Baku hosts conference on 90th anniversary of Turkish Parliament

The event, entitled “GNAT – 90 years, Parliamentary diplomacy - TurkPA”, brought together Azeri, Turkish and Kazakh MPs and representatives of international organization, including chief of the OSCE Baku Office.

Opening remarks were made by Secretary General of the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkish-speaking countries, TurkPA, Ramil Hasanov, who highlighted the assembly's priorities.

“TurkPA was born on the basis of mutual friendly relatiosn among Azeri, Turkish and Kazakh parliaments. The assembly's priorities are contributing to expanding the political, economic, social, humanitarian and legal cooperation between the friendly and brotherly countries which share same language, religion and culture”.

“Since its establishment, the organization has held a number of important events, and this conference dedicated to the 90th anniversary of brotherly Turkey`s Grand National Assembly is the vivid example of this,” he added.

Hasanov expressed confidence the number of TurkPA`s member countries would increase in the nearest future, adding “we hope other Turkish speaking parliaments will join us”.

First deputy chair of the Milli Majlis, chairman of the parliament`s standing commission for security and defense, Ziyafat Asgarov, praised Heydar Aliyev`s role in creating TurkPA.

“During a meeting in Ankara in 1993, Heydar Aliyev stressed the importance of creating such an organization. And today we witness the realization of national leader`s ideas. With joint efforts we established TurkPA, whose secretariat is headquartered in Baku.”

Asgarov underlined the “increasing” role of parliamentary diplomacy in international relations. He expressed confidence “the conference will be a success given the topicality of the issues on its agenda”.

Deputy chair of Turkish Grand National Assembly, Nevzat Paktil, stressed “TurkPA, which plays an important role in strengthening unity between Turkic-speaking countries, and developing cultural, economic and political relations among them.”

Other speakers included chair of the Azerbaijan-Turkey interparliamentary working group at the Milli Majlis and head of Ataturk Center Nizami Jafarov, head of Turkey-Azerbaijan interparliamentary friendship group at GNAT Mustafa Kabakci, Kazakh MP Kilishbay Bisenov, head of Azerbaijani delegation at PACE Samad Seyidov, head of GNAT delegation to PA BSEC Kamaladdin Goktas, head of the Azerbaijani delegation at PA BSEC Asaf Hajiyev, head of GNAT delegation to OSCE PA Alaattin Buyukkaya, head of OSCE Baku Office Ali Bilge Cankorel and Azerbaijani MPs Asim Mollazade and Ganira Pashayeva.


/AzerTAc/