Chinese scientists say Turkey’s claimed “giant” rare earths deposit actually “small in scale”

Chinese researchers have reportedly determined that a deposit that is Turkey’s great hope in the field of rare earths supply is not set to emerge as particularly significant.

The scientist who led the mapping of the Kizilcaoren, Beylikova deposit, Yang Xiaoyong, was on October 24 reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP) as saying that its mineralisation was “small in scale” and “still far from reaching the large scale of rare earth deposits”.

The SCMP article said: “Although the findings shed light on how rare earth elements accumulate in carbonatite-related formations, the researchers concluded that the site was unlikely to emerge as a major global alternative to existing producers any time soon.”

“So far, there is no evidence that Turkey or other countries in the Middle East have substantial rare earth deposits,” Yang, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China and Hebei GEO University, was cited as saying in an interview.

“Globally, rare earth resources are concentrated mainly in China, Greenland, Australia, Canada and Southeast Asia,” he added.

The rare earths resource is located in Kizilcaoren district of Beylikova in Eskisehir Province in central Anatolia.

In May last year, IntelliNews reported on how Turkish energy and natural resources minister Alparslan Bayraktar told a conference in Istanbul that rare earth elements (REE) had become one of the pillars of Turkey’s economic security and industrialisation strategy. His remarks were made despite publicly available information showing it was not at all clear that the country boasted significant rare earth deposits.

When Turkey announced the discovery of the "giant" 694mn-tonne REE deposit in 2022, breathless local news stories referred to officials estimating that it could meet global REE needs for a thousand years. But various publications then looked at whether the claims might be bunk.

"If they're claiming such a big deposit, they would [have] done a lot of drilling and would know what the grade was," Christopher Ecclestone, a principal and mining strategist at the UK research house Hallgarten & Company, was quoted as saying by DW in July 2022, adding: "So where's the detail?"

Turkey was yet to provide such detail, but as AGBI reported in the spring of 2025, Bayraktar was telling potential investors that the country was counting with becoming one of the world’s leading suppliers of rare earths—critical minerals much sought by countries and companies driving the energy and technology transitions—and would attempt to capitalise on its rare earth reserves with investments in extraction and processing and the development of downstream industries.

The Kizilcaoren site includes 10 of the 17 REEs alongside thorium, uranium traces, barite and fluorite, according to previous work carried out by Turkey’s General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration.