Turkey appears to have formally applied to join the BRICS group of emerging market nations.

Bloomberg on September 2 reported people familiar with the matter as saying the application went in months ago, while local media reports indicated that Ankara applied in coordination with close ally and neighbour Azerbaijan, which announced its bid to join two weeks ago.

Critics may argue that Nato member Turkey should show more coherence in its choice of alliances, but, straddling Europe and Asia as it does, the country—for several years now angered by Europe’s blocking of the path that would allow its EU membership application to progress—is in a unique position that allows it to align, to various extents, with many groupings, securing various advantages and concessions along the way.

“Turkey can become a strong, prosperous, prestigious and effective country if it improves its relations with the East and the West simultaneously,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in Istanbul over the weekend. “Any method other than this will not benefit Turkey, but will harm it.”

“We do not have to choose between the European Union and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO] as some people claim,” Erdogan added. “On the contrary, we have to develop our relations with both these and other organisations on a win-win basis.” 

The BRICS grouping is named after Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. At the start of this year, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Egypt joined its ranks. Saudi Arabia has received an invitation to join.

The enlargement of BRICS could be discussed during a summit in Kazan, Russia, due to take place from October 22-24, said the people quoted by Bloomberg. Malaysia and Thailand are two other countries pushing for membership.

Notably, last week Turkey for the first time in five years attended a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

The Financial Times’ Europe Express column reported that Turkish top diplomat Hakan Fidan—who lately said that for Turkey EU membership remains a “strategic target”—took part in a “convivial and productive lunch between foreign ministers”, the outcome of which was “two steps forward, one step back for EU-Turkey relations”.

The FT noted how the meeting was marred as Fidan lashed out at the European Commission’s stance that the bloc’s managing of future relations with Turkey should sit with a proposed Commissioner for the Mediterranean rather than the Commissioner for Enlargement, who is to handle ties with EU applicant countries such as Albania, Montenegro and Ukraine.

Bloomberg also reported its sources as saying that the view of the Erdogan administration is that the geopolitical centre of gravity in a multipolar world is shifting away from developed economies. 

BRICS bills itself as an alternative to what its members perceive as Western-dominated institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Turkey has, meanwhile, long called for a rearrangement of the United Nations Security Council to expand beyond just five permanent members. Last November, Ankara even pushed for an alternative to the UN in its entirety.

In meeting Nato membership obligations and maintaining productive relations with the West, Erdogan must reckon with various vocal groups in Turkey with a strong anti-Western bent, the more so in recent months given accusations that the US and Europe have not done nearly enough in trying to curb or stop Israel’s brutal war on the Palestinians in Gaza.

On September 2, two US military service members in civilian clothing from the USS Wasp were “physically attacked” in the port city of Izmir in western Turkey by members of an anti-American youth group, Turkey Youth Union (TGB), a youth offshoot of nationalist opposition party Vatan, authorities said.

An apparent TGB social media account posted a video on X that was said to show a group of men holding a US soldier and placing a white hood over his head.

Fifteen suspected assailants were detained, authorities said. Five other US service members joined in the incident after seeing the violent encounter, they added.