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Opinion: Turkey has quietly built long-term diplomatic, institutional and political influence across the Pacific – leveraging development aid, elite engagement and multilateral access – to shape regional decision making and constrain Australia’s strategic freedom, despite being largely overlooked by Canberra, warns strategic analyst Shay Gal.
Australia scans for China in the Pacific. It has already missed Turkey.
Canberra files Ankara under the Mediterranean. That classification fails. Its Pacific footprint matured over two decades and accelerates under COP31.
The structural error is searching for a Turkish “Pacific strategy” as Australians do with China or the United States. Turkey is not competing in spending or patrols. It secures access. It reshapes consultation patterns. It converts adjacency to leverage at multilateral choke points where small votes decide outcomes.
Istanbul, 9 April 2008. Its operative clauses set out a template for reach in microstates. Turkey and Pacific partners established a US$5 million fund implemented through the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), Turkey’s development agency. They formalised Turkey’s interest in becoming a post-forum dialogue partner and encouraged Ankara to participate in annual Pacific Island Countries and development partners meetings.
The parties agreed to use UN General Assembly High-Level Week in New York as a venue for ministerial consultations and to establish a standing follow-up mechanism among their permanent representatives to the UN.
That is design.
In June 2014, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu set out the next phase: a Turkey-Pacific Small Island Developing States foreign ministers’ meeting in Istanbul with 14 Pacific states. TIKA had been participating in Pacific Islands Forum meetings since 2011.
Turkish assistance to small island developing states reached US$5.24 million in 2012, and Ankara allocated a further US$5 million to development projects in the Pacific. He announced the opening of Turkey’s first diplomatic mission in the Pacific.
In 2014, Turkey was admitted as a post-forum dialogue partner of the Pacific Islands Forum. That status confers access within a formal framework whose aims include transparency and accountability, while applications are managed through criteria and guidelines because the partner ecosystem is crowded and politically sensitive.
Turkey is embedded. Ankara turns dialogue partner status into weight through three channels: project delivery, elite access and diplomatic densification.
TIKA operates in more than 170 countries and has carried out thousands of projects. In Fiji in 2013, TIKA reached an agreement with the Ministry of Health to provide equipment support to expand emergency room capacity nationwide, framed as demand-driven support that could continue via equipment and capacity building.
Turkey has recorded development assistance to Fiji and ministerial interface, including Pacific attendance at Turkish-hosted forums in 2025. In Vanuatu, Turkey listed donations for medical equipment and post-cyclone assistance. This is not the scale of Chinese infrastructure or Australian budget support; it buys gratitude, trust and invitations without triggering domestic backlash.
Elite access is the second channel. The 2008 declaration institutionalised ministerial consultations during UN General Assembly High-Level Week and a standing permanent representative mechanism at the UN. The 2014 statements added diplomatic training and information exchange memoranda with Pacific foreign ministries.
These tools produce a cohort of Pacific officials with reasons and relationships to call Ankara when a vote is coming, a candidacy is in play, or a statement needs co-sponsors.
Diplomatic densification moves presence from theoretical to permanent. Turkey shifts from non-resident accreditation to resident posts once relationships deepen. Papua New Guinea marks the shift. For years, Turkey’s embassy in Canberra was accredited to PNG.
Ankara has appointed an ambassador to Port Moresby to establish a resident diplomatic presence. A resident post in Port Moresby is a regional node. PNG is the region’s demographic and economic heavyweight, where infrastructure, resources, policing and internal stability converge.
It is also where Australia has been trying to lock in security integration. It confirms long-term entrenchment in the Pacific.
Australia and Turkey have reached an arrangement under which COP31 will be hosted in Antalya, with Turkey as host and president and Australia leading the negotiation process as president of negotiations.
A Pacific-hosted Pre-COP will centre regional priorities. COP processes institutionalise contact between foreign ministries, climate agencies, treasuries and leaders’ offices. They drive travel, side meetings, commitments and pledges.
When the Pre-COP convenes in a Pacific state with a summit machine, Ankara will be in the room with Pacific leaders under the banner of Pacific priorities, the same banner Canberra uses to justify its leadership.
The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat has framed the COP31 framework as putting Pacific states front and centre. Australia’s climate department has reported trilateral meetings between Turkey, Australia and the UN to progress both COP31 and the Pacific Pre-COP.
Location determines outcomes and access, defining which voices dominate. Turkey exploits the year-long process that places it in contact with Pacific leaders and regional institutions.
China is not the proxy story. The interaction is alignment by convenience. Turkey has elevated ties with Asia-Pacific countries, including China, and participates as a dialogue partner in the Pacific Islands Forum as part of its drive to associate with Asia-Pacific subregions.
Pacific governments pursue optionality. Turkey provides distance from the US–China binary while delivering projects and access. Ankara reinforces its global brand from the Bosporus to the Pacific. This constrains Australia’s operating space.
Turkey’s Pacific activity combines distance, marginal trade and entrenchment for leverage rather than markets. Trade volumes with Pacific island states remain limited. That does not explain a decade and a half of ministerial meetings, dialogue partner status, UN mechanisms and a resident post in Port Moresby.
The objective is political. Pacific votes and legitimacy matter. This is not a kinetic problem. The risk is institutional – and already embedded.
Agenda dilution. COP31 and the Pacific Pre-COP create a lane where Turkey associates itself with Pacific priorities and earns credit while offering commitments relative to Australia’s investment. The Pre-COP generates endorsements that translate into support for Turkish candidacies and positions.
Institutional drift. As the Pacific Islands Forum renegotiates partner engagement, a dialogue partner positioned outside the US–China binary presents itself as an alternative. Over time, this reshapes expectations and trades access for influence.
Security adjacency. Australia’s Pacific settings revolve around policing, cyber, infrastructure and surveillance. States with expanding defence industries and a record of coupling diplomacy to capability are attractive under pressure.
While major Turkish defence sales in the Pacific have not materialised, Ankara’s pattern elsewhere is to follow diplomatic presence with tailored capability offers, with Port Moresby as a platform.
For Pacific governments, short-term gains are immediate: practical projects fill gaps and strengthen bargaining power. The long-term cost is rising burden, more conditionality tied to votes and statements, greater internal friction, and the risk that climate forums become bargaining arenas.
China has defined the Pacific debate; Turkey has been misread as peripheral.
Agencies track hardware and treaties. Influence moves through relationships, training, grants and repeated ministerial interface. Turkey’s model is relational.
Treat Turkey as an autonomous Pacific actor. Map the engagement: ministries, projects, scholarships, networks, voting alignment before it consolidates.
Use COP31 and the Pre-COP to set transparency rules before they are imposed.
Strengthen Pacific institutional capacity so governments can test offers, negotiate terms and publish agreements. Procurement discipline is strategic defence.
Engage Ankara directly and define boundaries. Port Moresby and COP31 guarantee sustained presence. Direct engagement tests intent, probes overlap and marks red lines.
Turkey is not breaking rules in the Pacific. It is operating within them, deliberately. The Pacific’s partner architecture is consolidating. Turkey is inside it. COP31 consolidates that position.
The choice is binary: shape the environment now or manage its consolidation later.
Shay Gal is a strategic analyst in international security and crisis management, advising governments and senior decision makers on geopolitical risk, institutional strategy, and high level decision making.
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