• Commentary Geoeconomics
  by Riccardo Gasco and Federico Donelli
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In recent years, access to strategic resources has become a central dimension of global geopolitical competition, helping to redefine the boundaries between economic security and national security. In this context, power tends to be increasingly exercised through control of supply chains, processing capacity, and access to critical materials, rather than through traditional institutional and regulatory channels.

The United States' recent decision to seize Venezuela's president and bring him to the U.S. was more than a dramatic episode in hemispheric politics. It was a signal of how geopolitics is changing-and of how power is increasingly exercised when strategic resources are at stake. For Europe, the lesson is not Venezuela per se, but the method. In an era of intensified great-power competition, Washington is showing a growing willingness to act directly to secure access to critical resources, blurring the line between legal, diplomatic, and coercive tools. Oil in Venezuela today, critical minerals tomorrow.

This shift matters for the European Union because it exposes a structural vulnerability. The EU operates in a strategic environment that is becoming more unpredictable, more transactional, and increasingly shaped by supply chains rather than treaties. As economic security and national security converge, Europe finds itself more exposed not only to geopolitical shocks, but also to policy decisions taken elsewhere-particularly in Washington-over which it has limited influence.

The power of resources or resources for power?

Power is no longer exercised primarily through institutions and rules, but through control over production, processing, and access to strategic materials. This evolution is already visible in the defence sector, where industrial capacity and supply chains increasingly shape security outcomes. In this new landscape, the EU faces a choice: adapt to a harder geopolitics, or accept growing strategic dependence. Adapting, however, requires reassessing partners it has often treated as politically difficult rather than strategically indispensable. Turkey is one of them.

The latest U.S. National Security Strategy leaves little ambiguity. Economic security is closely tied to national security, and control over supply chains for critical minerals has become a key strategic priority. Rare earths, lithium, nickel, and other essential inputs for clean energy, advanced manufacturing, and defense technologies are now viewed as instruments of power rather than neutral commodities.

The Venezuela episode illustrates this logic in its starkest form. Long framed as a pariah state defined by authoritarianism and mismanagement, Venezuela is also home to vast oil reserves and underexplored mineral wealth. When strategic materials are involved, legal, diplomatic, and military tools often overlap. For the EU, which has built much of its external action around rules, multilateralism, and regulatory power, this shift creates a dilemma. Europe remains heavily dependent on external suppliers for critical raw materials, yet it lacks both the coercive instruments and the political appetite to secure them in a more confrontational geopolitical environment.

Brussels has responded with initiatives such as the Critical Raw Materials Act, aiming to diversify supply, boost domestic extraction and processing, and strengthen recycling. However, structural constraints, such as environmental opposition, slow permitting, and fragmented industrial capacity, mean that Europe will remain dependent on external partners for the foreseeable future.

The question, then, is not whether Europe needs partners, but which ones-and on what terms. In a world where U.S. foreign policy has become more unpredictable and China dominates large segments of mineral processing, Europe's strategic autonomy will depend on building reliable, geographically proximate, and rules-based partnerships. This is where Turkey's emerging role becomes strategically relevant.

Turkey's potential role

Turkey's announcement of a large rare-earth deposit near Eskişehir has not yet altered global markets. But geopolitically, it matters. Turkey sits at the intersection of European, Eurasian, and Middle Eastern supply routes; it has a sizeable industrial base; and it is already a key supplier of boron, a critical input for many advanced technologies. For years, Ankara pursued strategic autonomy through hedging, balancing relations with Washington, Moscow, and Beijing to preserve flexibility. That strategy was viable in a more permissive international environment. Today, however, hedging is becoming harder to sustain.

As the United States tightens control over strategic supply chains and increasingly links access to technology and markets to political alignment, ambiguity carries higher costs.

Turkey's tentative shift toward cooperation with Western partners on critical minerals reflects this reality. For Ankara, cooperation on critical minerals offers access to capital, processing technology, and European markets-benefits that are increasingly difficult to secure through strategic ambiguity alone. Rare earths offer Ankara a way to reinsert itself into Western industrial ecosystems without reopening the most contentious political disputes in its relations with the EU. Alignment through supply chains, in this sense, is not a rejection of autonomy, but an attempt to redefine it.

From a European perspective, Turkey's mineral ambitions present both an opportunity and a test. Cooperation on critical raw materials could strengthen Europe's supply-chain resilience, reduce exposure to geopolitical shocks, and anchor Turkey more firmly in a shared industrial and regulatory space. Unlike distant suppliers, Turkey is embedded in Europe's economic geography and already integrated into key manufacturing sectors. At the same time, cooperation cannot be unconditional. The EU's approach to strategic materials is fundamentally regulatory. Environmental standards, transparency, and governance are not optional add-ons but the foundation of trust. Turkey's uneven record in these areas raises legitimate concerns.

Yet disengagement would be the wrong response. If Europe treats Turkey solely as a political problem rather than a strategic partner, it risks pushing Ankara toward alternative arrangements that undermine European interests. The lesson of the new U.S. geopolitics is precisely that strategic vacuums do not remain empty for long.

Critical materials as a new vector for cooperation?

The broader implication is that Europe must adapt to a harder international order without abandoning its core principles. This requires complementing regulatory power with strategic pragmatism. Rather than viewing critical minerals only through the lens of compliance, the EU should use them as a platform for conditional but meaningful engagement.

In practical terms, this could involve narrowly defined partnerships focused on specific segments of the value chain-such as joint ventures in rare-earth processing or recycling-linked to EU financing, technology transfer, and gradual regulatory convergence. Selective Turkish participation in European industrial initiatives connected to the green and digital transitions would anchor cooperation in clearly defined projects, rather than in open-ended political alignmen. A pragmatic EU approach would focus less on comprehensive political alignment and more on targeted, conditional cooperation.

Turkey's rare-earth discovery is not a silver bullet, nor would cooperation on critical minerals resolve all political disputes. But in a world where supply chains, processing capacity, and export licenses increasingly define power, disengagement is not a neutral option. For Europe, engaging Turkey through targeted, conditional cooperation on critical minerals would not signal a retreat from values, but an adaptation to a geopolitical reality in which strategic relevance is measured as much in materials as in norms.