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Turkey’s top diplomat confirms Ankara seeks to join BRICS

Ankara always looks for new opportunities to expand its trade and economic cooperation anyway, Hakan Fidan added

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan Alexander Shcherbak/TASS

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan

© Alexander Shcherbak/TASS

ANKARA, September 19. /TASS/. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan confirmed on Thursday that Ankara is willing to join BRICS but said that the republic doesn’t have enough information regarding institutional development at the grouping.

"Amid the ongoing diversification globally, we are certainly considering various options as regards trade and economic cooperation. BRICS now is a platform, but it is not institutionalized enough <…>. When we join BRICS, we will see how everything evolves. We are looking forward to it," Fidan said in an interview with Turkey's state-run news agency Anadolu when asked to comment on the situation around Ankara’s intentions to become a BRICS member.

Should Turkey’s economic cooperation with the European Union have resulted in full-fledged membership of the bloc, Ankara would not have sought alternatives across the board, Fidan explained. But then Ankara always looks for new opportunities to expand its trade and economic cooperation anyway, he added.

"We are eyeing not only BRICS, but also ASEAN, with which we are seeking to cooperate, too," Turkey’s top diplomat continued. According to him, Turkey is also at the center of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation and Islamic associations, including the Developing Eight (D-8) Organization for Economic Cooperation. "Looking at these associations from the point of view of their scale and market potential, it will be easier to act in cooperating with them when a need for a larger integration arises," he said.

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