(Today's Zaman) (Alexander Cooley quoted) According to a statement released by the Kazakh presidential office on Friday, Nazarbayev said Turkey should be a member of the EaEU during the fourth summit of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States (Turkic Council) on June 4-5 in the Turkish port city of Bodrum.
The Turkic Council is an international organization encompassing Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey, and was founded with the signing of the Nakhchivan Agreement in 2009. Stressing that there is not much difference between the Turkic Council and EaEU, Nazarbayev said: "The EaEU is open to new members. Turkey and others could become members of our union," according to the statement. Nazarbayev also brought to mind that Armenia and Kyrgyzstan are planned future members of the EaEU and said that many countries are willing to develop trade cooperation with EaEU members. […]
"The original purpose of the Eurasian [Economic] Union was to become a dominant regional economic organization, with a legal architecture controlled by Moscow," said Alexander Cooley, a political science professor at Barnard College, according to Foreign Policy magazine. "But Crimea ended up illustrating that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin would much rather have something to 'effectively lock countries into Moscow's political and economic orbit'," Cooley added.
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