Analysts say Türkiye's accession to BRICS is a strategic and symbolic move.

Turkey's bid to join the BRICS alliance is seen as both strategic and symbolic as the Eurasian nation of 85 million people makes increasing strides in its influence and power on the global stage.

Earlier in September, a spokesman for Turkey's main ruling party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), told reporters: “Our president has already expressed several times our desire to become a member of BRICS. Our request in this regard is clear, and the process is continuing in this regard.”

BRICS, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is a group of emerging market countries seeking to deepen economic ties. This year, it added four new members: Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates.

It is also seen as a counterweight to Western-led organizations such as the European Union, the G7 and even NATO, although it lacks formal structure, enforcement mechanisms, and uniform rules and standards.

For Turkey, a longtime Western ally and NATO member since 1952, the move to join BRICS “is in line with its broader geopolitical journey: positioning itself as an independent actor in a multipolar world and even becoming a power pole in its own right,” George Dyson, a senior analyst at Control Risks, told CNBC.

“This does not mean that Turkey is completely moving away from the West,” Dyson added, “but Turkey wants to strengthen as many trade relationships as possible and pursue opportunities unilaterally without being constrained by Western biases. This is certainly symbolic because Turkey is demonstrating exactly that – that it is not constrained by its good relations with the West.”

Despite decades of alliance with Europe and the United States, Turkey has faced persistent refusal to join the European Union, which has long been a sore point for Ankara.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government “seem to be motivated mostly by two factors: a strategic tradition of securing national interests…and a desire to scare the West a little, either out of emotional rancor or as a negotiating tactic to extract concessions,” said Ambassador Matthew Bryza, a former White House and State Department official now based in Istanbul.

CNBC has contacted the Turkish presidential office for comment.

Turkey has expanded its role in global diplomacy in recent years, brokering prisoner swaps and leading other negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, for example, while also repairing previously strained relations with regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and, more recently, Egypt.

Ankara also refuses to participate in sanctions against Russia — a stance that irks its Western allies but helps it maintain an independent position as a middle power, which it sees as beneficial to its relations with China and the Global South.

To this end, “it is clear that any new BRICS member is keen to take advantage of stronger ‘solidarity’ among emerging economies in order to reduce dependence on advanced economies, especially the United States,” said Arda Tunca, an independent economist and consultant based in Turkey.

Tunca noted that Turkey's unique position in the world is a “sensitive point of discussion” because the country has “serious political problems with the European Union and the United States” despite its Western alliances.

The ruling party in Turkey, which has been running the country for 22 years, is “ideologically closer to the East than to the West,” Tonga said. “Turkey wanted to join BRICS before it was too late. It is too early to say that BRICS could become an alternative to the West, but the intention is clear: to stand up to the West under the leadership of China.”

It is important to note that joining BRICS allows its members to trade in currencies other than the dollar. This is intended to reduce dependence on the US-led system and usher in a more multipolar world. The fact that China is leading this system makes some in the West wary, as they see this as a potential victory for Beijing.

“I don’t think there is any enforcement of the BRICS decisions, it’s more of a geopolitical issue, a kind of symbolic opposition to the G7,” Dyson said. “It’s interesting that Iran and the UAE are in this group. It’s kind of an anti-Western team.”

Erdogan has spoken of his desire to join BRICS since at least 2018, but the issue has never been formalized. In June, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan visited both China and Russia, the latter for the BRICS+ summit, where Russian President Vladimir Putin said he “welcomed” Turkey’s interest in joining the bloc.

At the time, then-US Ambassador to Turkey Jeff Flake said in an interview that he hoped Turkey would not join the group, but added that he did not believe it would negatively impact Turkey's alliance with the West.