Kremlin comments on NATO member state’s SCO bid

Türkiye’s bid to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is not compatible with its membership in NATO, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

Last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended a summit of the Eurasian mutual defense group, in which his nation has observer status. While returning home from Kazakhstan, he told journalists that Ankara wants to “further develop” ties with the SCO and its founding members Russia and China. During the NATO leaders’ summit in the US this week, he said Türkiye wants to join the SCO as a permanent member.

Asked by journalists when Turkish accession could be expected, Peskov said there was a problem with such a proposal.

“There are certain contradictions between Turkish commitments and [its] position on fundamental issues as a NATO member and the worldview formulated in the founding documents of the SCO,” he explained.

The expansion of the SCO is of interest to many nations and remains on its agenda, but there is no specific timeline for accepting new members, he added. Commenting later during a press call on bilateral relations with Türkiye, Peskov said Russia was “open for attempts to reach agreements based on a certain worldview.”

Moscow perceives NATO as a hostile, aggressive military organization, which serves US geopolitical interests and is currently conducting a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

Despite being a NATO member state, Türkiye has maintained a neutral stance on the Ukraine conflict, refusing to impose economic sanctions on Russia and serving as an intermediary between Moscow and Kiev on several occasions. Ankara helped to mediate a nascent peace deal in the early months of the hostilities, which Kiev eventually ditched in favor of continued fighting. The Russian government believes that the US and its allies, particularly the UK, forced Ukraine to reject the proposal.

The SCO was founded in 2001 and currently has ten full members: Russia, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus. Kazakhstan holds the rotating presidency this year and hosted the leaders of member states on July 3 and 4 in Astana.

One of the key pledges to which SCO members subscribe is not to seek the improvement of their own national security at the expense of the national security of other parties. NATO policy does exactly that, according to its critics, including Russia.