Turkish President Abdullah Gul said on Wednesday that Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan needed to act as “six states with one nation” and display solidarity with each other.
Speaking in Ankara at an international meeting to mark the 20th year of the independence of Turkic republics, Gul said: “This is the challenge before us. Those who are not in solidarity with each other face difficulty when they are alone. Being in solidarity never puts a shadow on mutual, equal and respectable relations.”
The meeting was organized by the Turkish Prime Ministry Office of Public Diplomacy and the Ataturk Culture Center for Strategic Strategies. The first session of the meeting was titled “Turkic communities in Eurasia: Newly drawn borderlines and newly created identities.” In his speech, Gul also said, “If we do see ourselves as part of one nation, it is the natural right of all our states to facilitate the utmost cooperation between our citizens, societies and states.”
The president added that the Turkic republics have proven their success, gone through a historic test and assumed important roles in their region over the past two decades since they declared their independence, noting that he was proud to see all of this.
