Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan Arrives in South Korea Seeking Nuclear Collaboration

Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Seoul, South Korea, on Monday, anticipating meetings with leftist President Lee Jae-myung focused on broadening trade relations with the East Asian country.

Erdogan said in an interview with the South Korean news service Yonhap published on Monday that he considers South Korea a promising partner on the issue of expanding Turkey’s civilian nuclear energy program, which currently mostly consists of cooperation with Russia’s Rosatom state nuclear corporation on the development of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant. Akkuyu has been in development since 2010 and began active construction in 2018, but is still incomplete, expected to go partially online by the end of 2026.

Cooperation with South Korea, Erdogan indicated, would be directed towards the development of a different, new nuclear power plant.

“We regard the Republic of Korea as a great potential collaborator on this initiative,” Erdogan told Yonhap, referring to Turkish plans for a second power plant, potentially located in Sinop. “We attach considerable importance to the negotiations we are holding with Korea on this topic. We are well aware of our Korean friends’ experience with nuclear energy.”

Erdogan added that Turkish authorities were considering their “contacts with other countries,” presumably with Russia at the top of that list, but prepared to act “in light of our national interests.”

The Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency recalled in its reporting that South Korean President Lee signed a memorandum of understanding with Erdogan during a visit to Turkey last year that included an agreement to collaborate on nuclear energy development, specifying work together on “reactor technology, site assessment, licensing, financing, and business models.” Erdogan later stated that “feasibility studies” had begun to explore where best to begin the collaboration.

Erdogan has touted the Akkuyu project, and developing Turkey into a nuclear energy power generally, as a major goal of his rule.

“Like many important projects, Akkuyu was realized with a financing model that does not burden our national budget. Akkuyu is our biggest joint investment with Russia,” Erdogan emphasized in remarks in 2023.

He has not, however, limited his pursuit of nuclear development to Russia. That same year, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar revealed that his office had been engaging with officials in China to pursue potential nuclear collaboration.

Nor did Erdogan limit his comments to Yonhap to potential nuclear collaboration. He noted with some dismay the fact that South Korea exports significantly more goods to Turkey than Turkey does to South Korea and expressed a hope that further negotiations would result in better agreements for Turkish businesses to export their goods.

“We have set a target of $15 billion in bilateral trade volume. As we work toward this goal, we prioritize developing a more balanced trade structure, expanding investment, and encouraging greater collaboration in production,” Erdogan told Yonhap.

Turkey has invested heavily in becoming a defense exporter, relying especially on its Bayraktar line of inexpensive attack drones to boost its profile. The Bayraktars featured heavily in battle during Azerbaijan’s extermination of the indigenous Armenian community of Nagorno-Karabakh and were later used with significant success by Ukraine in fighting off the ongoing Russian invasion of its territory. By 2024, Baykar, the company that produces the Bayraktar, claimed that Turkish companies controlled as much as 65 percent of the global market for drones. South Korea was not immune to the charms of Turkish drones. Following the G20 summit in 2023, Erdogan signed an agreement with the South Korean government to expand Korean investment in Turkish drone technology.

Erdogan also emphasized in his South Korean interview that Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which have dramatically disrupted global trade, have also impacted Ankara and Seoul’s ability to do business.

“The current crisis has once again demonstrated just how vital it is to develop reliable alternative routes for international trade,” he was quoted as saying. “We would like to see greater participation by Korean companies in Turkiye’s regional transport and logistics investments.”

Like Turkey, South Korea has also pursued greater investment and development in the defense industry, though not directly competing with the Bayraktar. During the term of conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was ousted and imprisoned after attempting to impose martial law in 2024, South Korea prioritized defense cooperation with Middle Eastern states — particularly Saudi Arabia, which found itself ostracized by the United States during the term of former President Joe Biden. While this included sales of Korean tanks and artillery to Turkey, by the end of 2023, South Korean officials were boasting of the near-completion of an agreement on “large-scale defense industry cooperation” with Erdogan’s government.