At the Astana Mining and Metallurgy Congress in June, Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov said Kazakhstan wanted to become a regional hub for processing and higher-value manufacturing. That should force Ankara to revisit the mining memorandum signed in July 2025, which emphasised joint exploration and production.
If bilateral co-operation ends at the mine mouth, it will already be behind Kazakhstan’s own industrial policy. Türkiye and Kazakhstan need a processing alliance, not an ore-for-machinery bargain Joint work should extend from beneficiation and metallurgy to alloys, permanent-magnet materials, processing equipment, recycling and environmental control.
If Kazakhstan supplies concentrate while Türkiye imports the refined chemicals, magnets or specialised components needed by its factories from established producers elsewhere, both will remain outside the most strategic stages. The excitement around Kazakhstan’s mineral potential makes this distinction urgent.
In April 2025, the government announced an estimated rare-earth resource of more than 20 million tonnes at the Zhana Kazakhstan site, including neodymium, cerium, lanthanum and yttrium. The estimate still requires confirmation as an economically recoverable reserve.
Even if confirmed, geology alone will not create industrial power. Refining concentration continued to rise in 2025 and that planned magnet production in diversified regions amounts to only about one-third of expected rare-earth mining capacity by 2035. The bottleneck is what happens after extraction.
That middle of the chain is technically demanding. Ore must be characterised, concentrated, separated and refined before it becomes high-purity metal, alloy powder or a usable component. Plants also need specialised equipment, laboratories, water treatment and reliable maintenance.
These activities create engineering knowledge and supplier demand; an offtake agreement does not. The two countries have complementary starting points, but neither should exaggerate them. Kazakhstan has operating mines, metallurgy and trained engineers. Türkiye has an export-oriented machinery industry and is developing rare-earth processing knowledge through the Beylikova pilot plant and the Rare Earth Elements Research Institute.
It is not yet a substitute for the countries dominating separation, advanced magnets and specialised equipment. A credible alliance would bring in technology partners from Japan, South Korea, Europe or Southeast Asia where necessary, rather than present dependence as self-sufficiency.
The division of labour should follow industrial logic. Beneficiation and primary metallurgy will usually make more sense near Kazakh deposits, avoiding the shipment of low-grade material and retaining local value. Turkish firms can supply process machinery, power electronics, automation, precision parts and environmental systems, while Turkish industrial clusters provide demand for refined metals, alloys and magnet materials.
Joint laboratories should qualify outputs for automotive, machinery, energy and electronics customers. Technology licences and engineering teams should be shared, instead of leaving one side with the mine and the other with the purchase order. Southeast Asia makes this more than a bilateral Central Asian project.