“The Extraordinary Meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) will be held in Istanbul on 17 October 2022,” the Ministry said.

“Priority agenda items of the OTS as well as the preparations of the OTS Summit to be held on 11 November 2022 in Samarkand will be discussed during the meeting, with the participation of H.E. Mr. Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Türkiye, and Foreign Ministers and other high-level representatives from the OTS Member States Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and the OTS Observer States Hungary and Turkmenistan,” the Ministry added.

The Organization of Turkic States (OTS), formerly called the Turkic Council or the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking States, is an international organization comprising prominent independent Turkic countries: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey and Uzbekistan.

It is an intergovernmental organization whose overarching aim is promoting comprehensive cooperation among Turkic-speaking states. First proposed by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2006, it was founded on 3 October 2009, in Nakhchivan. The General Secretariat is in Istanbul.

Hungary and Turkmenistan are the observer states. Hungary received the observer status in 2018, while Turkmenistan received the observer status in 2021. (ILKHA)