Türkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, speaking to reporters while on a highly successful three-day official visit to China, stated that his nation would like to join the BRICS, and will bring the issue up at an upcoming meeting of the BRICS’ foreign-ministers in Russia.
During an event at the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing, Fidan disclosed that he was looking forward to attending the BRICS Foreign Ministers meeting in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod next week, to which he has been invited. “We cannot ignore the fact that BRICS, as an important cooperation platform, offers some other countries a good alternative,” Fidan said, noting that while the group still has “a long way to go,” Ankara sees the “potential in BRICS.”
Moscow has welcomed Ankara’s interest in joining BRICS. President Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, has stated, according to the June 4 RT, that the topic of Türkiye’s membership in the group will be featured on the agenda of next week’s summit, which this year is being chaired by Russia, though, Peskov noted, not all the nations that wish to join the BRICS can join.
Türkiye first applied to join the EU (then called the European Community) in 1997, but the accession process has been stalled since 2016, and the EU has continued to string Turkiye along. Were Turkiye, which is a NATO member, to join BRICS, this could represent a significant shift.
