Türkiye will not sell rare earth elements to the USA

https://ceenergynews.com/climate/turkiye-rare-earth-elements-usa/

by bookofjoe • 9 months ago

52 82 9 months ago

shigawire• 9 months ago

Seems like this is talking about not allowing the US to own the deposits or processing - as opposed to not selling the output to the US?

Anyone know if that is correct?

stackedinserter5• 9 months ago

Good news is that with allies like this we don't need enemies!

furkansahin3• 9 months ago

Maybe you guys should redefine who is your allies and enemies. Since the last one year or so even your allies feel like they are your enemies anyway. Tell me, who do you not have a beef with atm?

burkaman• 9 months ago

We seem to be very good friends with Saudi Arabia and Qatar now.

stackedinserter5• 9 months ago

Allies are those who fight together.

The ones who are like "man, fight alone and we'll mock you for military spending" - are not. The ones who are like "yo we kinda support you in a fight, but we'll also pump money into your enemy" - are not either.

But I sorta agree to your point, current administration screw up their allies really hard, although I see it more like very bitter pill that hurts before healing.

BTW I'm not 'merican, I'm from Canada.

pixelpoet• 9 months ago

The sheer hypocrisy of this comment is absolutely mindbending

NickC25• 9 months ago

I have a feeling the comment you are replying to is sarcasm, not to be taken literally.

stackedinserter5• 9 months ago

Why did you find it hypocritical?

tokai• 9 months ago

Both this article and its source are misrepresenting the actual quote. Its seems to be about rumors that rare earth minerals are being sold now.

Responding to the allegations that 'rare earth elements are sold to the USA', Bayraktar said that there is absolutely no such thing. Bayraktar said, "The agreement we made and signed in America was also a nuclear-related agreement. If we had done it about rare earth elements, be sure, they would have declared it too, we would have declared it," he said.

mrtksn• 9 months ago

Yep, this is about local politics. It is customary in Turkish politics to discover vast natural resources from time to time and promise that good times are ahead if you vote for Erdogan one more time(this field was discovered months before the 2023 elections).

They are often exaggerated, although resources exist. There's a meme from the previous election cycle about a pro-Erdogan TV personality celebrating the natural gas reserves discovered before elections instructing citizens to open the windows and run the boilers even if its a hot day because Turkey is now a natural gas boss.

The Turkish state isn't shy from selling access to these resources to foreign companies but this often leads to scandals and environmental disasters. Last year SSR mining, a Canadian company, had a huge mine collapse. Also, there are issues about cutting down forests to access mines that creates a lot of trouble for the government as it leads to widespread protests.

So what's the minister is actually saying is that Don't worry we are not going to sell it to foreign companies that will ruin the environment this time in response to rumours that they are going to sell it. But in Turkey, nobody remembers anything so anything can happen.

stackedinserter5• 9 months ago

At the same time, Canada pushes their extraction project https://www.mining-technology.com/news/canada-fast-track-cri...

euroderf• 9 months ago

Forever playing both sides of the fence.

umanwizard12• 9 months ago

Türkiye

Please stop. Erdogan is not in charge of what things are called in English, and Turkey has been called Turkey for hundreds of years. Calling it "Türkiye" would be as silly as switching to calling Germany "Deutschland" tomorrow because it tickles Friedrich Merz's nationalist pride.

suddenlybananas• 9 months ago

It's unrelated, but this spelling of Turkey makes me irrationally angry. I don't see why I should be expected to change my language to suit the whims of nationalists when they don't call Greece "Ellada" or Armenia "Hayastan" in Turkish.

StephenSmith• 9 months ago

Every country has rare earth elements. Just google "X discovers rare earth" where X is your country of choice and you'll find articles about how they have huge deposits. The underlying problem is the processing. China has figured this out and has cornered the market. Until other countries figure out how to process these materials, China will be able to leverage this capability to their advantage.

big-and-small• 9 months ago

It's have nothing to do with "figuring it out". Both mining and processing been figured out decades ago. But rare earth mining is disaster for ecology and western countries just don't want to pay the tall and deal with political consequences. Countries like China and Russia have advantage the they can do whatever they want without caring about protests or long term effects on population of regions where mining occurs.

There quite few talks on the topic, but you can check this one by Dr. Julie Klinger of University of Delaware:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGQeXrkCqM0

maxglute• 9 months ago

Not every country has economically extractable heavy rare earths, resource =/= reserve. X discovers rare earth is the same as X discovers plants, and then assume every country can build a robust biofuel economy. Reminder PRC has the MOST shale deposits in the world, they're just buried very deep and economically AND technically not productive to extract at scale.

PRC's main choke hold is HeavyREE, more specifically processing of ionic clays that is GEOGRAPHICALLY SCARCE like economically extractable oil deposits, which enables economic leeching of heavy strategic rare earth AT SCALE. Think hunting whales for blubber vs drilling oil, supports entirely different tiers of proliferation and use. At scale is key, west never used HREEs at scale until PRC commoditized them by exploiting specific geology mostly limited to south PRC, Myanmar, parts of Brazil but deposits now also found in Australia because Australia has everything. So the real question is can long will it take AU+co to discover and build the entire HREE infra based on deposit types only PRC has real experience with.

miroljub5• 9 months ago

Off-Topic: Why Türkiye? Why not keep using Turkey in English?

I know they changed their name to Türkiye, but why would we change it in our languages? We still use Germany instead of Deutschland, India instead of Bharat, and Italy instead of Italia.

So why make an exception for Turkey?

m00dy• 9 months ago

Because we are born to be exceptional.

jones89176• 9 months ago

"Following an official letter submitted to the United Nations by the Republic of Türkiye, the country's name has been officially changed to Türkiye at the UN.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that a letter had been received on June 1 from the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavuşoğlu addressed to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, requesting the use of “Türkiye” instead of “Turkey” for all affairs." [1]

"Foreign Minister Cavuşoğlu said in a tweet that the move would "increase our country's brand value".

The country’s English language public broadcaster TRT World said, the move would help to disassociate the country’s image from the large bird of the same name."[2]

[1] https://turkiye.un.org/en/184798-turkeys-name-changed-t%C3%B... [2] https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/turkey-or-turkiye-why-th...

umanwizard12• 9 months ago

So what? The UN does not have the power to redefine what words mean in the English language, and neither does the Republic of Turkey. If Germany submitted an official letter somewhere purporting to change its English name to Deutschland, you should also not listen to them.

beardyw• 9 months ago

help to disassociate the country’s image from the large bird of the same name.

So easily done - what? You are going to roast a whole country? You are going on holiday in huge bird?

m101• 9 months ago

It's because Erdogan is in charge and he's throwing his weight around because he knows he holds the cards on a number of geopolitical issues.

csomar• 9 months ago

I think they changed it in the UN or something. Theoretically their name never changed as most of their neighbors always called them Turkia.

miroljub5• 9 months ago

Can you remind me which language is the official language of the country called UN? I'd like to pass a C1 UN-language test so I can apply for UN-citizenship.

argestes• 9 months ago

Yeah, I'm from Turkey and it's really annoying for me to use a keyboard shortcuts to select "Türkiye" from dropdowns using year old "T", "U", "R" keys. Now in some websites it's "Turkey" and in some websites it's "Türkiye" I need to switch keyboard layouts just to select my country name.

Even though, website doesn't let me use my actual name since my name has non ascii characters so I need to try many times.

danhau• 9 months ago

This reminds me of my own struggles in locating my country in various dropdowns. Sometimes it‘s the trivial to find Austria, but sometimes Österreich under O and other times Österreich under Ö (sorted to the very bottom). Collation is fun!

0xEF3• 9 months ago

Respect?

If the people of that nation want their nation called something specific, cool. If they want to adopt/use the Anglicized version of their country's name, also cool. It's up to the people in that country, I guess.

Plus, you know, gobble gobble.

umanwizard12• 9 months ago

It's up to the people in that country, I guess

No, it is not. How English is spoken is determined collectively by the community of English-speakers, not by the Turkish government.

There is also the pretty major issue that native English speakers cannot even pronounce "Türkiye", nor easily type it. That's why use an English word for it, not a Turkish word -- because we speak English, not Turkish.

jstummbillig• 9 months ago

Do we?

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=T%C3%BCrki... (US)

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=T%C3%BCrkiye,Turk... (global)

Some noise in the global trend recently (any guesses?) but does not seem like a huge adjustment.

helsinkiandrew• 9 months ago

Because they want to be known as Türkiye and have been actively requesting. The United Nations officially agreed to recognize the country's new name in 2022.

umanwizard12• 9 months ago

The UN does not have the power to determine how the English language is spoken and written.

TyrianPurple• 9 months ago

You don't want to make the Sultan mad. If he gets mad, he won't sell you rare earths.

All jokes aside, I'm pretty sure both are still used. Non Turks still use Turkey.

blueflow• 9 months ago

The Germany/Deutschland/Alemannia/Niemcy situation is utter garbage and its existence is a curse upon this world, not justification to do it to other countries, too.

Türkiye is Türkiye because it self-identifies as such.

xg152• 9 months ago

I think just for kicks some group should start lobbying for the US to be called "Columbia" again.

rayiner• 9 months ago

We're laying the groundwork to globally search/replace "India" to "Bharat."

Hemospectrum• 9 months ago

Looking forward to my next long flight where I can watch movies about Bharatna Jones.

ozgung• 9 months ago

As a Turkish person I used to agree with you. Not anymore. My people don't want to be associated with an ugly bird and I respect that. Also we don't want an exception. We're ready to use Bharat, Deutschland or any other name in our language if those nations want that. Same for the city names. It's about respecting those countries and their people.

Fun fact: India is Hindistan in Turkish which literally means Land of Turkeys. Maybe we should really change. Bharat means spice which is a better name.

OutOfHere2• 9 months ago

Turkiye is okay but Türkiye is not (in English).

rafram• 9 months ago

India's main official name is India. Bharat (from Sanskrit) is coequal according to the constitution, and Hindustan (from Persian) is also sometimes used.

redwood• 9 months ago

It's a great bird.. in fact Benjamin Franklin proposed that it be the American bird. The bald eagle was chosen for whatever reason over that

umanwizard12• 9 months ago

Funny… turkeys (the bird) are called “dinde” in French, which means “from India” and is short for “poule d’Inde”: chicken from India.

Guinea pigs are called “cochon d’Inde” which means “pig from India”. In fact they are neither from India nor Guinea.

xg152• 9 months ago

Not sure if it's a trend already that some countries are trying to exert more control over their own names, but I noticed the same with Belarus a few years ago. It used to be called "White Russia" in german, but at some point, the name vanished from both press articles and official publications and was replaced with Belarus. According to Wikipedia, there was a german government decision to change the official usage of the name, co-initiated by the Belarusian government. (This was before the war, so I assume the relations weren't yet as icy as they are today)

https://dgo-online.org/informieren/aktuelles/belarusisch-deu...

https://web.archive.org/web/20210924060241/https://geschicht... (in German)

miroljub5• 9 months ago

Which is kind of funny, since Belarus means exactly Whiterussia.

Bolwin• 9 months ago

The diacritics are a bit annoying to type but if they've asked to be called Turkiye why not call them Turkiye?

miroljub5• 9 months ago

What kind of authority do they have over my language?

Yizahi• 9 months ago

Funnily, the actual pronunciation is easier now, and it (to me) sounds 99% close to Turkia. I don't get why they went with such complicated letter sequence for such a straightforward word. Though both languages are not native to me, so I may be wrong. But I was baffled this year, after discovering that incomprehensible Türkiye is actually Turkia.

PS: I'm going from this this video as a basis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYjVIaZA14c

umanwizard12• 9 months ago

Türkiye in Turkish contains sounds that can’t be pronounced in English, and does not sound much like “Turkia”. The closest English approximate pronunciation (which is what you hear in that video) does sound pretty close to Turkia, though.

I don't get why they went with such complicated letter sequence for such a straightforward word.

The spelling wasn’t invented recently, it’s just the standard word for Turkey in the Turkish language.

drivingmenuts• 9 months ago

Not an American news agency - they're probably following a European standard.

ramazanpolat• 9 months ago

Why is this in the "hacker" news?

Maken• 9 months ago

The lack of rare earths could pretty much collapse the entire US' electronics industry.

BeFlatXIII2• 9 months ago

…and we (USA) didn't give the Kurds their deserved autonomous nation as thanks for their help in Iraq to avoid pissing off the Turks.

husav1k• 9 months ago

Is the land yours to give?

BeFlatXIII2• 9 months ago

Arguably, the northern parts of Iraq, where the Kurds live, was ours to partition after Saddam Hussein’s fall. But Turkey doesn’t want a Kurdish state on their border, and the US wants good graces with Turkey for their anti-Russian missile silos.

arctics• 9 months ago

as stated many times before, rare earth mining isn't a major issue, capacity to process into something useful which requires tons of water and toxic chemicals is the real issue for the US since China controls lion's share of the market.

OutOfHere2• 9 months ago

In the English language, we need to stop spelling Turkiye as Türkiye. Note that I did not revert to the old spelling of Turkey. English does not have ü as a character. We spell all other countries using the A-Za-z character set, and no exception should be made for Turkiye. It doesn't matter how they want it spelled. If tomorrow they want it spelled Ṫüřḳïýe or Ĵăƥȃn̈ or Ǥëŗṁāņẙ, we should not have to oblige.

speedylight• 9 months ago

If they don’t even have the refining infrastructure built yet what do they have to offer the US ( or any other nation) that we can’t get from China? Rare Earth isn’t actually rare, what’s rare is the ability to refine it into pure elements.

johnrgrace• 9 months ago

The us has tons of rare earth ores, it's the refining the US lacks mostly because it's a nasty process that creates a lot of toxic waste.

Türkiye will not sell rare earth elements to the USA

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