The efforts of the European Union (EU) and the United States will have been in vain: Ankara has officially requested to join the BRICS group (an acronym in English for its first members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) despite the reluctance of Western capitals. Turkey thus becomes the first NATO member to join this informal club of southern countries, often considered as an alternative to the G7 (Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom), which will soon be overtaken in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) by this BRICS group. The information, revealed on Monday 2 September by the Bloomberg agency, citing sources close to the matter, was neither confirmed nor denied by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Turkish presidency.
On several occasions in the past, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had expressed interest in joining the BRICS, but formal talks had not taken place until recent months. It was his participation in the Johannesburg summit in 2018 that initially attracted attention. The acceleration of Turkey’s accession process became clear from the end of 2023.
At the time, the BRICS had just announced their intention to double the number of their members, notably by inviting Egypt, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. On the Turkish side, several signals from Ankara clearly suggest a desire for rapprochement. There is talk of the war in Ukraine and of dissensions with other NATO members after Turkey maintained close ties with Moscow. The unwavering support, too, of the West for the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu in its war in Gaza which exacerbates Erdogan’s Islamo-nationalist government. And then there is that music that continues to play in Ankara, blaming the Europeans for the lack of progress in its attempt to join the EU.
On June 3, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, during a visit to Beijing – the most important by a Turkish official to China since 2012 – was questioned about his country’s desire to join the BRICS. “Of course we would love to, why not?”The Russian Foreign Minister responded quickly. The statement was welcomed the next day by Moscow, which said through Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov that Russia welcomes Turkey’s wish and that the issue will be on the table during a future BRICS meeting in Nizhny Novgorod.
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