Neville Teller
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 the news medium 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 originally 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, and this led to the change of name to BRICS. The bloc has come to be 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.”
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