THE timing was deliberate. Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan arrived in Bangladesh this week as part of a broader South Asia tour that also included Singapore, Indonesia, and South Korea — a regional sweep that underscored how seriously Ankara is now treating its eastern flank. Fidan’s two-day official visit to Dhaka, which began on June 4, comes as Bangladesh and Turkey seek to expand strategic cooperation and strengthen trade, investment, and humanitarian engagement. For Fidan, it was a first: his first visit to the South Asian country since taking office.
The visit did not emerge from nowhere. It comes amid growing diplomatic engagement between the two countries following the formation of Bangladesh’s new government in February. Foreign minister Khalilur Rahman made his first bilateral foreign visit to Turkey on March 14, where both sides reaffirmed their commitment to deepening the strategic partnership. During that Ankara meeting, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the Diplomacy Academy of Turkey and the Bangladesh Foreign Service Academy, aimed at enhancing institutional cooperation in diplomatic training and capacity building. Now Fidan has returned the call, and the pace of engagement signals something qualitatively different from the cultural and historical ties the two countries have traded on for decades.
For a country of 170 million people that has long sought to align its geopolitical clout with its economic weight, this convergence with Ankara represents a bold assertion of sovereignty in a fractured world order. But every assertion of sovereignty creates its own anxieties elsewhere. From New Delhi to Beijing, from Islamabad to Brussels, regional and global powers are reading the fine print — and recalibrating accordingly.
Why Turkey, why now
TO UNDERSTAND the logic of the Bangladesh-Turkey convergence, you have to understand what both countries want — and how neatly those wants align.
Bangladesh seeks high-tech defence hardware without the political strings, structural dependencies, or alignment risks that come with buying exclusively from traditional superpowers. The country is midway through a substantial military modernisation drive, its Forces Goal programme, and the procurement landscape it faces is laced with complications. Buying heavily from China deepens an already lopsided dependence. Buying from India means inviting a neighbour with its own regional interests into the domestic security architecture. Relying entirely on Western Europe or the United States brings strict conditionalities around governance and human rights that have grown politically sensitive in Dhaka.
Turkey arrives as the ideal alternative: a Muslim-majority NATO member with a battle-tested defence industry, a track record of technology transfer, and no historic leverage over Dhaka. The signal from Fidan’s visit was unambiguous on this point. Speaking at a joint press conference with FM Khalilur Rahman, Fidan stated explicitly that Turkey will strengthen cooperation with Bangladesh in the defence industry, saying there are steps the two sides can take to enhance cooperation in various fields, ‘particularly in the defense industry.’ That is not diplomatic boilerplate. It is a public commitment, made on Bangladeshi soil, at the beginning of a formal visit.
Earlier discussions under the interim government had already floated a concrete proposal to establish a defence industrial zone in Bangladesh — a proposal expected to feature in the current round of talks. Such a zone would allow Turkish defence firms to manufacture on Bangladeshi soil, deepening industrial ties and allowing Bangladesh to begin cultivating a domestic defence production capacity rather than remaining a pure end-user of imported hardware.
Economically, the timing is equally deliberate. Bangladesh is preparing for its formal graduation from Least Developed Country status in November 2029, a transition that will strip away the automatic preferential trade access its economy has long relied upon. Partnering with Turkey provides avenues for high-tech upgrades in textile machinery, joint investments in man-made fibres, and streams of Turkish capital into pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, and information technology. Trade between the two countries reached approximately USD 1.36 billion in 2025, with Turkish exports totalling USD 430.6 million and imports from Bangladesh reaching USD 926.4 million. FM Rahman has confirmed that Bangladesh is now discussing the possibility of a free trade agreement and, in the interim, a preferential trade agreement to rapidly increase trade volumes, with both sides targeting a $2 billion figure as the near-term benchmark.
Turkey’s motivations are just as clear. For Ankara, the partnership is a crown jewel of its ‘Asia Anew’ foreign policy initiative, which seeks to expand Turkey’s diplomatic and commercial footprint beyond Europe and the Middle East. By establishing a proposed dedicated Turkish Special Economic Zone in Bangladesh, Turkish firms can manufacture goods in Asia using Bangladesh’s massive, skilled labour pool — circumventing high domestic production costs while anchoring themselves in Asian supply chains.
Rohingya dimension
ONE element of Turkey’s engagement with Bangladesh that rarely receives the geopolitical attention it deserves is the Rohingya crisis — and it was front and centre during Fidan’s visit.
Turkey’s humanitarian assistance for Rohingya Muslims has exceeded USD 80 million, with support continuing through projects in healthcare, shelter, education, and infrastructure led by TIKA, AFAD, the Turkish Red Crescent, and the Turkish Diyanet Foundation. The Turkish Field Hospital established in Cox’s Bazar in 2018 continues to provide medical services. Fidan is scheduled to visit the Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar as part of his itinerary, inspecting projects by these organisations and underscoring Turkey’s continued support for displaced Rohingyas.
Speaking at the joint press conference in Dhaka, Fidan stated that Turkey is acting in solidarity and coordination with relevant neighbouring countries and organisations to find a ‘lasting and fair solution’ to the Rohingya issue and is making intensive efforts to keep the crisis on the agenda of the international community. He praised Bangladesh for hosting the refugees for years, describing the country’s efforts as a ‘historic sacrifice on behalf of humanity.’
This humanitarian dimension is not separate from the strategic relationship — it is integral to it. Turkey’s sustained presence in Cox’s Bazar, through multiple agencies and a functioning field hospital, gives Ankara an on-the-ground footprint in Bangladesh that no other outside power can match. It also reinforces Turkey’s positioning as a champion of Muslim-majority communities worldwide, a soft-power identity that resonates deeply in Dhaka and amplifies Ankara’s influence in ways that pure defence sales cannot.
One overlooked consequence of the Bangladesh-Turkey deepening is what it has done for Dhaka’s standing in multilateral institutions. FM Rahman was nominated by Bangladesh for the presidency of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, and Turkey actively supported that campaign. Fidan used the Dhaka visit to formally congratulate Rahman on his election to the role, saying the outcome reflected the ‘respect the international community has for Bangladesh’ and its growing role on the global stage.
The UN General Assembly presidency is more than ceremonial. It positions Bangladesh as a recognised voice in global governance and gives Dhaka a platform to amplify issues — from climate vulnerability to the Rohingya crisis — that it has long struggled to press at the highest international levels. Turkish support for that campaign is itself a signal of the depth of the partnership: Ankara is not just selling hardware and seeking trade; it is actively investing in Bangladesh’s international standing.
New Delhi confronts more independent Bangladesh
OF ALL the regional powers watching this alignment, India has the most immediate reason for unease — and the most complex set of grievances to untangle.
New Delhi’s concerns operate on multiple levels. At the security level, India’s primary worry stems from the tight geopolitical alliance between Ankara and Islamabad. Turkey and Pakistan have cultivated close ties over decades, bound together by shared defence cooperation and a mutual interest in counterbalancing Indian regional primacy. From New Delhi’s vantage point, a heavy Turkish footprint in Dhaka, including a potential defence industrial zone, risks pulling Bangladesh into a tighter diplomatic orbit alongside China, Pakistan, and Turkey, potentially altering the balance of power on India’s most sensitive flank.
The concern has taken on added weight following the profound political transitions in Dhaka. The fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government in mid-2024 abruptly ended an era in which New Delhi enjoyed exceptionally close ties with Bangladesh. The formation of Bangladesh’s new elected government in February 2026, under prime minister Tarique Rahman, has established a diversified foreign policy as the institutional baseline. Dhaka’s new openness to partnerships that New Delhi finds uncomfortable — Turkey being the most visible — signals a Bangladesh that is deliberately moving out from under India’s geopolitical shadow.
At the commercial level, India has positioned itself as a major security provider and defence-industrial partner for Dhaka, offering lines of credit for military hardware. Turkey’s highly competitive, battle-tested defence exports — now accompanied by an explicit public commitment to defence industry cooperation — represent direct market competition to India’s regional security offerings. Every Turkish drone, naval asset, or defence industrial zone established in Bangladesh is a strand of dependency that does not run through New Delhi.
How Turkey’s influence could reshape regional geometry
PAKISTAN occupies an unusual position in this realignment: a country with relatively modest direct stakes in Bangladesh’s economy or security, yet potentially one of the most significant beneficiaries of the shift.
Islamabad and Dhaka carry the deep, unresolved wounds of 1971, when the Pakistani military’s campaign in what was then East Pakistan left scars that have never been publicly addressed with a formal apology. For most of the past five decades, the relationship has been cordial but guarded, shaped more by what goes unsaid than by active engagement.
Turkey’s growing proximity to Bangladesh changes the geometry of that relationship. Ankara already serves as a major diplomatic partner to Islamabad, and Turkey’s deep ties with Pakistan mean that a Bangladesh-Turkey partnership inevitably draws Dhaka into closer indirect proximity with Islamabad on the world stage — whether or not Bangladesh consciously intends it. The Rohingya dimension reinforces this: Turkey’s self-positioning as a global advocate for Muslim communities aligns with Islamabad’s own rhetoric and creates shared multilateral spaces where Bangladesh, Turkey, and Pakistan increasingly find themselves on the same side of the argument.
A Dhaka that is more autonomous from New Delhi is, by definition, more geopolitically accessible to the rest of the Islamic world — and that opening, however informal, ultimately serves Pakistani interests.
Why Beijing can afford to stay relaxed
BEIJING’S response to the Bangladesh-Turkey partnership is, characteristically, the most measured of the major powers — and in many ways the most revealing.
China has deep structural interests in Bangladesh. It remains Dhaka’s largest supplier of military hardware and a primary infrastructure investor through the Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese-funded ports, roads, and power plants are woven into Bangladesh’s economic infrastructure in ways that are not easily unwound. On pure self-interest calculations, Chinese dominance in Dhaka stands to be diluted by any credible new partnership.
And yet Beijing is not particularly alarmed. China does not view Turkey as a hostile Western proxy; rather, it sees Turkey as a fellow member of the Global South pushing for a multipolar world order. From Beijing’s perspective, a world in which Bangladesh diversifies away from Western-dominated security frameworks and financial conditionalities is broadly favourable, even if some of China’s exclusive leverage in Dhaka is diluted in the process.
As long as Turkey’s defence cooperation does not directly compromise China’s core strategic maritime assets in the Bay of Bengal, Beijing is content to let Dhaka diversify, knowing that a more independent Bangladesh is also less likely to fall entirely into a Western or pro-Indian security alignment. This is the logic of the multipolar world China has long championed: more players, more vectors, and fewer clear lines of unilateral Western influence.
A challenge to established economic frameworks
THE European Union’s discomfort with the Bangladesh-Turkey axis is the most structurally complex — and the most revealing about the limits of European economic statecraft.
Turkey remains bound to Europe through the 1995 Customs Union agreement, which heavily restricts its external trade policy. As the EU advances its massive free trade agreement negotiations with India, Turkish manufacturers are deeply concerned — Turkey and India share heavy export overlaps in European markets, particularly in textiles and machinery, and Turkish firms fear an EU-India deal will severely erode Turkey’s competitive advantage.
The two sides are keen to increase bilateral trade volume from USD1.35 billion in 2025 to USD2 billion, and the ongoing FTA/PTA discussions represent a direct attempt to build an alternative supply chain pipeline that reduces exposure to European market shifts. Bangladesh, as the world’s second-largest garment exporter, integrating more deeply with Turkey’s textile machinery and manufacturing capacity, is structurally threatening to European producers who have long relied on competitive access to both markets.
The deeper EU anxiety is about regulatory leverage. Brussels has long used preferential market access — through mechanisms like the GSP+ programme — as a tool to enforce compliance with international conventions on labour rights and environmental standards. Turkey operates on an entirely different model: transactional pragmatism, with no political strings attached. Fidan committed to deepening cooperation across a broad range of sectors, including defence, energy, education, culture, science, and health care — and none of those commitments came attached to conditionalities. If Dhaka can meet its industrial and security needs through Ankara on purely commercial terms, its vulnerability to European regulatory dictates decreases significantly. That erosion of leverage, more than any specific trade figure, is what concerns Brussels most.
Bangladesh’s emergence as strategic actor
WHAT the Bangladesh-Turkey axis ultimately represents is something bigger than bilateral trade figures, defence contracts, or even the Rohingya camps of Cox’s Bazar: it is a case study in how medium-sized nations are rewriting the rules of engagement in a post-unipolar world.
Bangladesh and Turkey are demonstrating how middle powers can assert their sovereignty in a highly fractured global landscape. Neither country is powerful enough to dictate terms to the great powers — but both have become sophisticated enough to play them off against each other, extracting technology transfers here, favourable trade terms there, and diplomatic recognition somewhere else, without permanently aligning with any single patron. That Bangladesh’s foreign minister now holds the presidency of the UN General Assembly — a role Turkey actively supported and which Fidan described as reflecting the international community’s confidence in Bangladesh’s growing role on the global stage — is the clearest possible signal that this is working.
For New Delhi, Beijing, Islamabad, and Brussels alike, the challenge is the same: adapting to a Dhaka that is no longer reactive but deeply deliberate. Bangladesh has a long history of surviving on the margins of great-power competition. It is now, quietly but unmistakably, beginning to compete on its own terms.
The region will not look the same for it.
Namia Akhtar previously worked at the embassy of the Netherlands, the UNDP and the European External Affairs Services.
