As Brazil prepares to host this year’s BRICS summit in July, the bloc is celebrating a historic expansion. Yet it also faces uncertainty about its future.
In January, BRICS officially welcomed Indonesia as its 10th member, a move that reflects the group’s growing appeal across the global south. Nine countries also accepted invitations to become BRICS partner countries, a vaguely defined category that allows government representatives to join the bloc’s meetings without voting power or commitment.
BRICS member and partner countries now include more than half the world’s population and account for more than 40 percent of global GDP. But there’s an elephant in the room: Saudi Arabia has yet to respond to a BRICS membership invitation that it received in 2023, and Turkey remains silent on a 2024 offer for partner status. Ankara had been vocal about its desires to become a BRICS member.
Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey were all strong candidates for BRICS membership. Indonesia is the largest economy in Southeast Asia and is strategically positioned in the Indo-Pacific. Saudi Arabia is the world’s top oil exporter and a key player in the Middle East. If it receives a membership invitation, Turkey would be the first NATO member to join BRICS.
Each of these three countries has navigated its relations with BRICS differently. Comparing Indonesia’s accession, Saudi Arabia’s ambiguity, and Turkey’s aspirations offers valuable insights into BRICS’s evolving role in the international system—and how emerging powers are hedging their bets amid geopolitical uncertainty.
BRICS’s growing membership suggests that the bloc is gaining credibility around the world, attracting diverse economies eager to align themselves with an alternative to Western-led institutions. But including more countries risks diluting the group’s ability to act in unison.
If Turkey and Saudi Arabia eventually join as members, it could indicate broader shifts in the global order. It would also reveal whether BRICS membership enhances strategic autonomy or complicates ties to Western partners for policymakers in Ankara and Riyadh.
When BRICS started discussing expansion in 2023, Indonesia was a compelling candidate. In addition to its strategic location, the country boasts a rapidly growing economy and is a founder of the nonaligned movement, lending it legitimacy across the global south.
Ahead of the 2023 BRICS summit in Johannesburg, Indonesia expressed interest in joining the bloc, and all of the BRICS members supported its candidacy. However, then-Indonesian President Joko Widodo ultimately requested to delay the invitation, preferring to remain nonaligned ahead of the country’s 2024 presidential election. Ultimately, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates were the only countries to become members on Jan. 1, 2024.
In the year that followed, conflicts within the bloc over expansion made Indonesia’s BRICS membership seem unlikely. While vehemently anti-Western members China and Russia have pushed for BRICS expansion in the last few years, moderate Brazil and India have remained hesitant, fearing a loss of influence. Last June, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that BRICS had agreed “by the overwhelming majority” to pause considering new members while the recently admitted countries assimilated into the organization.
Yet days after current Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto took office last October, the country once again expressed an interest in BRICS membership. Indonesia’s foreign ministry framed the choice as “a manifestation of [Indonesia’s] independent-active foreign policy,” emphasizing that BRICS accession would be part of its multi-alignment strategy. Prabowo likely saw membership in the bloc as an opportunity to expand his ties to member countries in a more tumultuous world.
Because of BRICS’s stated reticence to take on new members, the bloc’s summit last October ended with a list of at least 13 new partner country invitations, including to Indonesia and Turkey. The creation of partner status seemed to be a compromise between the bloc’s expansionists and the more hesitant countries.
As Brazil assumed the rotating annual BRICS presidency on Jan. 1, Indonesia and eight other countries—Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Malaysia, Thailand, Uganda, and Uzbekistan—officially became BRICS partners. It came as a surprise when, only five days later, Brazil announced that Indonesia had been accepted as a member, effective immediately. (Nigeria later accepted partner status on Jan. 17.)
Indonesia’s sudden accession suggests that the bloc may no longer be publicizing membership offers until they are accepted. BRICS may have learned from Saudi Arabia’s ongoing silence and Argentina’s embarrassing rejection of a 2023 membership offer after right-wing President Javier Milei’s election. (Milei’s leftist predecessor had sought BRICS accession.)
Indonesia’s BRICS accession enhances the bloc’s legitimacy, reinforcing the idea that membership can be valuable even for countries that do not support overtly anti-Western narratives. Indonesia’s presence is likely to strengthen Brazil and India’s nonaligned wing of BRICS, while another recent entrant, Iran, boosts Russia and China’s anti-Western stance.
Indonesia recently finalized a military aid agreement with Japan and conducted joint military exercises with the U.S. Navy. Rather than signaling a move away from the West, Jakarta’s BRICS membership is just one plank in Indonesia’s broader hedging platform.
Though Indonesia’s BRICS accession occurred quickly, Saudi Arabia has been toying with its 2023 invitation for over a year. In January, a Saudi minister at the World Economic Forum said that the country was still assessing BRICS membership. Yet the Brazilian government has listed Saudi Arabia as a member ahead of the 2025 summit, leading to confusion about the country’s exact status.
Unlike Indonesia, Saudi Arabia has capitalized on its BRICS invitation as leverage in ongoing negotiations over a bilateral security agreement with the United States. By expressing interest in BRICS, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman signaled to Washington that Riyadh had alternatives.
However, U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House complicates this equation. If Saudi Arabia sees Trump as more transactional and open to renegotiating Saudi-U.S. ties on favorable terms, then BRICS membership may lose appeal. Moreover, the potential negative repercussions of Saudi Arabia joining—such as the threat of economic retaliation from the United States—may outweigh the current benefits of strategic ambiguity.
By stringing BRICS along without committing, Saudi Arabia has exposed one of the bloc’s vulnerabilities: its informality. The longer Riyadh’s invitation remains unanswered, the more BRICS risks looking weak, highlighting its limited leverage over even mid-sized powers.
Unlike Saudi Arabia, Turkey has been enthusiastic about engaging with BRICS. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has frequently spoken about his country’s desire to join alternative global institutions, in part to gain more leverage vis-à-vis Western partners like the European Union, which froze membership negotiations with Ankara in 2018.
After years of frustration with its faltering EU candidacy, Turkey applied for BRICS membership in 2024, seeing it as an opportunity to recalibrate ties with the West and diversify its alliances. If accepted, Turkey would have extra leverage as the only NATO member in BRICS.
However, BRICS has so far only offered Turkey partner status. Although Ankara acknowledged the invitation, it has not accepted it. After many ups and downs with the EU, Turkey appears uninterested in participating in another opaque membership pipeline. Instead, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan suggested in February that the country remains interested in BRICS membership; he attributed the delay of Turkey’s invitation to the bloc’s focus on incorporating its new members.
Fidan further used Turkey’s growing relationship with BRICS to attack the EU. He said that the EU had an “Islamophobic” stance, building on his claim last year that Turkey would not have sought BRICS membership if it had been granted an invitation to join the EU.
Turkey’s reluctance to embrace BRICS partner status suggests that the category does not hold meaningful weight when hedging on the global stage. Turkey already enjoys significant global influence—playing a pivotal role in NATO, the Black Sea region, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the Middle East—but BRICS membership may offer Turkey an opportunity to diversify its partnerships in places where its role is limited, such as in South America and sub-Saharan Africa.
If Turkey and Saudi Arabia eventually follow Indonesia’s path and join BRICS, it would lend the group more geopolitical heft. Ankara’s and Riyadh’s accession could also signal a growing perception among U.S. allies that strategic diversification is necessary to respond to Trump’s unpredictable foreign policy. Both countries have historically balanced their relationships between Washington and other global powers; a move toward BRICS would suggest that Trump’s transactionalism is pushing key partners away.
Alternatively, if Turkey and Saudi Arabia maintain their current strategy—keeping BRICS at arm’s length while engaging selectively with the bloc—it reinforces the idea that middle powers are not jolting toward changes in the global order but rebalancing relations incrementally. In this scenario, ties to BRICS remain a useful diplomatic tool, but membership carries diminishing returns as more countries join.
For now, countries’ interest in formal or informal ties with BRICS is a signal of strength for a bloc that was long dismissed as irrelevant. But as BRICS expands, its ability to act cohesively weakens. Egypt and Ethiopia already stalled a BRICS joint statement on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last fall by refusing to support South Africa’s bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. The more diverse BRICS’s membership, the harder it becomes for the group to establish a unified agenda.
Whether BRICS becomes a driving force in the global south or a stalled symbol of multipolar aspirations will depend on its ability to adapt without diluting its influence—and its capacity to attract relevant powers such as Indonesia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Otherwise, BRICS risks evolving into a loosely connected forum rather than a decisive geopolitical force.
