Türkiye-Canada pact opens G7 path in 4 energy areas

Türkiye and Canada signed a March 3 energy declaration covering four areas: civil nuclear power, LNG, renewables and mining, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said in a ministerial announcement.

For Washington, the pact matters because Russia's Rosatom is building and will operate Türkiye's first nuclear power plant at Akkuyu, while Ankara is weighing future projects at Sinop and Thrace.

Bayraktar said he signed the declaration with Canadian Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson during PDAC in Toronto, the mining conference where critical minerals and project finance draw government and industry attention.

The declaration gives the White House, State Department and allied finance agencies another opening to press Ankara on Western-backed reactor options. The State Department's Bureau of Energy Resources has courted Türkiye on American and allied small modular reactors, or SMRs, a term for factory-built reactors designed for smaller sites and faster deployment than large conventional plants.

The energy security argument in Washington has two tracks. One is civil nuclear dependence, where Rosatom's build-own-operate model at Akkuyu gives a Russian state company a long operating role inside a NATO member's first nuclear plant. The other is critical minerals, where the US and G7 are trying to reduce reliance on Chinese-controlled supply chains.

Canada brings both mining capacity and nuclear credentials to that discussion. Cameco and US-based Westinghouse form a Western fuel and reactor-technology grouping that gives Ankara a potential G7-backed alternative to Russian and Chinese bids, if Türkiye chooses to attach future projects to allied vendors and financing.

The declaration, as described by Bayraktar, does not name a reactor vendor, financing institution or project award. That limits its near-term effect: it is a political and commercial channel, not yet a procurement decision for Sinop, Thrace or any LNG or mining project.

If Ottawa or Washington follows with financing or pre-feasibility agreements tied to Westinghouse, Candu or allied SMR technology, the pact would move from signaling to execution. If Türkiye instead awards Sinop exclusively to Rosatom or China's SPIC, the declaration would do little to change the strategic balance around Ankara's civil nuclear buildout.

Source: Turkish energy minister's announcement, March 3