Should Turkey consider membership in Shanghai Cooperation?
Turkey’s possible membership in the Shanghai Cooperation would be interesting, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Jan. 28.
A few days ago Turkish PM was reported to have said in a TV interview that Turkey was seriously considering seeking membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an alternative at a time when EU does not seem to have a bright future.
The conflict of interest in this case however would be that Turkey is a Nato member, which was already expressed by U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland in press meeting on 28th January.
When we look at the issue from Turkey’s point of view Turkey has been trying to overcome several barriers put by EU administration and countries such as France and England in specific.
The EU has certainly not been fair to Turkey especially compared to the extremely positive attitude it has displayed during and for the union of countries such as Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria etc with by far weaker and less developed economies.
EU has failed by applying double standards all along the way starting from the beginning of the Turkey’s application process to become part of the Union.
The interesting thing is Turkey – once the ill man of the Bosphorus as referred by Europeans – has a much stronger and healthy economy now and it is the EU that is economically ill now and not Turkey.
This is to say in other words that Turkey is the part to contribute to Europe and not the other way round. Still, EU displays a consistent attitude in bringing about more obstacles to slow down a possible union of this country to the community.
This is exactly among the major reasons why Turkey could (and maybe should) consider a much closer cooperation with the Shanghai Organization.
Should such an alternative come true, EU would definitely be the losing party as a very dynamic economy would offer its benefits to the rival global group; that is SCO.
Although this possibility seems to be remote for the time being, benefits of this country could force the current administration to reconsider the issue some day.
30.01.2013
Editor, BTT
