Nato member Turkey will not stop deepening ties with the East, including the BRICS group of nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), but at the same time it will continue to face West, the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was reported as saying at an event in Ankara on September 18.

Erdogan stated that debates over Turkey going through an "axis shift" were unfounded, but that Turkey had to adapt to new "centres of power" in terms of economies, production and technology, while ensuring it remained open to potential presented by every structure and actor, Reuters reported.

"That is the approach that lies behind our country's will to expand the basis of dialogue with all of them, from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation to BRICS and Asean," Erdogan was quoted as adding.

And he said: "Of course, our face is turned to the West, but this certainly does not mean that we will turn our backs on the East, that we will ignore the East, or not improve our ties with the East."

The National Interest on September 17 published an opinion piece headlined “Turkey: A Ship Headed Eastwards”, written by Robert Ellis, an international advisor at RIEAS (Research Institute for European and Amerian Studies) in Athens.  

Ellis noted that Erdogan said in a speech four years ago: “Turkey has the political, economic and military power to tear up the immoral maps and documents imposed on it.”

Suggesting Turkey always sets out to have its cake and eat it, Ellis concluded: “There seems to be no limit to Turkey’s cakeism.”

A BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, to be held in October, is set to evaluate Turkey’s BRICs membership application, as well as an application from Ankara’s close ally Azerbaijan. The club of emerging nations is made up of its five original members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and four members who joined earlier this year, namely Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Egypt.

In June, Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek, during a talk at London’s Chatham House think tank, described BRICS as “a dialogue platform” compared to a formal economic bloc such as the EU.

“The EU remains our core partner in terms of trade investments, tourism flows ... so we remain focused [on the EU], but that doesn’t mean we do not look at alternatives if they present value,” he told the forum.

Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe, this week told VOA Mandarin that “Turkey’s BRICS bid is one more example of the country’s drift away from the Transatlantic community”.

“BRICS membership may not mean much in practical terms and Turkey is still keen to retain its Nato membership. But it is gradually, inch-by-inch, drifting from the West — and that requires greater strategic thinking on the part of US and other Nato allies, given Turkey’s regional heft and geographic location. Is this an outcome we want?” said Aydintasbas.

Earlier this week, Turkey’s move for BRICS membership hit a bump in the road when Russian economist Sergey Glazyev expressed opposition to it joining, arguing that Erdogan’s stance that Russia should return annexed Crimea to Ukraine is “unacceptable”.

Last week, Erdogan was reported by Turkey’s state-run news provider Anadolu Agency as affirming in a video message to the Fourth Crimea Platform Leaders Summit held on September 11 that the "return of Crimea to Ukraine is a requirement of international law."

Prior to his reaction to Erdogan’s comments on Crimea, Glazyev published an article titled “Türkiye has no place in BRICS.”

In it, he said that in this period when the world economy is shifting to Southeast Asia, Russia is searching for allies further afield in Asia. Turkey and Azerbaijan, he said, were ideologically weak. 

He said Moscow should even consider breaking off diplomatic relations with Turkey if Erdogan did not withdraw his comments on Crimea.