Neither his opponents nor his fans like the place where President Tayyip Erdogan will sit.
At the Samarkand summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), “Erdogan is talking, other leaders are listening. Here is the world leader,” he can make cheap honors from the image. A moment later, another leader at the table taking the arm and bending down to get a discount on natural gas is overshadowed by the captured moment. At that time, if the Ukrainian grain reaches the developing countries through Turkey, it will calculate the commission that will fall on itself. This is written in the national interest!
The weight of a leader should be considered rather than where he sits. A weight like this: While world leaders were listening to the great narrator (we don’t know what he was talking about), Chinese leader Xi Jinping was shaking hands for historical agreements. The China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway agreement, which has been spoken for 20 years, was signed. A compromise was reached for the development of the economic corridor between China, Mongolia and Russia. The value of the trade, investment, financial and technical support agreement signed with the host Uzbekistan is $15 billion.
Those who lament remind that that table is not the league of democrats. There are those among them who have blood, cruelty and bullying in their record. Not on the NATO table? Democrat inside, putschist outside. Colonial, abusive, interventionist, sanctioning, dictatorial lover! Are their pages contaminated with the wars they waged? Who doesn’t have blood on their hands? More or less.
Those who cannot fit Erdogan to that table see him in the “democrats” league! What a contradiction. Anyway, I have no intention of getting stuck in the race for unnecessary inferences.
UNITY BUT HOW?
So, is Turkey looking for a new world? Or what is Erdogan trying to do? Turkey cannot easily break away from the West with a reality commanded by geography, economic ties and dependencies, and centuries-old interactions in many fields despite contradictions and faltering.
Although the SCO represents 40 percent of the world’s population and produces 30 percent of the global gross national product, it is not an EU or NATO structure in terms of its codes. There is no such claim. Yes, a new center of gravity in the global balance of power against Western hegemony. Where the emphasis on multilateralism is produced. Its standards are flexible, its goal of harmony among members is low, and mutual commitments and obligations are limited. Security, trade and economic cooperation are at the forefront. The values policy is almost non-existent. Definitely a club where Erdogan will feel good. Not the league of rights, law, justice, freedom. A league in which Erdogan has demolished Turkey from top to bottom.
But the warnings that come out of this are the kind that will overwhelm Erdoğan a little later. For example, Samarkand’s final statement included the following article: “Member states note that it is unacceptable to intervene in the internal affairs of countries and to use terrorist, extremist and radical groups for the sake of profit under the pretext of fighting terrorism and extremism.”
Who is this note for? In a text dictated by China and Russia, the addressees of the accusation of “using terrorist, extremist and radical groups” are clear.
When we look at the member, observer or dialogue partner countries sitting at the SCO table, there are those who have not yet buried their axes against each other. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev came with the smell of gunpowder.
Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan could not come after the clashes in which 210 soldiers died, for fear of a coup d’etat inside.
When the leaders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan were at the summit, their soldiers were shooting each other. The death toll in the border dispute reached 46.
As Chinese leader Xi Jinping sits at the table with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, there must be a lot of depressing questions: Will border disputes recur? Would New Delhi, which does not recognize Beijing’s “One China” policy regarding Taiwan, become more partners in the American game? Can India, which has entered into a QUAD partnership with the USA, Australia and Japan with the strategy of containing China, be removed from this circle?
WHO EXPECTS WHAT?
Each member or candidate country may assign different meanings to the SCO.
Erdogan is trying to tell his Western allies, with whom he has conflicts, that he is not helpless. He composes whistles in the dark for the words of İsmet İnönü, on whom he wrote about all the sins of recent history, saying “A new world will be established” to the West because of Cyprus. In addition, his dreams of reaching Central Asia and meeting the Pacific coasts via the Zangezur corridor, which was built on the defeat of Armenia, were given to the SCO. merges with the goal of membership.
The meaning of “heavy brother” to the SCO by China is not different from the one pictured outside. For Beijing, the SCO is a long-term partnership project with the near and far periphery in line with China’s economic and security concerns. It does not see it as a ground for conflict or reckoning as much as Russia and Iran, which signed the membership agreement. China’s economic development strategy is inevitably foreign-dependent. It cannot create an alternative by throwing bridges with the West. He’s not ready for this.
Iranian President Ibrahim Reisi positions the SCO as an organization that will “combat unilateralism and American sanctions” and says that “a common infrastructure should be established with financial and commodity exchanges”. However, China’s “One Belt One Road” initiative cannot afford a confrontational approach. Huge projects can be easily blocked. That’s why Chinese diplomacy has to be sophisticated. Even though China shows its muscle power in the face of NATO’s targeting of China in its new strategic document and the US working on Taiwan as a ‘soft belly’, it pays maximum attention not to get caught in the Western sanction network and to stay within the system.
The SCO is an area where Russia can breathe in the face of embargoes. Embargoes against Russia also benefit the SCO basin. China is stockpiling cheap energy, grain and precious metals. So is India. In fact, the concerns created by Russia’s Ukraine adventure in the former Soviet republics may serve to expand China’s influence in Central Asia. But the prolongation of the war is triggering Beijing’s reserve fears. The sources of energy and raw materials that make Russia undeterred and China fragile. And other fears…
It is not in vain that Xi turned to Putin after giving Russia the right in Ukraine and told him not to prolong this. After all, China has been playing the multilateral game together with Russia since 1996. The concern that Russia’s defeat from Ukraine will leave China alone in its own game is gradually coming to the fore. The rising giant does not want to be a premature giant. The luxury of resting and blackmailing in foreign policy is the privilege of world leaders like Erdogan!
It is pleasant to crack the enemy with a common pose in the SCO, but the areas of competition between China and Russia and India also contain potential hostilities. What if the SCO pushes back potential crisis issues and focuses on cooperation? That’s the target.
The cornerstone of the SCO, of which China and Russia are the main stakeholders, was the Convention Against Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism. Despite the enormous power it has acquired, problems related to Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan continue to determine China’s foreign policy sensitivities. Ankara’s Uyghur policy is also closely followed, although it has been trimmed to appease Beijing.
Pakistan, which is technically at war with India, is also in the SCO. Despite the USA’s emphasis on India over China, Beijing has also taken its relations with Pakistan to a level defined as the “Iron Brothers”. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor occupies an important place in the “One Belt One Road” initiative. To add Afghanistan to this, they are following the ripening of conditions. Pakistan in turn gives full support to China’s Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong policy. While China maintains its leadership role in the SCO by observing these complicated balances, it should not be surprised by its silent diplomacy that does not look like a showdown. This style does not cut Erdogan.
IF WE COME ONLY…
In short, the SCO is both a counter-gravity center on the eastern side of the globe and a ball of contradictions that contain important balances of power. At the same time, it is rising in a geography where power is concentrated. Bigane is an unstoppable process. The presence of a Turkey in the SCO, whose integration with the West has progressed without stumbling, can put the country in an exceptional position on the economic and geostrategic level. He who gives strength takes power. With the current policies that cannot produce advanced technology and create added value, Turkey is moving away from being an actor that adds strength. Erdogan is looking for resources to get the 2023 run off the ramp. The whole world is watching this helplessness with the naked eye. He is after the moments that will fill the void of the photo he could not give with the US President Joe Biden. A similar moment captured for Erdogan was also framed for Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif. The Pakistani government tweets this, “All eyes are on the Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Mohammed Shahbaz Sharif, at the SCO-2022 Mega Samarkand Summit.” Erdogan can but Sharif can’t? Bre brothers!
Saying in Samarkand, “We have stated that we consider the security, stability and prosperity of our homeland of Asia to be among our foreign policy priorities,” Erdogan will be the world leadership if he catches a square with Biden in New York, where he went before everyone else for the UN General Assembly. Oh effort!