Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Samarkand, announced Ankara’s desire to become its full member. The Turkish leader stated this to journalists following the results of the summit in Samarkand.
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“Now our next process will be the steps for this work. This is our goal,” he said, answering a journalist’s question whether Turkey is considering the possibility of becoming a member of the SCO.
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According to Erdogan, this issue will be “on the agenda of the talks in India, which will preside over the coming period” in the SCO. “Thanks to this step, our relations with these countries [SCO members] will be transferred to a completely different level,” the Turkish president added.
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The declaration on the establishment of the SCO was signed in Shanghai in June 2001 by six states – Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Currently, apart from them, the organization includes India and Pakistan. Observer states – Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia, dialogue partners – Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia, Nepal, Turkey and Sri Lanka. At the SCO summit in Dushanbe in September 2021, the procedure for admitting Iran to the organization was launched. This year, Belarus officially applied to join the SCO as a full member.
