Turkey’s ‘balancing act’ with BRICS bid raises NATO concerns

Leela JACINTO

5 September 2024 at 3:11 am·1-min read

Turkey’s application to join the BRICS bloc, led by Russia and China, is sparking concerns over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's commitment to NATO. The move, by a member of the world’s most powerful military alliance, highlights the geostrategic shifts straining the post-war order at a time of heightened international tensions.

On June 11, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was appealing for help at a conference in Berlin at the start of a week of intense diplomacy in western Europe, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was in the east, holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

The Kremlin meeting went “fantastically well”, Fidan told Turkish state media. Putin also sounded pleased. “We welcome Turkey's interest in the work of BRICS,” Turkish media quoted the Russian leader as saying. “Undoubtedly, we will fully support this aspiration.”

The BRICS bloc has long been dismissed as a talking shop, a loose grouping of countries that are sometimes at odds and even engage in fierce border skirmishes, without a defining purpose.

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