China, Turkiye seek to align Belt and Road, Middle Corridor initiatives
President Erdogan welcomed the Chinese foreign minister for talks to deepen economic ties, despite fellow NATO members’ efforts to isolate China
In the highest-level visit from Beijing to Ankara since 2011, China’s new Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on 26 July to focus on deepening economic and political cooperation, in particular regarding both nations’ regional trade and infrastructure initiatives.
According to the Turkish presidency, Erdogan and Wang discussed bilateral relations and international issues, including efforts to align China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with Turkiye’s Middle Corridor project.
China’s BRI, launched in 2013, is a set of development and investment initiatives originally devised to link East Asia and Europe for trade through physical infrastructure, while Turkiye’s Middle Corridor project aims to link the country’s eastern border to the Turkic republics in Central Asia and China through the Caspian basin.
The Middle Corridor would create an alternative trade route between Europe and China, as the so-called Northern Corridor, which facilitates trade between Europe and Asia via heavily sanctioned Russia and Belarus, has been disrupted by the war in Ukraine.
Citing Turkish diplomatic sources, Turkiye’s public broadcaster TRT said Foreign Ministers Wang and Fidan discussed steps to increase mutual investments and cooperation in various fields, including nuclear energy, agriculture, civil aviation, culture, and tourism.
Wang’s visit to NATO member Turkiye comes less than three weeks after NATO accused China of “striving to subvert the rules-based international order, including in the space, cyber and maritime domains,” in its final communique after its Vilnius Summit.
Erdogan carefully distanced himself from the joint message, hoping to attract Chinese investment to alleviate his country’s foreign currency shortage.
“At a time when global security risks are increasing, it is only natural to advance the comprehensive cooperation and political dialogue with our partners in the Asia-Pacific region, both at the bilateral level and through NATO. During the meeting, I particularly stressed that these ties need to be strengthened without targeting a third country,” Erdogan stated at the Vilnius summit in reference to China.
As tensions between US-led NATO on the one hand and Russia and China on the other, have increased in the wake of the Ukraine-Russia war, which began in February last year, newly re-elected President Erdogan has sought to balance relations between both of the world’s major power blocs while extracting concessions from both.
Despite its NATO membership, Turkiye has maintained a neutral stance toward the Russia-Ukraine conflict, refusing to join its fellow members in imposing sanctions on Russia and providing arms to Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is planning a visit to Turkiye in the coming weeks, Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov said on 25 July, though no final date has been set.