BERLIN (Reuters) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday said he was “very irritated” about Turkey’s attempts to join a Central Asian security body dominated by Russia and China.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday he was targeting membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation for Turkey, which is also a member of the NATO defense alliance. [L1N30O07G]
“This is not an organization that is delivering an important contribution to a good global coexistence,” Scholz said at the U.N. 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 Turkey and Germany aimed to prevent.
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Alistair Bell)
