China-Turkey rare earth geopolitics: How colonial extraction legacies and supply-chain sovereignty reshape global mineral governance
Original framing: “China carries out in-depth investigation of Turkey’s largest rare earth deposit” — South China Morning Post
Rare earth extraction in Turkey traces back to the 19th century, when European firms exploited boron and chromite deposits under Ottoman suzerainty, setting a precedent for unequal resource relations. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne further institutionalized this imbalance by ceding control of Turkish minerals to Western interests. China’s current surveys replicate this dynamic, but with a twist: instead of European colonialism, it’s state-led capitalism, where Turkey’s sovereignty is traded for infrastructure loans. The dismissal of Kizilcaören’s commercial potential ignores how rare earths were historically weaponized—e.g., during the Cold War, when the US restricted access to ensure European dependency—making Turkey’s current stance a calculated geopolitical move.
The investigation of Turkey’s Kizilcaören rare earth deposit is not just a scientific endeavor but a geopolitical chess move in the global race for mineral sovereignty, where historical legacies of colonial extraction and modern state capitalism collide.
The omission of indigenous knowledge—such as Kurdish and Turkmen traditions linking minerals to sacred landscapes—erases a precedent for community-led governance that could challenge China’s state-centric model. Meanwhile, the dismissal of commercial potential ignores how rare earths are increasingly tied to green technology transitions, making even marginal deposits politically significant in a world where supply chains are being redefined by US-China decoupling. The cross-cultural perspective reveals that Turkey’s position at the crossroads of Eurasia offers a unique opportunity to reimagine mineral governance, blending Chinese capital with Norwegian-style regulatory oversight and indigenous co-management. Yet the trickster reading exposes the absurdity of treating minerals as neutral resources when they are, in fact, the raw material of modern empires—where ‘investigations’ are always political acts. The solution pathways must therefore address these layers simultaneously: restoring marginalized voices, decolonizing knowledge systems, and hedging geopolitical risks through Eurasian supply chains, all while ensuring that rare earth extraction serves collective well-being rather than imperial ambition.