Turkey seeks to join BRICS in a strategic shift away from the West - opinion

On September 2, Turkey was reported to be the first and only NATO member asking to join the BRICS economic group of nations. BRICS, headed by Russia, China, Iran, and South Africa, is dominated by the Russian and Chinese presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

One former Turkish diplomat told Newsweek that the move by Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been driven by “accumulated frustrations” with the West and the EU. Sinan Ulgen, head of the Istanbul-based think tank EDAM, said: “It’s a strategy to strengthen relations with non-Western powers at a time when the US hegemony is waning.”

The economic grouping originally calling itself BRIC from the initials of its founding members – Brazil, Russia, India, and China – was initially concerned with identifying investment opportunities for their fast-growing economies. They held their first meeting in 2006 and soon evolved into a formal geopolitical bloc. 

In 2010, South Africa was invited to join, leading to the change of name to BRICS. The bloc is regarded as a global alternative to the US-led G7 economic grouping – the informal body comprising seven of the world’s advanced economies: the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. The European Union is a “non-enumerated member.”

In August 2023, during its summit in Johannesburg, BRICS invited six new countries to join the group: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The invitation reflected BRICS’s ambition to challenge the dominance of the G7 on the world economic stage and strengthen ties with emerging economies.

Argentina is the only country to have formally declined the invitation. Saudi Arabia is hesitating and might take it up at some time, but meanwhile it participates in the organization’s activities as an invited nation. The other four joined on January 1, 2024. Combined, BRICS members now encompass about 30% of the world’s land surface and 45% of the global population.

TURKEY’S APPLICATION to join puts it at odds with the rest of the NATO family, but it has been a problematic member from the start. Admitted in 1952, with the Cold War at its iciest, the hope was that Turkey would help protect NATO’s eastern flank from Soviet aggression. Turkey, half-in and half-out of Europe, frequently diverged from the consensus view of the alliance. But since Erdogan came to power – first as Turkey’s prime minister, and later as president – Turkey has consistently pursued tactical and foreign policy goals at odds with the West. 

Convinced that Turkey’s place within the organization was impregnable on strategic grounds, Erdogan has persistently pursued his own agenda. For example, even when Western countries combined to fight terror groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, Erdogan continued supporting the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot extremist militias. In Syria, Turkey is continually challenging the US for supporting Kurdish forces that Erdogan views as terrorists.

Then there was the debacle over Erdogan’s bid to purchase F-35s, the latest generation of US stealth jet fighters, at the same time he was installing Russia’s advanced S-400 air-defense missile system. Defying strenuous American objections and the threat of sanctions, Turkey received the first shipment from Russia in July 2018. 

This rendered the American F-35 deal impossible. The S-400 is specifically designed to detect and shoot down stealth fighters like the F-35. If Turkey acquired both, the Russian specialists required to set up the S-400 system would be able to learn about the advanced technology built into the American-made fighter jets. 

So when it became perfectly apparent that Erdogan was insistent on receiving the Russian ground-to-air missile system, Washington canceled the F-35 deal. 

The effect of Turkey’s S-400 purchase was to enhance Russia’s growing influence in the Middle East. Every subsequent NATO operation had to take into account the presence of the Russian system in Turkey – a disruptive effect on the Western alliance very much to Putin’s liking. 

Putin must also relish Turkey’s application to join BRICS, centered on Erdogan’s belief that he can simultaneously run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Erdogan may feel that a by-product of his membership to BRICS will be to gain congenial support for his latest diplomatic effort – a new Islamic alliance dedicated to delegitimizing and destabilizing Israel. He now reveals the “charm offensive” he directed toward Israel in April 2022 as the realpolitik cloak it always was. He urgently needed to improve his standing with the US at the time.

"Solidarity against Israel's expansionism"

On September 7, speaking in Istanbul, Erdogan said: “The only step that will stop Israeli arrogance, Israeli banditry, and Israeli state terrorism is the alliance of Islamic countries.” He emphasized that Turkey’s recent diplomatic moves to improve ties with Egypt and Syria would create a “line of solidarity against the growing threat of expansionism.” 

Egypt is, of course, already a member of BRICS. At least 10 other countries are expressing interest in joining. They include a fair number of potential supporters of Turkey’s anti-Israel consortium, such as Algeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

Erdogan’s fear of Israeli “expansionism” probably refers in part to the Abraham Accords – the arrangements under which four Arab nations have normalized their relations with Israel without requiring a Palestinian state as a prerequisite. The UAE is already a member, and Saudi Arabia, which is in advanced negotiations with the US about an Abraham Accord of its own, was invited to join the BRICS group during its summit in August 2023 but did not do so on January 1, 2024, the suggested date. It is still considering the matter.

Erdogan’s current dissatisfaction with the West stems from its support for Israel’s response to Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Subsequent adverse criticism by many Western nations of the collateral deaths, injuries, and physical damage has done nothing to placate him. His reported response to the exploding pagers and walkie-talkie episodes is to accuse Israel of seeking to expand the Gaza war to Lebanon.

Turkey has remained equivocal about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Unlike other NATO members, it has not imposed sanctions on the Kremlin. Rather than annoying Moscow, Erdogan has established himself as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine. He has brokered talks about grain exports from Black Sea ports and the latest prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington.

“Turkey can become a strong, prosperous, prestigious, and effective country,” he said on September 1, “if it improves its relations with the East and the West simultaneously. Any method other than this will not benefit Turkey, but will harm it.”

Warming to his theme, and sticking closely to his precarious, but well-established strategy, he continued: “We do not have to choose between the European Union and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as some people claim. On the contrary, we have to develop our relations with both these and other organizations on a win-win basis.”

Turkey’s application to join BRICS will be discussed at a summit in Russia in October.

The writer is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at: www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com