According to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey wants to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes China, Russia, India and Pakistan as well as some Central Asian countries. Turkey is currently listed as a dialogue partner by the SCO. In the event of accession, Turkey would be the first member of the group to also belong to NATO. At the most recent meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Iran’s admission was also decided.
After a summit of the organization in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, the Turkish president said Turkey wanted to discuss membership at next year’s meeting. His country has “historical and cultural” connections to the Asian continent and wants to play a role in the organization, whose members together make up “30 percent of global economic output”. He referred to the Asia Initiative, which Ankara decided in 2019 and which aims to connect Turkey, which is in western Asia, more closely with the east of the continent.
The foreign policy spokesman for the SPD, Nils Schmid, sees Erdoğan’s initiative as a “serious mistake” and as “another attempt by Erdoğan to distract from domestic political difficulties”. Green foreign politician Jürgen Trittin called for a “more robust Turkey policy”. “NATO and the European Union have to ask themselves how long they will let Erdoğan dance around on their noses,” said the foreign policy spokesman for the Greens parliamentary group, Jürgen Trittin, the newspaper World.
The organization sees itself as the antipode to the West. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in Samarkand that the SCO was an organization against “US unilateralism”. It is not yet clear whether Turkey will ultimately join the eastern alliance.
more on the subject – Summit meeting of the Shanghai organization: Putin accuses West of economic selfishness
Source: RT
