taken these steps (towards BRICS) if it had been able to pursue integration talks with Europe, or even with (upgrading) the customs union," which has been stalled since 1996.
Soli Özel, an international relations professor at Istanbul's Kadir Has University, said Türkiye was responding to an anticipated shift in the global center of gravity. "The Turkish government sees that the unquestioned hegemony of the West cannot continue as it is," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP). "And like many other countries, it is trying to position itself to have more of a say if a new order emerges in an asymmetrically multipolar world." Ankara wanted to take advantage of the "weakening" of Western influence, he said, "particularly that of the United States, to see whether it can create more room for maneuver."
But Türkiye remained part of "the security-conscious West and its economy certainly remains part of the European economy," he added.
For Gokul Sahni, a Singapore-based analyst, Ankara wanted the best of both worlds.
"Türkiye wants to benefit from being West-adjacent, but, knowing it can't ever become part of the West, it wants to partner closely with the non-Western BRICS" countries, he told AFP. And it was a no-risk gamble because joining BRICS "has no security implications," he said.
"Türkiye will never leave NATO," said Özel, but its rapprochement with BRICS reflects "the need for change, the desire to obtain more from emerging regional powers."
The NATO secretary-general on Tuesday praised Türkiye for playing a "vital role" in the alliance's southeastern flank and for providing capabilities to NATO as a whole, saying that it is Ankara's sovereign right to work with BRICS partners. "Let's not forget that Türkiye is a very important ally in the alliance. It has one of the best-equipped military forces in NATO. It plays a vital role in its part of the NATO geography. It provides a lot of capabilities to NATO as a whole," Mark Rutte said in the Estonian capital, Tallinn.
His remarks came in response to a question about Türkiye's ties with BRICS as the 16th summit of the intergovernmental organization is underway. Rutte expressed pleasure that Türkiye has been "for so many years now," an integral part of the alliance. Türkiye has been a NATO member since 1952. Within the alliance of 32 countries, "there will always be debates," he said.
Pointing out that Ankara is working toward or with some of the BRICS partners, Rutte underlined that Türkiye has "the sovereign right to do so that might lead to debates now and then, within bilaterally or within NATO."
"But that doesn't mean that Türkiye is not ... it is still and it will always be, to my absolute conviction ... very popular in NATO," Rutte said. "So, we have to make sure that we make maximum use of each other, and we are so happy that they are an ally of ours," he added.
