ABSTRACT
Turkey’s attitude toward the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has been the subject of much speculation ever since it received the status of dialogue partner in 2012. This chapter seeks to understand the motivations and drivers behind Turkey’s asserted aspiration to pursue closer engagement with the SCO and offers three explanations rooted in three different theories of international relations and their views of international institutions. The first is constructivist and highlights the conception of international organizations as communities of values and practices endowed with a shared identity. This explanation understands Turkey’s SCO rapprochement as part of a rethinking of many of the underpinnings of the country’s domestic and foreign policy. The second is neoliberal and rests on the view of international organizations as instruments of states, devised to enable cooperation and reduce transaction costs. The third is realist and argues that Turkey’s interest in the SCO is primarily geopolitical. As Turkey seeks to position itself as a central country linking the East and the West, it is natural for it to look for greater cooperation with the SCO – especially at a time when EU accession is definitively off the table.
