The Astana Times provides news and information from Kazakhstan and around the world. 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 Mehmet Enes Beşer. 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.
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