Scholz 'irritated' about Turkiye's bid to join security body led by Russia, China

German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, on Tuesday said he was “very irritated” about Turkiye’s attempts to join a Central Asian security body dominated by Russia and China, Reuters reports.

Turkish President, Tayyip Erdogan, said on Saturday he was targeting membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation for Turkiye, which is also a member of the NATO defence alliance.

“This is not an organisation that is delivering an important contribution to a good global co-existence,” Scholz said at the UN General Assembly in New York, after meeting with Erdogan.

“So I’m very irritated about this development. But at the end, it’s important to agree on what is driving us to make clear that the Russian war on Ukraine may not be successful,” he said according to a transcript of a news conference.

Separately, Scholz said any referenda held in eastern Ukrainian territories that had been seized by Russian forces were “fake referenda” that could not be accepted.

He also said it sounded like Russia might try, once more, to stop Ukrainian wheat exports – something both Turkiye and Germany aimed to prevent.

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