Turkey is emerging as a significant potential contributor to global critical minerals supply chain diversification, backed by its resource endowment — including the world’s second-largest rare earth element reserve — and its strategic geographic position connecting Asia, Africa and Europe, a senior OECD official has said.
Marion Jansen, director at the OECD Directorate for Trade and Agriculture, made the assessment on the sidelines of the OECD Critical Minerals Forum in Istanbul. “Türkiye is already an important player in critical minerals,” she told Anadolu Agency, pointing to the country’s strength as a major global supplier of borates and its significant rare earth reserves, discovered in the central province of Eskişehir in 2022. “This is one of the countries where more investment could take place,” she said. Turkey’s location also gives it a natural advantage as a logistics and transit hub. “Türkiye is situated between Asia, Africa and Europe. This is a fantastic trading hub.”
As a participant in the OECD’s export credit arrangement, Turkey also has a voice in coordinated international financing efforts for critical minerals projects — a mechanism Jansen described as increasingly important as the world works to broaden the supplier base for minerals essential to the energy transition, digitalisation and defence industries.
Jansen used the forum to deliver a pointed warning about the structural conditions undermining the global critical minerals market. In some markets, a single country accounts for up to 90% of global supply at either the extraction or processing stage. “This is not good,” she said, noting that excessive concentration distorts markets and prevents normal price formation, while high entry barriers limit the emergence of new participants.
On export restrictions, the OECD data she cited painted a concerning picture. The use of export restrictions on critical materials has increased nearly fivefold between 2009 and 2024 and remains at historically elevated levels, with the most severe measures — including outright export prohibitions — being deployed with growing frequency. “It becomes nearly acceptable to use it and that’s not good news for the multilateral trading system at all,” she said.
Investment in the sector faces its own structural challenges, Jansen noted. Mining and processing projects require long-term capital commitments in markets where price volatility is a real risk precisely because competition is limited. “If market conditions are not competitive, the risk that prices will be volatile is real,” she said, adding that addressing these investment barriers will be essential to unlocking the supply diversification the global economy needs.
