Shanghai Cooperation Organization

Aiming to become a member of the Shanghai Pact, whose members are countries where "one-man rule" is predominant, will only cause more problems for Turkey's foreign policy, main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) lawmaker Öztürk Yılmaz has said.

Turkey should not be "fixated" on the idea of joining the European Union and should look at other opportunities, such as the Russia-led Shanghai Pact, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said.

"Turkey should first of all feel relaxed about the EU and not be fixated" about joining it, Erdoğan told reporters on the presidential plane returning from Uzbekistan, daily Hürriyet reported.

The first face-to-face meeting which took place between senior Turkish and Russian officials in Belgrade on Dec. 3 has proven the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who suggested Moscow's reaction to Turkey's downing its warplane would not be a short-term act. 

Turkey was the first NATO member state to have a military that conducted joint exercises with the Syrian military. Turkey was the first NATO country to have an air force that conducted joint exercises with the Chinese air force. Two years ago, Turkey selected a Chinese company to build its long-range air and anti-missile defense architecture - a contract which Ankara scrapped on Nov.

Turkey may be directing defiant remarks at Russia for its military operations in Syria and its violation of Turkish airspace, but there is little that Ankara can do on its own in this regard. This is not only due to the superpower status of its northern neighbor, although it is clear that this aspect cannot be overlooked.

Russia hosted two important gatherings, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS (the five emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summits on July 8-10, 2015, in the Russian city of Ufa, as the simultaneous holder of the rotating chairmanships of both institutions.

Time flies! It?s already three months since the ?fourth sequel? appeared here, but it?s time for more headlines from the Istanbul press in the year 2023:

Turkey’s current rulers are actively aspiring for membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) instead of the European Union, main opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has said, adding that the government has already declared its will to "abandon democracy and move toward dictatorship."

This is from this column nearly two years ago:

“The bitter truth is that Turkey is too oriental for the European Union, too non-Arab for the Arab League, too non-African for the African Union, too irrelevant for ASEAN and the Union of South American Nations and too western for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (‘The Shanghai Seven?’ Feb. 8, 2013).”

A long period of severing ties between Washington and Moscow should be expected amid attempts to solve the Ukraine crisis, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned.

In an open lecture organized by the ruling party United Russia, Lavrov declared Russia would strive to expose the utopic nature of any attempts to reinstate a unipolar model in the world.