The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is at a crossroads, evolving from an area-specific security forum to a multi-dimensional tool of regional cooperation, connectivity, and diplomacy. Extending its ambition horizon and mandate to the entire extent of Eurasia, new entrants have shifted the balance in favor of newcomers. That this upcoming 2025 SCO Summit, in Tianjin, China, with Turkey and Azerbaijan joining the membership, is evidence of this new dynamic. Their greater involvement hitherto only on paper positions of interlocutors is evidence of the increased popularity of the SCO umbrella, although tensions within, particularly India’s reserve, are evidence of fault lines for the future direction of the organization.
Azerbaijan and Turkey SCO membership represents a step in their progress toward more influential roles within the SCO. Both nations possess distinct geopolitical, economic, and cultural inclinations that are better positioned to capitalize on the organization’s broader vision. Having had a traditional leaning toward the West through NATO, Turkey has been forcefully pursuing an independent foreign policy more and more. Its actual participation with the SCO over the last decade puts it in a better position to forge closer ties with Eurasian friends. The leadership in SCO has become aware of this fact. March 2025 Briefing of the Secretary-General described Türkiye’s “balanced diplomacy” as a “distinguished interlocutor of Eurasian multilateralism.” Likewise, Azerbaijan’s geostrategic position between Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia places the state in a best position to become an ideal energy and commerce transit passage. Baku’s regional integration projects such as the Middle Corridor project are most relevant to the SCO focus on development and connectivity.
Article 13 of the SCO Charter specifically mentions that the new members would be regional states willing to receive the purposes and principles of the organization such as regional security, peaceful settlement of differences, and economic help to one another. These are the shared principles of Turkey and Azerbaijan. Turkey as Astana Process for Syria and between Black Sea conflicts interlocutor guarantees their experience in handling multilateral conflicts. Azerbaijan’s insistence on respecting the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement guarantees a flavor of diplomacy over action. Their past guarantees that the full membership of their country would be a step in accordance with the founding principles of the SCO. Apart from normative convergence, membership from Türkiye and Azerbaijan would be strategic interest for the SCO.
Its middle geographic location between Europe and Asia positions it as a middle point where the organization can leverage its location in westwards directions. Its growing economic and security profile in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the South Caucasus lends credibility to the bid. Interests are too great for Azerbaijan to lose them as well. Its transit status and principal energy exporting function is only secondary to SCO’s vision of an integrated Eurasian economic space. The two would also be making regional coordination easier for what are otherwise known as the “Three Brothers” Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Türkiye—towards providing a fresh impetus to trilateral cooperation on the multilateral platform. Not all members of SCO are visionary on this front, however. India is now a vocal opponent of greater visibility in the organization from Azerbaijan and Turkey.
New Delhi was in their path on issues of political alignment and competition. India’s inability to sign the final communique at the most recent SCO Defence Ministers meeting in Qingdao was consistent with its more subtle policy reaction. Indian diplomacy has been protesting the manner in which Türkiye is aligning with Pakistan on Kashmir and the very close relationship Islamabad and Baku are building. The anger, however, can turn the SCO into a veto and exclusion club that reverses norms of multilateralism which the institution had desired to enter. India’s action is but one component of a larger pattern of transactional multilateralism in which state agendas start to overwhelm common objectives. Such a policy would conceive of the SCO’s place in a world forced to cohere across geo-political and ideational fault lines.
If the organization allows member state agendas to strait-jacket it, then it will so surely wither away. In place of this, the SCO would have to develop an effervescent, outward policy with finesse to Eurasia’s multi-dimensional politics. The Azerbaijani and Turkish positive outreach is a direction to such openness. For the others, i.e., Russia, China, and Pakistan, the future accession of Azerbaijan and Türkiye would be a chance to reaffirm the pan-Eurasian nature of the SCO. It would broaden the horizon of activity of the organization, diversify its diplomatic portfolio, and raise the profile of the organization globally. In a more multipolar world order with fragmentation, the SCO can be one alternative coalition platform—a one above Cold War blocs and a one for cooperative dividends. The Tianjin Summit can be one watershed in SCO outreach. Whether formally extended to Azerbaijan and Türkiye or not, their involvement is an imprimatur upon the growing gravitational pull of the organization.
The challenge now is whether or not the momentum is allowed to dissipate with the weaknesses of the organization.
The SCO needs to reaffirm the spirit of its inception—dialogue, respect, and openness—before it can be an effective and representative forum for Eurasian cooperation. Thirdly, and most important, expansion to Azerbaijan and Türkiye would bring strategic and geographic diversity to the SCO but also to the legitimacy of an actually representative institution. Eurasian multilateralism’s future is at stake on the capacity of institutions such as the SCO to be forward-looking and visionary. When SCO opens its arms to the broader world, it can ride on this wave to assert a new world order for itself.
