The weaponization of economic interdependence has made supply chains the primary arena of geopolitical competition. China's deliberate consolidation of critical mineral processing capacity — controlling approximately 92% of global rare-earth refining — has transformed the trade architecture into a form of coercive leverage. This is the structural condition into which the Iran war of February–March 2026 has erupted, compounding logistical, chemical, and defense-industrial disruptions simultaneously and making the abstract costs of supply chain dependency concretely visible.

(You can read the executive summary and key findings of the report below. Click here to access the full report in pdf)

This report argues that Türkiye represents the EU's most proximate, industrially capable, and institutionally integrated candidate partner for critical minerals supply chain resilience — and that it is conspicuously absent from European strategic frameworks. Türkiye already supplies approximately 97% of European boron demand. It hosts the Beylikova rare earth deposit. It has a mature refining industry and a systematic state-level minerals strategy with defined phases through 2035. The International Energy Agency (IEA) itself, speaking in Istanbul in December 2025, identified Türkiye as a potential refining partner. Yet Türkiye was excluded from the European Commission's June 2025 list of Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) strategic projects.

The Iran war has created a window of aligned incentives. The halt of Iranian gas exports to Türkiye following the South Pars strike — though cushioned by storage and alternative sources — reinforces Ankara's interest in European alignment. The EU's own implementation record is poor: despite 14 strategic partnerships concluded since 2021, imports from partner countries fell for 13 of 26 critical raw materials. A new industrial partnership framework is needed, one that addresses both the geological and the midstream dimensions, links to Customs Union modernization, and positions Türkiye within — rather than outside — the emerging Western supply chain architecture before Washington may define those terms unilaterally through the Pax Silica coalition.

The brief presents six concrete policy recommendations directed at the European Commission, EU member states, and the Turkish government. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Critical Minerals Forum, convening in Istanbul in April 2026, is an immediate venue for the partnership conversation to begin in earnest.

Key Findings

1. Supply chains are the new geopolitical battlespace. China's deliberate consolidation of critical mineral midstream capacity has weaponized interdependence, converting a trade architecture into coercive leverage. The Iran war is the most acute demonstration yet of this dynamic.
2. Rare earth elements are not geologically rare — they are operationally rare. Their strategic value derives not from scarcity in the Earth's crust but from the extreme difficulty of separating them chemically. China's dominance is industrial and technological, not only geological.
3. The EU's CRMA is an instrument without adequate delivery mechanisms. Despite 14 strategic partnerships signed since 2021, imports from partner countries fell for 13 of 26 critical raw materials. The 2030 benchmarks are structurally unachievable without new industrial cooperation frameworks and financing.
4. Türkiye is the EU's most proximate, industrially capable, and institutionally integrated candidate partner — and is conspicuously absent from EU strategic frameworks. It supplies ~97% of European boron demand, hosts the Beylikova Rare Earth deposit, and holds a mature refining base. The IEA itself has identified Türkiye as a potential refining partner.
5. The midstream is the decisive constraint. China controls ~92% of REE refining capacity. Extraction without processing is strategically inert. EU–Türkiye cooperation should prioritize midstream investment as its primary objective, not simply upstream access.
6. The Iran war has created a window of aligned incentives. Türkiye's gas supply disruption — though cushioned by diversified sources — reinforces its interest in European energy frameworks. Europe's supply chain urgency has rarely been higher. This conjuncture will not last indefinitely.

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Riccardo Gasco is the Foreign Policy Program Coordinator at IstanPol and Federico Donelli is an Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Trieste University. The authors thank Gutemberg Howard Belfrid, Fatma Arslan and Silvio Ouedraogo for their research assistance in the preparation of this report.

IstanPol thanks Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Türkiye Office for their contribution to the publication of this report. The views stated in this report belong to the authors and need not agree, partly or entirely, with the institutional views of IstanPol or Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.