Asked on BRICS, Turkey’s finmin says country doesn’t want to decouple from “core” partners

Turkey wants to stick with its “core” trade partners such Europe rather than decouple and join the likes of China, Russia, India and Brazil in the so-called BRICS group, its finance minister Mehmet Simsek said on Thursday.

Speaking at an event in London organised by the Chatham House think tank Simsek said that BRICS was mainly a “dialogue platform” currently rather than a formal economic bloc like the European Union that Turkey has said it would like to join.

The EU, “remains our core partner in terms of trade investments, tourism flows, so we cannot afford to decouple,” he said.

“So we remain focused (on the EU), but that doesn’t mean we do not look at alternatives if they present value.”
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Marc Jones, editing by Karin Strohecker)