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 (English acronym 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 countries of the South, often considered as an alternative to the G7 (Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom), itself soon to be overtaken in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) by this BRICS group. The information, revealed on Monday, September 2 by the Bloomberg agency, citing sources close to the matter, has been 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 his interest in joining BRICS, but no formal discussions had 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 has become 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 suggested a desire for rapprochement. The war in Ukraine and the disagreements with other NATO members were mentioned 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 the Islamo-nationalist government of Erdogan. And then, there is this music that never ceases to rise in Ankara, reproaching 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 asked about his country’s desire to join the BRICS. “We would like to of course, why not?”he promptly responded. The statement was welcomed the next day by Moscow, which affirmed through the voice of the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, that Russia welcomed Turkey’s wish and that the subject would be on the table at a forthcoming BRICS meeting in Nizhny Novgorod.
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