Eurasia Press & News
Q. Has Turkey taken any steps to acquire nuclear weapons?
Ankara appears to be taking quiet but deliberate steps toward producing enriched uranium fuel, which has dual purposes in fueling nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. In October 2024, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and National Intelligence Chief Ibrahim Kalin visited Niger, securing a provisional mining agreement with the country’s junta government. The most plausible explanation for this deal is Turkey’s intent to secure access to uranium, potentially laying the groundwork for developing the fuel cycle to produce enriched uranium.
Turkey is a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). It has long suggested all countries retain a “right to enrich” uranium, even though such a right is not explicitly delineated in the NPT. Moreover, in 2019, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized the notion that “countries like the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom could possess nuclear weapons while others, including Turkey, could not.” Until now, Erdogan’s rhetoric was not complemented with noteworthy actions to potentially procure such capabilities.
Q. What might drive new Turkish nuclear ambitions?
Erdogan’s recent efforts to strengthen Turkey’s influence in the region, particularly in Syria, increase the possibility that Ankara will seek nuclear weapons. In December 2024, jihadist rebels overthrew the government of Bashar al-Assad, likely with Ankara’s support. Assad’s downfall exposed the vulnerability of Iran, already weakened by heavy military losses against Israel, particularly through Israeli strikes on Tehran’s proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. Tehran is both resentful and afraid of Ankara’s actions in Syria, as it suspects Erdogan is moving to position Turkey as the dominant power in the region. Fearing further Israeli attacks and Turkish ambitions for regional hegemony, (which could occur with support from the Trump administration,) Tehran may escalate its uranium enrichment to weapons-grade levels as a deterrent. Ankara — keen to continue to dominate Syria’s future and capitalize on Iran’s regional decline — may seek its own independent nuclear deterrent to bolster its power.
Q. What are Turkey’s legal nonproliferation obligations?
As a party to the NPT, Turkey must permit the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to implement comprehensive safeguards at sites where it produces nuclear material, such as nuclear reactors, in order to prevent diversion to an atomic weapons program. Comprehensive safeguards also cover sites like plants that convert or enrich uranium and plutonium separation facilities, which Turkey does not possess but may acquire in the future.
Ankara also signed an enhanced IAEA inspection agreement known as the Additional Protocol (AP), which endows the IAEA with the authority to visit, on short notice, sites where Turkey does not produce nuclear material but that could support a clandestine nuclear weapons program. Such sites could include gas centrifuge manufacturing facilities — plants designed to produce enriched uranium — as well as uranium mines and mills, none of which Turkey is known to possess. The AP also requires Turkey to provide information about sensitive foreign nuclear procurements. In essence, by signing the AP, Turkey better positioned the IAEA to detect activities that it might, in the future, try to hide.
Q. What are Turkey’s current capabilities regarding nuclear energy production?
For nuclear reactors, Ankara has relied primarily on Russian assistance. It has sent officials for nuclear training in Russia and relies on Russia’s Rosatom Corporation for cradle-to-grave construction, financing, and ownership of its four nuclear power plants, located in Akkuyu, a suburb of Turkey’s Mersin province. The Akkuyu plants are expected to start operating between 2025 and 2028. South Korea or Russia may build four additional units in the Black Sea province of Sinop, and China may build yet other reactors at Igneada, near Istanbul. U.S. nuclear power plant manufacturer Westinghouse is also considering contending for reactor projects to move Turkey away from Russian and Chinese nuclear supply.
Q. Does Turkey’s acquisition of a nuclear energy program lay a future basis for acquiring nuclear weapons?
Possibly. Turkey has been developing a vast nuclear energy production program that, if misused, could assist a nuclear weapons effort. Nuclear-electrical power production provides a means for Ankara to acquire basic nuclear infrastructure, know-how, and training. Nuclear energy programs have helpfully served as covers for states like Iran to import needed equipment for nuclear weapons. As a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), Turkey is required to inform the NSG of direct nuclear-use imports and exports but could covertly shirk its obligations.
Yet Turkey would require time to acquire and develop key nuclear weapons capabilities, such as a source of fuel, via uranium enrichment or plutonium separation; needed expertise and know-how to actually construct nuclear weapons, a process known as weaponization; and a means to integrate a nuclear warhead on a deliverable missile in order to enhance future nuclear weapons’ offensive and deterrent power.
Q. What is known about Turkey’s uranium fuel cycle, and what indicators might suggest intentions to acquire this capability illicitly?
While Ankara has not informed the IAEA about any uranium enrichment capacity, it could seek gas centrifuge enrichment technology — the most common means to produce enriched uranium — from abroad. An indicator that Turkey is seeking uranium enrichment could include the suspicious deal to acquire, via Niger, uranium ore needed for enrichment. Turkey and Niger, while they are AP adherents, are not legally obligated to declare imports and exports of uranium ore.
Ankara may also import raw materials and equipment for a gas centrifuge plant — for example, from state or private companies in China. Turkey may seek relevant foreign training and assistance from former nuclear weapons program scientists, activity that intelligence agencies or the IAEA may not detect.
Turkey’s Akkuyu agreement with Russia also reportedly provides for future help in building a nuclear fuel fabrication plant, which would use enriched uranium to produce fuel rods for nuclear reactors.
Q. What is known about Turkey’s plutonium fuel cycle, and what indicators might suggest intentions to acquire this capability illicitly?
Turkey has small research reactors that remain shuttered, and they are not of the size or type that states have previously repurposed to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Reactor-grade plutonium also requires reprocessing, and Ankara possesses no known plutonium separation facility. Such acquisition attempts would set off alarm bells among key Western and Asian suppliers. Yet Turkey could also bring in unofficial foreign assistance to build a plant in-country and try to illicitly buy or domestically manufacture many needed goods.
Q. Why would Turkey seek nuclear weapons if America already stations atomic bombs on Turkish soil?
U.S. and Turkish security goals are increasingly at odds. Historically, Turkey has relied on the presence of some 50 U.S. B-61 nuclear missiles stationed on its soil as part of NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangement, ensuring protection under Washington’s nuclear umbrella. However, the United States began reconsidering this policy after the failed 2016 coup attempt against Erdogan and the subsequent deterioration of Turkish-American relations. In 2019, a U.S. official told The New York Times, in a paraphrased comment, that the United States might ultimately opt to leave American nuclear weapons inside Turkey in case removing them could “mark the de facto end of the Turkish-American alliance.”
Erdogan has grown increasingly hostile toward the United States, mistakenly suspecting that Washington played a significant part in trying to topple him. In addition, the United States imposed sanctions in 2019 over Turkey’s purchase of Russian military equipment — leading to Ankara’s expulsion from Washington’s F-35 fighter jet program. Erdogan has also strengthened ties with groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United States, such as Hamas, while also targeting America’s Kurdish partners in Syria under the pretext of combating terrorism.
Q. What else is Ankara doing to bolster its security — or its potential to commit aggression?
Ankara is committed to advancing what it calls “strategic autonomy.” Turkey prioritizes developing a national defense industry to reduce, if not eliminate, reliance on foreign military acquisitions — particularly from the United States. To achieve this, it has invested in high-end domestic capabilities, including tanks, submarines, and drones. In 2024, Turkey successfully test-flew its indigenously produced fifth-generation fighter jet, the “Kaan,” placing it among the select few nations capable of developing stealth fighter aircraft. Ankara likely has a short-term interest in ensuring it has nuclear capabilities to offset Iran’s emerging capabilities, but the longer-term goal is to become an independent nuclear power.
Erdogan aspires to elevate Turkey as a great power. Given his emphasis on strengthening conventional military capabilities, he may also seek to expand the country’s unconventional weapons arsenal to reinforce this ambition.
