By Can Öztaş
“Casablanca” ends on a fogbound airfield. The plane to Lisbon has gone, and the idealists with it. What remains is a cynic and a prefect of police, each of whom has just discovered how useful the other might be. “Louis,” says Rick, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
In January, at Davos, Mark Carney discovered rather late what much of the world already knew: the rules-based international order had never applied its rules consistently. These pages answered with a modest request: fewer scriptwriters, more co-authors.
Nine months later, Carney is coming to Ankara.
The first bilateral visit to Turkey by a Canadian prime minister is expected to bring discussions of trade, energy and defense. The visit also brings Carney’s Davos proposal into sharper focus: middle powers cooperating through different coalitions to protect their interests in a world increasingly shaped by great-power rivalry. He calls it “variable geometry”. It is a departure from the idea that every security or economic problem must be handled through the same institutions, or under the direction of the same powers. Captain Louis Renault put it more economically: “I blow with the wind, and the prevailing wind happens to be from Vichy.” The question is what holds these coalitions together once the wind changes.
THE PRICE OF INDEPENDENCE
Canada has compelling reasons to reconsider its relationships. Dependence on the United States, long regarded as a guarantee of prosperity and security, now brings uncertainty. Ottawa has drawn closer to Brussels, concluding a security and defense partnership and joining the EU’s SAFE defense-financing initiative. Canada will always have Washington; geography sees to that. What it can no longer count on is Washington behaving like an ally.
Ankara knows the complications of dependence, and has learned some of them from Canada.
Canadian technology was once woven through Turkish defense projects: cameras for drones, engines for training aircraft, business jets for electronic warfare. Ottawa suspended new military export permits after Turkey’s 2019 operation in Syria, and in 2021, after Canadian drone sensors turned up in the Nagorno-Karabakh war, cancelled some thirty more. Ankara built its own cameras. Engines proved harder. Canada eased its restrictions on Jan. 29 2024, days after the Turkish parliament ratified Sweden’s NATO membership. Diplomacy rarely deals in coincidences. Each shipment still requires its own permit, and the engine question remains open. The two governments are now discussing deeper defense-industrial cooperation.
At the NATO summit in Ankara in July, Canada and Turkey joined Greece, Ukraine and other countries in supporting a proposed Defense, Security and Resilience Bank to finance defense production. Greece and Turkey, unable to agree where the sea ends, have agreed on who should lend them the money to defend it.
Meanwhile, attacks on Turkish-linked commercial shipping in the Black Sea are testing Ankara’s effort to maintain relations with both Russia and Ukraine. Ankara has also entered a collective-defense arrangement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, still awaiting parliamentary ratification.
These arrangements vary in purpose and legal character. Ankara remains committed to NATO while negotiating new security obligations elsewhere. Old guarantees seem less certain and new partnerships promise greater room for manoeuvre. What looks like strategic independence can also leave states carrying commitments whose implications are not fully understood.
THE POLITICS OF TRUST
Carney has described trust and legitimacy as particular advantages of middle powers. Shared interests may bring states together; democratic stability can help their cooperation endure.
Agreements are more credible when they emerge from accountable decisions, respect the law and survive electoral transitions. Independent courts, functioning parliaments and a free press cannot guarantee that governments will honor their promises; they can expose failures and make correction possible. A defense agreement may be negotiated behind closed doors, but its consequences belong to the public.
Turkey’s strategic importance is considerable. Its geography, defense industry, diplomatic experience and regional relationships give it a place in any serious discussion of international security. Yet concerns about judicial independence, the treatment of elected political opponents and concentrated executive authority raise questions about the democratic foundations of lasting partnerships. Renault’s “Round up the usual suspects” is a punchline. In some capitals it has become a procedure.
Canada, too, must reconcile its principles with the compromises of diplomacy. Carney calls his approach “principled pragmatism”, a phrase in which each word reassures a different audience: the adjective is for voters at home, the noun for the hosts. It is tested only when the two words disagree, which tends to be when a contract is on the table.
In January, these pages asked for more co-authors. Carney’s visit gives that invitation a practical setting. The question is no longer how many hands hold the pen, but whose signature will still mean something after the next election.
Casablanca ends with two men walking off into the fog towards a beautiful friendship. The citizens, as usual, are not in the shot.
