MOSCOW, September 24. /TASS/. The upcoming BRICS summit in Kazan in October is a very important event for Turkey, the speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (parliament) Numan Kurtulmus said.

"For us it is also going to be a very important event," he said addressing the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Turkey considers BRICS an efficient instrument "for peaceful settlement, for developing fair economic relations between countries," the speaker added.

"We also consider the BRICS membership, it is on our agenda," he noted.

Earlier, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan confirmed Ankara’s interest in joining BRICS.

Since its inception in 2006, BRICS has experienced two phases of expansion. In 2011, South Africa joined the original group, which included Brazil, Russia, India, and China. On January 1, 2024, five new members officially entered BRICS, namely Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Ethiopia. Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier that 34 countries had expressed their wish to work with BRICS. Russia assumed the one-year rotating chairmanship of BRICS on January 1, 2024. The BRICS summit will be held in Kazan, Tatarstan, in Russia’s Volga region, on October 22-24.