分类： politics

In the wake of catastrophic flash floods and landslides that have devastated cross-border regions of Nepal and Tibet’s Xizang Autonomous Region, ongoing rescue operations have been overshadowed by a heated social media dispute over media coverage and information control of the disaster.

The controversy ignited after a report from Laura Bicker, the BBC’s China correspondent, claimed that Chinese authorities had scrubbed viral footage of a massive flood and mudslide surge that swept through Gyirong Port, a key border trading hub on the Tibet-Nepal border. Bicker argued the removal was rooted in Beijing’s concerns over potential social unrest in the politically sensitive Xizang region.

Critics of the BBC’s reporting quickly pushed back, with social media users sharing screenshots proving the same footage cited by Bicker had already been broadcast by multiple domestic Chinese outlets. One Chinese journalist publicly accused the outlet of spreading blatant misinformation, while other online observers noted nuanced, middle-ground perspectives are often erased in polarized debates over Chinese media censorship.

Long-standing tensions frame this conflict: Beijing has repeatedly condemned what it frames as systemic bias in Western media reporting on Xizang, and pro-government social media users have amplified this narrative this week, centering their criticism on the BBC. At the same time, domestic and overseas Chinese social media users have long documented widespread state control over information in China, a pattern that has reemerged in the aftermath of the floods.

As Bicker outlined in her report, the most tangible evidence of content restrictions is the removal of user-shared footage showing the flood wave swallowing Gyirong Port. While the clips initially spread across domestic platforms WeChat and RedNote, they were later made inaccessible to users. Beyond content removal, independent and foreign journalists are systematically barred from accessing the disaster zone. Allyson Horn, a correspondent with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, confirmed she had submitted multiple requests to visit the affected area and was rejected each time, with other international reporters facing identical blocks.

This blanket access restriction makes independent verification of official Chinese accounts of the disaster impossible for outside outlets. The combination of removed social media content and barred independent reporting has left Chinese state media with full control over the public narrative of the floods.

State media coverage of the disaster has followed China’s long-standing crisis reporting playbook, which prioritizes content that avoids public panic or perceived threats to social stability. Coverage has centered almost exclusively on People’s Liberation Army rescue missions, President Xi Jinping’s oversight of the response, and Premier Li Qiang’s official visit to the affected region. Reporting has also included updates on road repair efforts and the delivery of relief supplies to impacted communities, but as The Guardian has observed, there has been a stark lack of coverage detailing the disaster’s impact on local residents, their destroyed homes and damaged communities. This stands in sharp contrast to the Nepali side of the border, where international reporters have been allowed to interview survivors without restrictions.

Critics also accuse Beijing of concealing the true casualty toll from the disaster, but the restricted access to the region means no outside observers can confirm or refute competing claims about the number of fatalities.

To contextualize current information controls, it is worth examining shifts in Chinese emergency reporting over recent decades. In some historical cases, Beijing has allowed far more open coverage of large-scale disasters: the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, which killed over 70,000 people and left millions homeless in Sichuan province, saw Chinese state media launch extensive live coverage within hours of the quake, a practice that continued for weeks. China Central Television published regular updates to the death toll and covered rescue efforts in depth. While foreign reporters raised questions about the collapse of poorly constructed school buildings and calls for accountability for victim families, domestic Chinese outlets even covered some of these controversies, including debates over whether local officials had conducted proper construction quality inspections. This early coverage was widely hailed by international observers as an unprecedented breakthrough in open Chinese disaster reporting, with many noting the extraordinary level of transparency on display. Within weeks, however, the government cracked down on discussions of the collapsed schools over fears the issue would fuel anti-government sentiment.

Over time, the standard approach for state media during crises has solidified: outlets are mandated to focus exclusively on “positive reporting,” while online censors remove any content that criticizes the government’s response or suggests official culpability. The 2011 Wenzhou high-speed train crash, which killed dozens of people, serves as a clear example of this model. Academic research shows that unlike the relatively open early coverage of the 2008 earthquake, the government enforced strict controls on permissible coverage of the crash. Officials ordered outlets not to deploy reporters to the scene, limited how often outlets could cover the incident, and barred any coverage that linked the crash to broader national high-speed rail expansion. Journalists were also forbidden from investigating the root causes and human impact of the crash, or sharing personal commentary on the incident on social media. Instead, they were instructed to prioritize heartwarming stories of bravery and collective action, such as local residents donating blood for victims, to encourage feelings of national unity and compassion rather than criticism.

Since Xi Jinping took office in 2012, concerns over potential threats to party rule have led to even stricter controls on both traditional media and social platforms across China. The restricted, positive-only coverage of the Tibet floods aligns fully with this tightened policy framework.

The ongoing dispute has also been amplified by growing geopolitical distrust between China and Western nations, which has deepened perceptions of biased coverage on both sides. Logistical barriers to accessing the disaster zone and first-hand sources have only further muddied the information landscape. China’s access restrictions leave Western journalists unable to independently confirm details on the ground, creating an information gap that fuels suspicion of censorship in the West and criticism of Chinese state media narratives. In turn, this criticism reinforces Beijing’s long-held claim that all Western reporting on Tibet is inherently biased, creating a feedback loop that justifies further information restrictions.

In a public conference appearance this week hosted by Israeli media outlet Ynet and the Israel Democracy Institute, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz made an explicit public case for relocating the entire Palestinian population out of the Gaza Strip, framing mass emigration as the only viable long-term resolution to the ongoing conflict in the coastal enclave.

Katz’s remarks marked one of the most high-profile endorsements of a long-simmering Israeli policy that has drawn fierce international condemnation over fears it amounts to forced displacement of Gaza’s residents. “There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without migration,” Katz told journalist Moran Azoulay during the on-the-record discussion. He went on to lay out a timeline for advancing the plan, saying momentum for relocation would pick up after Hamas fails to meet its commitments under existing agreements, clearing the way for Israel to escalate military and territorial action to facilitate the population movement.

To back up his claim that relocation enjoys broad support among Gaza’s population, Katz asserted that consistent public opinion surveys show roughly 80 percent of Gazans want to leave the enclave. That figure aligns with a May survey conducted by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), a unit that falls directly under Katz’s own defence ministry. The COGAT survey found that nearly 80 percent of respondents expressed interest in learning more about processes to resettle in third countries via the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings.

Katz acknowledged that the plan has so far been held up by two key barriers: Hamas blocks Gaza residents from leaving for resettlement, and no foreign nations have stepped forward to accept the displaced population. “We are fully prepared to move them out if it becomes possible — by sea, by air, by every way possible,” the minister said, adding that Egypt has already ruled out allowing relocation through its territory. He also noted that potential host countries are waiting for formal backing from the United States before agreeing to take in Gazans, explaining that former President Donald Trump froze the initiative rather than cancelling it entirely, amid heavy pressure from Arab nations opposing the plan.

The controversy over Israel’s relocation plan has already forced the government to rebrand the initiative in an effort to blunt international criticism. At the end of June, Israeli officials confirmed that the plan would drop its original label of “voluntary migration” in favor of the rebranded “Freedom of Movement Plan.” Israel’s Channel 13 reported that Israeli security agencies including the Mossad were ordered to stop using the original terminology, which had sparked global backlash over allegations it masked a policy of forced ethnic cleansing. Reporting from Israeli newspaper Haaretz around the same time revealed that Shmuel Ben Ezra, head of Israel’s National Security Council, called an urgent meeting to discuss efforts to advance resettlement, with Mossad officials openly admitting they had yet to identify a single country willing to accept large numbers of displaced Gazans.

Beyond his comments on Gaza relocation, Katz also addressed rising regional tensions during the conference, confirming that Israel is actively preparing for a potential large-scale attack from Iran during the upcoming Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah, which falls between September 11 and 13 this year. The defence minister stressed that Israeli security forces are fully prepared to respond with overwhelming force if Iran or its proxy groups launch an attack on Israeli territory during the holiday period.

A prominent UK-based international aid organization is at the center of a high-stakes regulatory investigation after a pro-Israel advocacy group formally accused it of ties to the proscribed militant group Hamas, prompting firm denials from the charity and renewed scrutiny of partisan efforts targeting Palestine solidarity work in Britain.

The Al-Khair Foundation, which delivers critical humanitarian aid to vulnerable populations in Gaza, is now the subject of parallel probes by the Charity Commission for England and Wales and the UK Department for Education. The investigation was launched following a formal complaint submitted by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), an advocacy group that has long targeted organizations and individuals critical of Israeli government policy.

The chain of events that led to the probes began in July, when Mohammad Yousef Hasna was arrested in the UK at the request of American federal law enforcement. US prosecutors have charged Hasna with providing material support to Hamas, which is listed as a banned terrorist organization by both the US and UK governments. Al-Khair Foundation has clarified that Hasna was never a direct employee of the organization, noting he worked for a separate partner charity that carries out humanitarian relief work in Gaza. No charges have been filed against Al-Khair itself in relation to the case.

Within hours of learning of Hasna’s arrest on suspicion of terrorism-linked offenses, Al-Khair proactively submitted a mandatory serious incident report to the Charity Commission — a step the organization took before the regulator opened its formal inquiry. In an official statement released this week, the charity forcefully pushed back against all allegations of connections to Hamas or any other proscribed group.

“We unreservedly condemn violence and extremism of all kinds,” the statement read. “Al-Khair Foundation as an organisation categorically denies any allegation of channelling support to, supporting or assisting Hamas or any proscribed entity in Gaza or elsewhere.” To address the inquiry fully, the charity has appointed an independent consultant to conduct a full factual review, with findings to be shared alongside all required legal and operational documentation for the investigation.

The Department for Education’s parallel investigation centers on four schools operated by Al-Khair Foundation: three based in London and one in Oldbury, West Midlands. The charity emphasized that the school network operates completely independently from its international humanitarian aid programs, and has no connection whatsoever to Hasna. “The schools recognise the need for questions from the Department for Education and are responding to all of them,” the organization added.

This investigation is not an isolated incident: for years, the Israeli government has repeatedly leveled unsubstantiated accusations of Hamas links against international charities that deliver aid to Gaza, where a decades-long blockade and escalating humanitarian crisis have left more than two million residents dependent on outside assistance. Al-Khair reaffirmed its commitment to serving vulnerable communities in the territory, noting its programs have reduced food insecurity and sustained life-saving support for thousands of families amid extremely challenging operating conditions. “We hope the inquiry process will allow us to present evidence that will establish the facts of the work of AKF, and the realities of our humanitarian operations in Gaza,” the charity said.

Behind the complaint lies a long pattern of advocacy by UKLFI, which was founded in 2011 and has become a leading actor in pressuring UK-based organizations and individuals that express support for Palestinian rights or criticism of Israeli government policy. The European Legal Support Centre’s Britain Index of Repression, which documents systemic efforts to suppress Palestine solidarity activism across the UK, lists UKLFI 128 times. The centre’s research shows that UKLFI frequently acts as an initiating or escalating actor in campaigns against Palestinian solidarity activity, using formal complaints, legal threats, and public pressure to push schools, universities, employers, and public bodies to launch disciplinary proceedings or cancel planned events. This pattern of activity, the centre argues, has created a “chilling environment” where even lawful Palestine-related organizing is often abandoned out of fear of costly legal action and professional reputational harm.

As record-shattering summer heat pushes Tunisia into a dual crisis of widespread infrastructure collapse and growing public fury, President Kais Saied’s administration has intensified a sweeping, systematic crackdown on the country’s already beleaguered civil society sector, a new Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigation has found. In a 49-page report published Wednesday, the global rights watchdog warns that the escalating targeting of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is not isolated harassment, but a deliberate campaign to eliminate independent civil society from the North African nation entirely.

The report lays out a detailed timeline of repression that began between May and December 2024, when authorities arrested 14 staff members from two types of groups in particular: organizations that provide support to asylum seekers, and anti-racism advocacy groups. From 2025 through the first half of 2026, at least 47 individuals linked to targeted NGOs have gone through prosecution in Tunisian courts, the investigation found. At least 10 of those people have been held in pre-trial detention for periods longer than the 14-month maximum allowed under Tunisian national law, a clear violation of domestic legal standards.

One of the highest-profile cases highlighted in the report is that of Saadia Mosbah, a leading Tunisian human rights defender. In March 2026, Mosbah was sentenced to eight years in prison and ordered to pay a substantial fine on what HRW calls “abusive charges of financial crimes” that are widely seen as politically motivated. Five additional employees of asylum support organizations have also been convicted on similar fabricated charges tied directly to their professional work assisting vulnerable populations, the report confirms. All targeted organizations have been forced to cease operations entirely, leaving critical gaps in services for marginalized communities across Tunisia.

Saied’s government has also weaponized existing counterterrorism and anti-money laundering laws to criminalize even basic assistance to foreigners living in Tunisia with irregular immigration status, turning humanitarian work into a criminal act.

The government’s crackdown on dissent has done little to quell growing public anger, which has boiled over into mass street protests in recent weeks amid an unfolding climate and infrastructure emergency. This summer, temperatures in Tunisia have repeatedly climbed close to 50 degrees Celsius, driving unprecedented demand for electricity for cooling and increased strain on water supplies. To cope with constrained generation capacity, the Tunisian Company of Electricity and Gas rolled out rolling, rotating power cuts across multiple regions of the country.

Those outages have triggered a cascading crisis that has hit the country’s water distribution network, which depends on electric-powered pumping stations to deliver supplies to homes and businesses. The outages have added extra pressure to a water system already severely weakened by years of persistent drought. Compounding the crisis, power cuts and shortages of raw plastic have disrupted production of bottled water, leaving communities without reliable access to safe drinking water during the record heat wave.

The public health system has been pushed to breaking point as a result. Emergency departments across the country are already overwhelmed treating heat-related illnesses, and on August 29, the Tunisian Organisation of Young Doctors issued a statement warning of an “unprecedented” spike in heat-related deaths, and calling on the Saied administration to declare an official national health emergency.

Facing growing public outrage over the failures of basic services, Saied has responded by blaming unspecified actors for sabotage, a familiar pattern of conspiratorial rhetoric from the president. He has claimed the outages and shortages are “premeditated acts aimed at inflaming the situation by any means necessary, spreading lies and rumours to sow confusion” and “mistreating citizens even in the most basic services” — but has failed to produce any public evidence to back up these claims.

The current crackdown on civil society is part of a broader erosion of democratic norms that began shortly after Saied’s July 2021 power grab, when he dissolved the sitting parliament, seized executive authority, and moved to consolidate power under his personal control. Since that time, Tunisian civil liberties have deteriorated to what multiple local and international rights groups describe as an “alarming” state, with widespread condemnation of what they call Saied’s “authoritarian drift” and the sharp, systemic erosion of fundamental rights across the country. Dozens of journalists, opposition politicians, and human rights defenders have been arrested, with many handed lengthy, heavy prison sentences in recent years.

For centuries, armed conflict has retained one core human element: the final decision over who lives and who dies has rested with a human being. A frontline soldier could choose to wound rather than kill an exposed opponent; a military pilot could question flawed intelligence and abort a strike that would harm innocent people. But rapid advances in artificial intelligence and weapons technology are erasing that critical human check on lethal force, as fully autonomous weapons systems move from concept to battlefield deployment.

Activists and humanitarian organizations warn that these unregulated systems already are causing catastrophic civilian harm, with early deployment examples linked to the ongoing conflict between the US, Israel and Iran. AI-powered targeting tools were first fielded by Israel during its military campaign in Gaza, and have since been used in strikes across Iran, with data showing more than 1,000 targeted hits in the conflict’s first 24 hours – a pace of attack that military analysts say is only possible with automated targeting systems.

For more than a decade, the global advocacy coalition Stop Killer Robots has led the push to head off this unregulated new era of warfare, lobbying national governments to adopt an international ban on weapons that can select and engage targets without any form of human oversight. Nicole van Rooijen, the coalition’s executive director, explained to Middle East Eye that the core danger of these systems comes from their core design: built specifically to kill, they eliminate the checks and balances that human decision-makers bring to the battlefield, and their deadly output is entirely dependent on the quality of data fed into their algorithms.

A stark example of this risk, van Rooijen noted, is the February 28 US airstrike on Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, Iran. The strike killed 156 people, 120 of whom were children, making it the deadliest single attack of the entire conflict. Preliminary investigations point to outdated and inaccurate intelligence fed into an AI targeting system as the root cause of the civilian massacre. “It is false promises of being more accurate, more precise, yet the results are worse, not for their militaries but for civilians on the ground. They pay the brunt of it,” van Rooijen said. She added that without ground troops to verify target identities in volatile conflict zones, algorithmic errors become almost inevitable.

Beyond flawed intelligence, the fundamental accuracy of AI targeting is deeply questionable. Independent specialists who study AI integration into military operations estimate that these systems have a reliability rate of just 25 to 50 percent – even in the best-case scenarios, a failure rate that van Rooijen compares to the indiscriminate damage of carpet bombing. A second critical risk is that autonomous weapons drastically lower the political barrier to declaring war, since nations no longer need to risk their own soldiers’ lives to launch an attack. “No one wants to see their soldiers die on foreign land, so that calls for some restraint. You think twice about sending your own people,” van Rooijen said. “If it is all automated, you can just send machines. Israel and the US have been threatening Iran for decades, but never actually went through with it, and I do not think it is a coincidence… it gives you a false sense that you can do it quickly… and come back a winner.”

Compounding these dangers is the complete lack of global governance for the technology. To date, there is no internationally agreed definition of what constitutes a fully autonomous weapons system, and no binding treaty regulating their development, testing, trade or deployment. This regulatory vacuum has created what van Rooijen calls a “free for all” arms race, where large technology corporations can profit from the development of deadly tools at the expense of civilian lives. She points out that even civilian products like new cars or commercial airplanes have far more regulatory safety guardrails than AI integrated into military kill chains.

Human rights campaigners say there is clear historical precedent for banning dangerous weapons before they become a normalized part of warfare, pointing to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions that prohibited the widely harmful weapons. Bonnie Docherty, senior arms advisor at Human Rights Watch (HRW) and a key negotiator of the cluster munitions treaty, says the campaign for autonomous weapons regulation follows the same core humanitarian principle: preventing unnecessary human suffering caused by unaccountable weaponry.

For Docherty, the most fundamental objection to autonomous weapons is an ethical one: machines can never grasp the inherent value of a human life, so delegating life-or-death decisions to algorithms is morally unacceptable. “An autonomous weapon system is a machine and a machine cannot truly understand the value of a human life,” she explained. “To give that machine the power to kill… is ethically inappropriate. Whoever is taking a life should be able to understand the significance of it.”

HRW research has also confirmed that autonomous weapons systems can replicate and amplify existing algorithmic biases, with lethal consequences for marginalized groups. “We looked at the discrimination front and particularly at race, gender and disability,” Docherty said. “For example, on the disability front, artificial intelligence may have trouble distinguishing a cane from a gun.”

Major military powers including the US, Israel, Russia and China have so far resisted regulation, arguing that existing international humanitarian law is sufficient to govern the new technology – an argument Docherty says is identical to the one used by opponents of the cluster munitions ban two decades ago. She noted that what broke the deadlock on cluster munitions was Israel’s widespread use of the weapons in southern Lebanon in 2006, which left thousands of unexploded submunitions scattered across civilian land that continue to kill and maim local residents to this day. “I feel like I am having a deja vu,” Docherty said. “A lot of these arguments, you could just plug in the same weapons system.”

In recent weeks, global institutional leaders have ramped up pressure for action. The United Nations Secretary-General and the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have reissued their call for a binding international treaty governing autonomous weapons, three years after they first set a 2026 deadline for nations to agree on new rules. Now, leaders warn that the 2026 deadline is no longer feasible, and the world is rapidly approaching an irreversible moral red line.

The ICRC believes that increasingly advanced autonomous capabilities are already being integrated into weapons across multiple active conflicts, used for both defensive and offensive operations even in densely populated civilian areas. While formal verification of battlefield use remains difficult, ICRC legal adviser Georgia Hinds says the trend of growing integration is clear, ranging from cutting-edge state military systems to cheap commercial off-the-shelf technologies that are being adapted for combat.”While it is very hard for us to verify… we are seeing this increasing integration of autonomy into weapons in many conflicts, from sophisticated military capabilities down to more commercial off-the-shelf systems that are being adapted,” Hinds told Middle East Eye.

A critical upcoming opportunity for action will come in November, when national governments gather in Geneva for the Seventh Review Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), the five-yearly global meeting on conventional arms regulation. For years, the UN Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems has been drafting a regulatory framework that would ban the most dangerous fully autonomous systems and place restrictions on others. The group’s final working session is taking place this week, with its draft text set to go before the full November conference.

Campaigners and humanitarian experts are optimistic that the conference can approve a move to formal negotiations for a full legally binding treaty, a step that has been 13 years in the making. “It really would not take much now to convert that into a binding instrument,” Hinds said. “In November, the decision needs to be taken to move to formal negotiations. Rolling over discussions that have now been ongoing for nearly 13 years in the group of governmental experts is not acceptable. There is really only one option in November for us.”

If governments approve the move to formal negotiations, a final treaty could be finalized in just a matter of months, most likely as an additional protocol under the existing CCW framework. But Hinds cautions that the path forward is not guaranteed, and even if progress is delayed at the conference, campaigners will continue pushing for action through alternative pathways.

The core goal, Hinds emphasized, is to regulate the technology before it spreads too widely to control. As autonomous weapons become more common, cheap commercial systems become easier for non-state armed groups to adapt for lethal use, falling outside the scope of existing regulatory and accountability mechanisms. “The [more] opportunity for these systems to proliferate, the easier it becomes to adapt a commercially available system… it is also likely to be used by non-state actors who fall outside of those more regulated investigation mechanisms,” Hinds said. “All of these things again increase accountability concerns for me. So yes, I think it’s a big risk.”

Fresh off attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit hosted in Kyrgyzstan, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a clear diplomatic reassurance Wednesday: Turkey’s push to strengthen economic and political ties with Eastern powers will not come at the cost of its relationship with the Western bloc. In on-the-record remarks to reporters traveling aboard his presidential aircraft en route back to Istanbul, Erdogan pushed back against speculation that Turkey’s ambition to gain full membership in the growing Eurasian security and economic bloc signals a strategic turn away from the West.

“Turkey’s membership perspective in the organization does not mean a break from a bloc or turning our backs on the West,” the president emphasized, directly addressing widespread geopolitical analysis that frames Turkey’s deepening engagement with the SCO as a shift in its longstanding foreign policy alignment.

The three-day summit in Kyrgyzstan’s Cholpon-Ata provided a high-profile stage for Erdogan to hold a closed-door bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, where the pair advanced talks on expanded nuclear energy collaboration between the two nations. Beyond energy cooperation, the two leaders aligned on their shared top priority for the ongoing war in Ukraine: an urgent end to hostilities through peaceful negotiation. Since the full-scale Russian invasion began in February 2022, Turkey has carved out a unique diplomatic niche, maintaining open, constructive ties with both Moscow and Kyiv while positioning itself as a key neutral mediator for global and regional security.

A core focal point of Erdogan and Putin’s discussion was maritime security in the Black Sea, a strategic waterway where civilian commercial shipping has faced a sharp rise in attacks since Russia exited the landmark Black Sea Grain Initiative last year. Erdogan stressed that the ongoing instability threatens to reignite a global food security crisis, echoing warnings from global food security bodies that new disruptions to grain shipments from major exporter Ukraine would hit vulnerable populations in low-income regions hardest.

“There is a need for a mechanism that will permanently ensure the safety of commercial maritime transport in the Black Sea,” Erdogan said. The president added that a durable security framework would be “beneficial” to prevent a “resurgence of the grain crisis” that pushed millions of food-insecure people deeper into hunger in 2022 and 2023.

It was Turkey that led the 2022 brokering of the original grain deal, alongside the United Nations, which unlocked Ukrainian Black Sea ports to allow export of millions of tons of grain and sunflower oil, while also removing barriers to Russian exports of food and fertilizer. The agreement, which proved critical to stabilizing global food prices and preventing widespread hunger across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, collapsed in July 2023 when Russia withdrew from the pact over unmet demands related to its own agricultural exports.

Founded in 2001 as a Eurasian security and cooperation bloc, the SCO currently counts 10 full member states: Russia, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Belarus. The expanding bloc has increasingly been framed by geopolitical analysts as a counterweight to U.S.-led global institutional frameworks, though its core policy priorities and collective action mechanisms remain relatively undefined to date. Erdogan reaffirmed Wednesday that Ankara remains fully committed to its long-held goal of attaining full SCO membership, as Turkey continues to pursue a multi-directional foreign policy that balances longstanding ties to NATO and the European Union with growing economic and security partnerships across Eurasia.