Türkiye wants to diversify its alliances and aim for a special position on the international stage, becoming the first NATO member to apply to join BRICS.
“Türkiye has applied for full membership. We will consider it,” Yuri Ushakov, a foreign affairs aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on September 4, referring to Ankara’s desire to join BRICS.
Mr Ushakov’s comments came a day after Omer Celik, spokesman for President Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AKP party, confirmed that Turkey had applied to join BRICS. “The president clearly stressed that Turkey wants to join all important platforms, including BRICS,” Celik said.
BRICS is a group of emerging economies founded in 2009 with four members: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa joined a year later. Russia is the current chair of the bloc. BRICS announced in August 2023 that it would add six more members, including Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates, earlier this year. Of these, Saudi Arabia has not officially accepted the invitation, while Argentina has changed its mind and refused to join.
If approved, Türkiye would be the first NATO member state to join BRICS, a bloc aimed at countering Western influence in the world.
“This is a move that the transatlantic community needs to pay attention to,” said Asli Aydintasbas, an analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. “Turkey is looking for alternatives. It does not want to leave NATO, it does not give up its efforts to join the EU, but it still wants to diversify its alliances and hedge against risks. Türkiye no longer sees NATO membership as the only factor that guides its foreign policy.”
President Erdogan said on August 31 that “Türkiye can become a strong, prosperous and respected country if it can develop relations with the East and the West simultaneously.” He previously said he did not see BRICS as an alternative to other blocs. Ankara remains a candidate to join the European Union (EU), although negotiations have stalled since Erdogan’s government cracked down on the opposition following a failed coup in 2016.
Türkiye also maintains good relations with Russia. Ankara regularly talks with Moscow and Kiev, and played a guarantor role in the 2022 Black Sea grain deal.
A NATO member applying to join BRICS is unprecedented but does not violate the alliance’s rules, said Michel Duclos, an adviser at the Paris-based think tank Institut Montaigne. This has the US and its European allies worried that Turkey is pivoting away from the West.
A Turkish official said in June that the country was attracted to BRICS because the bloc did not require economic or political commitments or agreements.
“We do not see BRICS as an alternative to NATO or the EU. However, the stalled EU accession talks have pushed us to look for other economic platforms. We want to join every multilateral platform, even if the chances of benefiting are very small,” the person told Middle East Eyeadding that Türkiye’s “paper allies” often ignore Ankara’s security concerns.
Hayati Unlu, a scholar at Türkiye’s National Defense University, also said that Turkey’s desire to join BRICS should not be seen as a pivot away from the West.
“Türkiye wants to develop a network of relations that complements its existing ties with the West to overcome its economic difficulties,” Unlu said. Traditional institutions such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization are increasingly seen as obsolete, leading to the rise of alternative platforms such as the Quad (a security forum comprising Australia, India, Japan and the United States) and BRICS.
“Two are better than one. By cooperating with both the West and the rest of the world’s key players, Turkey is aiming for a special position that not every country can achieve,” said Leon Rozmarin, a Russia expert at Northeastern University in the US.
From left: Foreign ministers of South Africa, China, Russia, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates at the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia on June 10. Photo: Reuters
Relations between Türkiye and its Western military allies have been strained in recent years over Ankara’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense system, which is designed to shoot down NATO fighters.
Concerned that Turkey’s deployment of the S-400 could expose secret NATO hardware features to Russian intelligence, the US responded by removing Turkey from the F-35 stealth fighter project in 2019. The US then offset the $1.4 billion Turkey invested in the F-35 project by offering to sell Ankara 40 F-16 fighters. The F-16 deal also faced many obstacles and was only given the green light in January, when Turkey approved Sweden’s accession to NATO.
The US has yet to make a significant response to Turkey’s bid to join BRICS, and it is likely to remain silent, Aydintasbas said. She said some in Washington see Turkey’s move as having little impact because BRICS is not a military alliance and does not have a security or rapid response force.
“The US also does not want to argue openly with Türkiye, they understand that Mr. Erdogan is unpredictable,” Aydintasbas added.