The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has evolved a long way from its historic function of managing Central Asian border defense. Today, it is one of the world's largest regional institutions under the umbrella of China, Russia, India, and Pakistan. Since Baku and Ankara are bound to attend the forthcoming SCO summit in Tianjin, the bloc faces a crucial issue: whether to expand its membership again to include countries between Europe and Asia.

The SCO is the natural expansion of Ankara and Baku's foreign policy agenda. Both countries have been engaging actively with Eurasian institutions over recent years, partly as a diversification of Western and regional relations. More willing to diversify relations in recent years has been NATO member Turkey, especially during tense phases in the relationship with the West. Azerbaijan, a resource-rich oil and gas country with a strategic location in the South Caucasus, views the SCO as a means of securing its regional status and winning new economic and security partners.

The process is a bilateral one. SCO titans, China and Russia, have been wooing the enhanced involvement of Azerbaijan and Türkiye. Beijing did, nonetheless, join Azerbaijan's perspective in a 2024 joint statement in a demonstration of respect for Baku's geopolitical role in regional connectivity and energy geopolitics. Türkiye has also been actively engaged in SCO activities irrespective of its obligations within NATO. More cooperation with the two states can, for Russia, put more weight behind Russia's position in the South Caucasus and strengthen multilateral channels with strained relations with the West. The membership dividend can be gigantic.

For Türkiye, membership accession would be symbolic as it is the sole NATO member to be an SCO member. This would also drive the group toward its growing importance as an East-West bridge, not a Eurasian bloc alone. The Türkçe peacemaking track record—most recently in Astana Syria peace negotiations—can add credibility to the SCO track record of negotiated settlements. Azerbaijan, in turn, offers pipelines, transit routes, and corridors to energy hubs most crucial to Eurasian long-term economic integration. Both countries are essentially not symbolically beneficial to the SCO agenda. The future path, however, is not promising.

India, as a full member since 2017, has spoken out against not facilitating Azerbaijan and Türkiye. Indian authorities are apprehensive that intimate ties between Ankara and Islamabad would reshape the SCO intra-organization dynamics on essential issues, especially security and terrorism. New Delhi has never been comfortable with SCO declarations that have not been palatable to it, like joint condemnation of Israeli aggression in Iran or communiques in which terrorism does not receive an explicit mention. The trend is a reflection of India's guarded and sometimes discriminatory approach to multilateral action in the SCO framework. India's opposition has been criticized as undermining the spirit of openness to all that the SCO aims to project.

Supporters of New Delhi’s stance counter that the organization risks losing coherence if it stretches itself too thin across competing geopolitical loyalties. Turkey's membership requirements with NATO and Azerbaijan’s diplomatic relationships with Western organizations might make it problematic for the SCO to function as a Eurasian-led alliance. Expansion in such cases can dilute the consensus-making process in an already divergent member organization. For Pakistan, membership bids by Turkey and Azerbaijan are most significant.

Islamabad has maintained close relations with these two countries and had them included earlier in the "Three Brothers," a three-nation platform o open cooperation on security, trade, and regional diplomacy. Pakistan will have to walk a tight rope of taking advantage of these benefits without inflating tensions with India in the SCO. A fine balancing act between protecting allies and reaching an agreement will be needed if Islamabad wants to deepen and not damage the organization. The greater import of the possible membership of Türkiye and Azerbaijan lies beyond regional rivalry. Expansionists argue that the presence of nations with complex geopolitical ties would display the flexibility of the SCO amid the politics of liquid alliances.

Rather than a Western equivalent, the SCO can even be an international discussion forum capable of drawing into its fold participation by other configurations of security and politics. However, as the SCO's consensus-based decision-making struggles to agree on current members, it will not hurry to include two more states with inevitably complicated foreign policy trajectories. The issue is whether enlargement's advantage--more diversity, new pipeline routes, and symbolic East-West bridging--is worth the risk of further decelerating an already sluggish decision-making process. With Türkiye and Azerbaijan joining in Tianjin as well, the case becomes ever more vital to the SCO as a theater of Eurasian diplomacy. It will not heal the internal contradictions plaguing the organization. Will it answer the SCO's identity crisis: geographically constrained, miniaturized Eurasian club, or temporary institution capable of encompassing wider global arrangements?

Formally enshrined or not, the inclusion of Türkiye and Azerbaijan assures the SCO is increasingly viewed as a forum worth taking seriously. The member states are faced with challenges and possibilities to serve the organization better, without losing function in the bargain. In that precarious equilibrium lies the future legitimacy of the SCO, not only as a regional organization but a world-shaper of multilateralism.

Ali Mehar is a student of BS International Relations at Quaid e Azam University.