Turkey is preparing to officially unveil its Critical Raw Materials strategy in the coming weeks, with the Beylikova rare earth elements project positioned as the centrepiece of a national vision that links mineral extraction to deep processing and high-technology industrial development, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar has announced.
Speaking on 28 April at the OECD Critical Minerals Forum in Istanbul, part of the OECD Emerging Markets Forum Series, Bayraktar described Beylikova as potentially one of the largest rare earth element deposits in the world. State mining company Eti Maden is working intensively with partners to establish a full value chain at the site, and a pilot plant is already operational and moving toward industrial-scale production including separation and processing capabilities. “We will produce rare earth oxides needed for permanent magnets in wind turbines and electric vehicle motors,” Bayraktar said.
The minister framed the forthcoming roadmap — based on findings from the 2025 Critical and Strategic Minerals Report — within Turkey’s broader energy transformation. More than 62% of the country’s installed electricity capacity already comes from renewable sources, and Turkey is targeting an expansion of wind and solar capacity to 120 gigawatts by 2035. Plans to build approximately 40 gigawatts of High Voltage Direct Current transmission lines to strengthen grid integration add further urgency to securing domestic critical mineral supply.
“These represent a broad structural transformation, with critical minerals at its core,” Bayraktar said. “In this new era, it is not enough to have resources — you must be able to process them. Turkey is building exactly that, combining resource extraction with deep processing capacity and high-tech industrial value creation.”
