Türkiye sees Brics’ economic potential as it waits for full EU membership

The China-backed Brics grouping could offer Türkiye a “good alternative” to the European Union to boost its economic prospects, according to Ankara’s top diplomat.

At the start of a three-day trip to China on June 3, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said that while Türkiye was in a customs union with Brussels, it was also exploring new opportunities for cooperation with several partners in different platforms such as Brics, an association of 10 emerging economies, South China Morning Post reports.

“Certainly, we would like to become a member of Brics. So we’ll see how it goes this year,” he said during an event at the Centre for China and Globalisation (CCG) in Beijing.

Fidan also met Chinese security chief Chen Wenqing on Monday, where both sides showed a readiness to promote bilateral security cooperation, state news agency Xinhua reported.

On June 2, Fidan met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and Vice-President Han Zheng.

According to a Chinese statement, Fidan told Han that Türkiye adhered to the one-China principle and “will not allow activities in Türkiye that undermine China’s territorial integrity”, adding that Ankara was ready to have close high-level exchanges with Beijing.

During the CCG event on June 3, Fidan said he looked forward to attending a meeting of the mechanism in Russia next week when foreign ministers from Brics countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – will meet in the western Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod as part of the lead-up to the October summit in Kazan.

One of the topics on the agenda is expected to be the possibility of Türkiye, a NATO ally, joining the Brics grouping.

Erdogan declared his country’s intention to join six years ago at the Brics summit in Johannesburg but there has been little progress since then.

Speaking at the CCG event, Fidan said that one of the important pillars of Türkiye’s foreign policy was to form strong economic ties in an institutional form.

He said that due to “identity politics”, Türkiye has never been allowed in by some major EU nations to become a full member of the European bloc though it had been trying to join for a long time.

Although noting that Brics still “has a long way to go”, “we cannot ignore the fact that Brics, as an important cooperation platform, offers some other countries a good alternative,” he said.

“We see potential in Brics,” he added.

Nearly four decades ago, Türkiye applied to join what was then the European Economic Community, and in 1999 it was officially recognised as a candidate for full membership in the EU.