China to consider Turkey membership of SCO

China is willing to consider any application from NATO- member Turkey to join a Russian and Chinese- led security bloc, China’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday, after Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said his country could join.

China, Russia and four Central Asian nations – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2001 as a regional security bloc to fight threats posed by radical Islam and drug trafficking from neighboring Afghanistan.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said Turkey is already a dialogue partner of the bloc and has for a long time closely cooperated with it.

China attaches great importance to Turkey’s wish to strengthen that cooperation, he told a daily news briefing.

“We are willing, together with other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and in accordance with the rules of its legal documents, to seriously study it on the basis of consensus consultation,” Geng add- ed, without elaborating.

Erdogan was quoted on Sunday saying that Turkey did not need to join the European Union “at all costs” and could instead become part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Turkish membership of the bloc would likely alarm Western allies and fellow NATO members.