Azernews.Az

By Gunay Hasanova

Turkey will chair the Energy Club of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 2017, being the first non-member country in this position, Anadolu Agency reported with reference to the Turkish Energy Ministry.

Turkey's nomination comes after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted recently that his country would consider joining the non-Western body if the EU doesn’t decide on Turkey’s accession process soon.

Turkey had proposed that all the SCO partner countries should take turns in presiding the Energy Club for a year. The proposal was then accepted and Turkey was unanimously elected to chair the Energy Club in 2017, according to the agency.

Turkey applied for “dialogue partnership” in SCO in 2011 and its status was approved in June 2012 at the SCO Heads of State Summit in Beijing.

The SCO, established in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, conducts multilateral cooperation between the member states on national security, military, economy and culture. In 2013, Turkey became a dialogue partner at the SCO.

The SCO members now are China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

The territories of the six member states consist of 1.5 billion people, which equals to a quarter of the world's population. In addition to the six member states, the SCO has two new acceding members, India and Pakistan; four observer nations – Mongolia, Iran, Afghanistan and Belarus – and six dialogue partners, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia, Nepal and Sri Lanka

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Gunay Hasanova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @gunhasanova

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