President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will be in Astana on Wednesday and Thursday for a critical summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The president is expected to hold long-delayed bilateral talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin there as well.
The summit, which will be attended by heads of state and government from 16 countries, will focus on regional security and cooperation in fields from energy and health to education, transportation, economic, cultural and humanitarian cooperation.
The nine-member SCO, which encompasses a vast area from Moscow to Beijing, includes around half the world's population.
Its permanent members are this year's hosts: Kazakhstan, India, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Iran.
This year, Belarus is expected to join after being told at 2023's SCO summit, hosted virtually by India, that it would become a member.
This year’s summit will also focus on a cease-fire in Gaza, where Israel slaughtered thousands of innocent Palestinians since a new round of conflict began last October. The summit is expected to be concluded with more than 20 documents on cooperation and other issues.
Turkish media outlets reported that Erdoğan’s meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the summit will focus on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Israel’s attacks on Gaza, the situation in war-torn Syria where Türkiye sides with the opposition while Russia supports the Assad regime, as well as a planned natural gas hub in Türkiye, cooperation in energy and commercial relations. Two leaders are likely to discuss the state of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant Russia is building in Türkiye.
Türkiye last called for establishing a technical-level working group to work on a "mega grid" under SCO.
The proposal, conveyed by Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar, came on the sidelines of the fourth SCO Energy Ministers meeting in Astana.
Türkiye is not a full member of the SCO but has been a dialogue partner of the organization since 2012. "If the member countries approve, we would like to host the first technical meeting of this working group in Türkiye this upcoming fall or next spring in the year 2025," Bayraktar said at the meeting. The minister also pointed to the potential among member countries to further improve energy transition technologies and address more markets globally via international cooperation. "Our countries are blessed with abundant resources, including natural resources like oil, gas, minerals and human resources, as well as institutions like universities and research centers. By working together, we can leverage these resources more effectively and ensure that benefits are widely shared," he said.