Türkiye, Saudi Arabia ink critical mineral cooperation deal

Türkiye and Saudi Arabia signed a memorandum of understanding to advance the two countries' cooperation in mining, Türkiye’s Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar announced on August 28.

Bayraktar said the deal is particularly aiming to advance cooperation between Türkiye and Saudi Arabia on the mining of critical minerals.  “One of the most important components of this MoU involves cooperation on critical mines that are required in new technologies such as electric vehicles or solar panel technologies,” he told Türkiye’s public broadcaster, adding that the scope of the deal involves in mining of critical minerals in Türkiye and Saudi Arabia as well as third countries, Al-Monitor reports. 

The MoU was signed on the sidelines of Saudi Arabia's Industry and Mineral Resources Minister Bandar Ibrahim Alkhorayef’s visit to Türkiye. Alkhorayef also met with Türkiye’s Trade Minister Omer Bolat and other high-level officials during his visit on Monday.

In a tweet after the meeting, Bayraktar said the deal paved the way for wide-scale cooperation between the two countries, particularly in mining.

Monday's deal was signed as a follow-up to a series of deals reached on energy and oil cooperation between Ankara and Riyadh during Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to the kingdom last month. 

Bayraktar said the two countries also want to expand cooperation in the green energy field. “We saw that Saudi Arabia was particularly interested in green hydrogen, solar and wind energy,” he said.

Erdogan travelled to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in late July as part of his first regional tour after his reelection in May, largely in a bid to lure foreign investments to Türkiye amid the country’s acute foreign currency crunch. The visit culminated in more than a dozen deals and MoUs reached between Türkiye and oil-rich Gulf monarchies. 

Speaking on Monday, Bayraktar said energy cooperation makes up one of the largest shares in the deals Türkiye signed with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. “We have signed important agreements, particularly in the energy and oil fields with Saudi and the United Arab Emirates, ” he said, 

He added that Türkiye's new energy deals with the UAE are worth $29.7 billion of the more than $50 billion in deals signed during Erdogan's visit.  

“We would like to turn these deals into concrete project-based agreements and partnership deals as soon as possible.”

In addition to energy cooperation, defence ties between Türkiye and the kingdom have also seen rapid improvement following Erdogan’s trip. Türkiye’s Deputy Defense Minister Celal Sami Tufekci travelled to Riyadh for the first meeting of the trilateral defence mechanism between Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan. The two countries signed a series of defence cooperation deals on the sidelines of Erdogan’s visit, including a more than $3 billion agreement between the Turkish drone manufacturing giant Baykar and the kingdom’s state-owned Saudi Arabia Military Industries.