The limits of Turkey’s strategic autonomy

FOR OVER a decade, BRICS summits have featured the same cast of characters, meaning the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. That will change on October 22nd, when the presidents of Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates, which joined the club earlier this year, pose alongside Vladimir Putin and other BRICS veterans in Kazan, in south-western Russia. But an even more unusual guest, the leader of a NATO country no less, is expected to make an appearance. Russia has announced that Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will be on hand to make the case for his country’s BRICS membership.

Flanked by autocrats and populists who say they speak for the global south and hope to shape BRICS into a viable alternative to the Western world order, Turkey’s leader should feel right at home. Turkey has long sought to diversify its foreign-policy portfolio, by building new bridges and repairing old ones, with the Middle East, the Caucasus, Africa and Central Asia. But Mr Erdogan has gone farther, especially over the past decade, and begun to preach “strategic autonomy”. This is the idea that Turkey needs to chart its own path, reduce its dependence on the West, especially when it comes to the defence sector, and co-operate with allies only when this suits its own interests. Other NATO members can settle for the fixed menu. Turkey dines á la carte.

This has come into focus in Ukraine, where Turkey has supplied the Ukrainians with drones and other weapons, sometimes on the sly, while staying chummy with Russia. Turkey has refused to implement Western sanctions, which has allowed its trade with Russia to soar, reaching $56.5bn last year, up from $34.7bn in 2021, and continues to depend heavily on Russian oil and gas. Russia is also building Turkey’s first nuclear-power plant, and vying to build its second.

Mr Erdogan has been marching to the beat of his own drum elsewhere. Turkey has clashed with Greece and France by staking a claim to swathes of the eastern Mediterranean, challenged America by launching offensives against US-backed Kurdish insurgents in Syria, and taken on NATO as a whole by holding up the membership bids of Sweden and Finland. It has refused to be drawn into America’s stand-off with China. Mr Erdogan is also the only NATO leader to openly embrace Hamas.

But Turkey has no desire to break with the West, and its BRICS bid has been a clear case in point. As soon as Russia leaked the news that Turkey was keen on joining the group, officials in Ankara rushed to say this would not come at the expense of relations with Europe and America. Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, went so far as to suggest that the move was less of a geopolitical pivot than a cry for attention. “Perhaps we would not be on such a quest,” said Mr Fidan, had Turkey been a member of the EU.

Western capitals might take a dim view of Turkey’s BRICS gambit, but they are not alarmed. Membership of BRICS, which remains little more than a talking-shop, is a poor alternative to NATO or the EU, with which Turkey has a customs union.

Still, BRICS may not be ready to roll out the welcome mat just yet. India is rumoured to oppose Turkey’s accession, because of Mr Erdogan’s support for Pakistan in its dispute over Kashmir. Russia, too, is of two minds. On paper, Turkey’s BRICS membership would be a coup for Moscow, which welcomes any chance to drive a wedge between Turkey and its Western allies. But the Russians may be uneasy about having a NATO state in BRICS, fearing to water the group down even further.

Turkey may be backpedalling already. At a conference in Istanbul on October 14th, a Turkish diplomat said he was “not aware” whether his government had lodged an application to join BRICS. The BRICS bid was supposed to shine the spotlight on Turkey’s global ambitions. It may end up exposing their limits. ■

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