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01-30-2013, 08:01 PM
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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has turned the big wheel of geopolitics in a late-night TV show, calling the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) a more promising alternative for Turkey to membership of the EU. Erdogan, who raised the idea of an SCO membership bid for the second time now since his visit to Moscow in July 2012, appeared much more determined than last summer. “The EU does not want to have a Muslim country inside,“ Erdogan stated in an interview with the Turkish news channel TV24. “Of course, if things develop in such a negative way, then as a prime minister of 75 million you start with different searches,“ he said, adding that “the Shanghai Five is better, much stronger“.
Commonly referred to in Turkey by its old name “Shanghai Five,“ the SCO was founded in 1996 by China, Russia and the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. When Uzbekistan joined in 2001, the “Shanghai Five“ became SCO. The world’s biggest regional organisation in terms of the population of its member countries aims to deal with security and terror threats. It also started planning common oil and gas projects within the “SCO energy club”.
Last summer, Erdogan recalled a half-joking conversation he had had with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin: “You tease us, saying: what is Turkey doing in the EU? Now I tease you: take us into the Shanghai Five and we will forget about the EU“. Erdogan’s appearence on TV24on 25 January was much less on the light side. The Turkish prime minister dropped a “geopolitical bomb,” commented the renowned columnist Cengiz Candar. Erdogan spoke his mind, Candar claimed. With Erdogan looking to prolong his political career as president of Turkey after 2014, “joining the Shanghai Five is a possibility not to be underestimated,“ he wrote.
http://www.europolitics.info/external-policies/erdogan-shanghai-cooperation-organisation-an-alternative-to-eu-art347569-41.html
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has turned the big wheel of geopolitics in a late-night TV show, calling the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) a more promising alternative for Turkey to membership of the EU. Erdogan, who raised the idea of an SCO membership bid for the second time now since his visit to Moscow in July 2012, appeared much more determined than last summer. “The EU does not want to have a Muslim country inside,“ Erdogan stated in an interview with the Turkish news channel TV24. “Of course, if things develop in such a negative way, then as a prime minister of 75 million you start with different searches,“ he said, adding that “the Shanghai Five is better, much stronger“.
Commonly referred to in Turkey by its old name “Shanghai Five,“ the SCO was founded in 1996 by China, Russia and the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. When Uzbekistan joined in 2001, the “Shanghai Five“ became SCO. The world’s biggest regional organisation in terms of the population of its member countries aims to deal with security and terror threats. It also started planning common oil and gas projects within the “SCO energy club”.
Last summer, Erdogan recalled a half-joking conversation he had had with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin: “You tease us, saying: what is Turkey doing in the EU? Now I tease you: take us into the Shanghai Five and we will forget about the EU“. Erdogan’s appearence on TV24on 25 January was much less on the light side. The Turkish prime minister dropped a “geopolitical bomb,” commented the renowned columnist Cengiz Candar. Erdogan spoke his mind, Candar claimed. With Erdogan looking to prolong his political career as president of Turkey after 2014, “joining the Shanghai Five is a possibility not to be underestimated,“ he wrote.
http://www.europolitics.info/external-policies/erdogan-shanghai-cooperation-organisation-an-alternative-to-eu-art347569-41.html