ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s overtures toward BRICS may be a first for a NATO member, but experts say the move is economically-driven and aligns with Ankara’s desire for “strategic autonomy.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan joins the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan Wednesday at the invitation of his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. He will meet with the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Turkiye said last month it had asked to join the group of emerging market nations. If admitted, it would be the first NATO member in a bloc which sees itself as a counterweight to Western powers.
Most of its members are sharply at odds with the West over the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and in the case of Beijing and Moscow, also its stance on the Ukraine war.
BRICS is an acronym for its five founding members although the alliance added four nations this year, three from the Middle East — including Iran which the West says is supplying Russia with drones to use against Ukraine.
But experts said Turkiye’s bid to join did not mean it will turn its back on the West, nor on Ukraine, whose top diplomat visited on Monday — let alone NATO.
“The government is continuing to deepen its ties with countries that are not members of the Western alliance, in line with the strategic autonomy that Turkiye is pursuing,” Sinan Ulgen, a researcher at the Carnegie Europe think tank, said.
“But the initiative is also partly economic: it’s expected to have a positive impact on bilateral economic relations.”
he BRICS nations represent just under half of the world’s population and around a third of global gross domestic product.
As a “platform,” it does not impose binding economic obligations on members as does the European Union, at whose door Ankara has been knocking since 1999.
Erdogan raised a similar point last month. “Those who say (don’t join BRICS) are the same people who have kept Turkiye waiting at the EU’s door for years,” he said.
“We cannot cut ties with the Turkic and Islamic world just because we are a NATO country: BRICS and ASEAN are structures that offer us opportunities to develop economic cooperation,” he said.
Ulgen said it was clear the two issues were connected.
“Turkiye would not have taken these steps (toward BRICS) if it had been able to pursue integration talks with Europe, or even with (upgrading) the customs union” which has been stalled since 1996.
Soli Ozel, an international relations professor at Istanbul’s Kadir Has University, said Turkiye was responding to an anticipated shift in the global center of gravity.
“The Turkish government sees that the unquestioned hegemony of the West cannot continue as it is,” he said.
“And like many other countries, it is trying to position itself to have more of a say if a new order emerges in an asymmetrically multipolar world.”
Ankara wanted to take advantage of the “weakening” of Western influence, he said, “particularly that of the United States, to see whether it can create more room for maneuver.”
But Turkiye remained part of “the security-conscious West and its economy certainly remains part of the European economy,” he added.
For Gokul Sahni, a Singapore-based analyst, Ankara wanted the best of both worlds.
“Turkiye wants to benefit from being West-adjacent, but — knowing it can’t ever become part of the West — it wants to partner closely with the non-Western BRICS” countries, he said.
And it was a no-risk gamble because joining BRICS “has no security implications,” he said.
“Turkiye will never leave NATO,” said Ozel, but its rapprochement with BRICS reflects “the need for change, the desire to obtain more from emerging regional powers.”
At BRICS, Turkiye seeks to expand strategic reach
https://arab.news/88agr
At BRICS, Turkiye seeks to expand strategic reach
- Experts say the move is economically-driven and aligns with Ankara’s desire for ‘strategic autonomy’
- ‘The Turkish government sees that the unquestioned hegemony of the West cannot continue as it is’
Trump weighs Iran strikes to inspire renewed protests, sources say
- Trump’s options include targeting leaders and security forces, US sources say
- Iran prepares for military confrontation, seeks diplomatic channels, Iranian official says
DUBAI: US President Donald Trump is weighing options against Iran that include targeted strikes on security forces and leaders to inspire protesters, multiple sources said, even as Israeli and Arab officials said air power alone would not topple the clerical rulers. Two US sources familiar with the discussions said Trump wanted to create conditions for “regime change” after a crackdown crushed a nationwide protest movement earlier this month, killing thousands of people.
To do so, he was looking at options to hit commanders and institutions Washington holds responsible for the violence, to give protesters the confidence that they could overrun government and security buildings, they said.
One of the US sources said the options being discussed by Trump’s aides also included a much larger strike intended to have lasting impact, possibly against the ballistic missiles that can reach US allies in the Middle East or its nuclear enrichment programs.
The other US source said Trump has not yet made a final decision on a course of action including whether to take the military path. The arrival of a US aircraft carrier and supporting warships in the Middle East this week has expanded Trump’s capabilities to potentially take military action, after he repeatedly threatened intervention over Iran’s crackdown.
Four Arab officials, three Western diplomats and a senior Western source whose governments were briefed on the discussions said they were concerned that instead of bringing people onto the streets, such strikes could weaken a movement already in shock after the bloodiest repression by authorities since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute, said that without large-scale military defections Iran’s protests remained “heroic but outgunned.”
The sources in this story requested anonymity to talk about sensitive matters. Iran’s foreign office, the US Department of Defense and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. The Israeli Prime Minister’s office declined to comment. Trump urged Iran on Wednesday to come to the table and make a deal on nuclear weapons, warning that any future US attack would be more severe than a June bombing campaign against three nuclear sites. He described the ships in the region as an “armada” sailing to Iran.
A senior Iranian official said that Iran was “preparing itself for a military confrontation, while at the same time making use of diplomatic channels.” However, Washington was not showing openness to diplomacy, the official said.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is civilian, was ready for dialogue “based on mutual respect and interests” but would defend itself “like never before” if pushed, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said in a post on X on Wednesday.
Trump has not publicly detailed what he is looking for in any deal. His administration’s previous negotiating points have included banning Iran from independently enriching uranium and restrictions on long-range ballistic missiles and on Tehran’s network of armed proxies in the Middle East.
Limits of air power
A senior Israeli official with direct knowledge of planning between Israel and the United States said Israel does not believe airstrikes alone can topple the Islamic Republic, if that is Washington’s goal.
“If you’re going to topple the regime, you have to put boots on the ground,” he said, noting that even if the United States killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran would “have a new leader that will replace him.”
Only a combination of external pressure and an organized domestic opposition could shift Iran’s political trajectory, the official said.
The Israeli official said Iran’s leadership had been weakened by the unrest but remained firmly in control despite the ongoing deep economic crisis that sparked the protests. Multiple US intelligence reports reached a similar conclusion, that the conditions that led to the protests were still in place, weakening the government, but without major fractures, two people familiar with the matter said.
The Western source said they believed Trump’s goal appeared to be to engineer a change in leadership, rather than “topple the regime,” an outcome that would be similar to Venezuela, where US intervention replaced the president without a wholesale change of government.
Khamenei has publicly acknowledged several thousand deaths during the protests. He blamed the unrest on the United States, Israel and what he called “seditionists.”
US-based rights group HRANA has put the unrest-related death toll at 5,937, including 214 security personnel, while official figures put the death toll at 3,117. Reuters has been unable to independently verify the numbers.
Khamenei retains control but less visible
At 86, Khamenei has retreated from daily governance, reduced public appearances and is believed to be residing in secure locations after Israeli strikes last year decimated many of Iran’s senior military leaders, regional officials said.
Day-to-day management has shifted to figures aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including senior adviser Ali Larijani, they said. The powerful Guards dominate Iran’s security network and big parts of the economy. However, Khamenei retains final authority over war, succession and nuclear strategy — meaning political change is very difficult until he exits the scene, they said. Iran’s foreign ministry did not respond to questions about Khamenei.
In Washington and Jerusalem, some officials have argued that a transition in Iran could break the nuclear deadlock and eventually open the door to more cooperative ties with the West, two of the Western diplomats said.
But, they cautioned, there is no clear successor to Khamenei. In that vacuum, the Arab officials and diplomats said they believe the IRGC could take over, entrenching hardline rule, deepening the nuclear standoff and regional tensions.
Any successor seen as emerging under foreign pressure would be rejected and could strengthen, not weaken the IRGC, the official said.
Across the region, from the Gulf to Turkiye, officials say they favor containment over collapse — not out of sympathy for Tehran, but out of fear that turmoil inside a nation of 90 million, riven by sectarian and ethnic fault lines, could unleash instability far beyond Iran’s borders.
A fractured Iran could spiral into civil war as happened after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, two of the Western diplomats warned, unleashing an influx of refugees, fueling Islamist militancy and disrupting oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a global energy chokepoint.
The gravest risk, analyst Vatanka warned, is fragmentation into “early-stage Syria,” with rival units and provinces fighting for territory and resources.
Regional blowback
Gulf states — long-time US allies and hosts to major American bases – fear they would be the first targets for Iranian retaliation that could include Iranian missiles or drone attacks from the Tehran-aligned Houthis in Yemen. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Egypt have lobbied Washington against a strike on Iran. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has told Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian that Riyadh will not allow its airspace or territory to be used for military actions against Tehran.
“The United States may pull the trigger,” one of the Arab sources said, “but it will not live with the consequences. We will.”
Mohannad Hajj-Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center said the US deployments suggest planning has shifted from a single strike to something more sustained, driven by a belief in Washington and Jerusalem that Iran could rebuild its missile capabilities and eventually weaponize its enriched uranium.
The most likely outcome is a “grinding erosion — elite defections, economic paralysis, contested succession — that frays the system until it snaps,” analyst Vatanka said.
