President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Friday that the Turkic world acting together would facilitate the path to a cease-fire and permanent peace in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“For a full 28 days, crimes against humanity have been committed in Gaza,” Erdoğan told the 10th summit of heads of state of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) in the Kazakh capital Astana.
He lamented an “indescribable brutality” that has been unfolding in the besieged Palestinian enclave since Israel launched a counteroffensive to smother a Hamas attack on Oct. 7 and has so far killed over 9,000 Palestinians, including 3,700 children.
Israel’s relentless airstrikes have destroyed hospitals, schools and places of worship, and have driven more than half the territory’s 2.3 million people from their homes while food, water and fuel run low. Israeli troops pushed into Gaza in larger numbers over the weekend as the U.S. and other Western allies pledged unwavering support to Israel.
Erdoğan said “no words could describe what the world has seen” since Oct. 7 and called for Turkic states to take joint action to pave the way to permanent peace.
The OTS, formerly called the Turkic Council, was established in 2009 as an intergovernmental organization made up of prominent independent Turkic countries that work together to elevate relations and union among themselves.
Its members are Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, while Hungary, Turkmenistan and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) have observer status.
Erdoğan also assured that the organization was working on a “new mechanism” that would “guarantee everyone’s safety, be it Muslim, Christian or Jewish.”
“We continue working on holding an international peace conference for Palestine,” he added, referring to a Turkish initiative to end the conflict.
Ankara has floated a guarantorship model for the ongoing conflict where both Israel and Palestine would have guarantor countries, namely Saudi Arabia or Türkiye, as well as Western nations experienced in mediation.
Türkiye has also sent 10 planeloads of humanitarian aid to Gaza, which Erdoğan assured would continue “so long as conditions allow.”
Humanitarian aid has only been trickling into the blockaded city through Egypt’s Rafah border crossing, which the U.N. and human rights organizations have warned would “be nowhere nearly enough.”
“The unity of the Turkic world is our greatest strength in the face of global trials,” Erdoğan further told the summit.
He further hailed Azerbaijan’s recent victory in the Karabakh region against neighbor and rival Armenia, saying, “We are proud of Azerbaijan for ending 30 years of occupation in Karabakh. We are one step closer to lasting peace with this historic victory.”
Stressing the need for Yerevan to “fulfill its obligations to Baku” regarding the territory, he urged OTS members to maintain their support of Azerbaijan.
He also pointed to the importance of opening the transport route that will link Azerbaijan’s western regions to its Nakhchivan exclave, which he said would benefit the prosperity of all regional countries, including connecting Türkiye to its “fatherland, Central Asia.”
Ahead of the summit, Erdoğan received his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, for a closed-door meeting. The pair discuss the crisis in Gaza, the Türkiye-Armenia normalization process, and the current situation regarding the post-conflict process between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Relations between the two former Soviet republics have been tense since 1991 when the Armenian military illegally occupied Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan and seven adjacent regions.
Most of the territory was liberated by Azerbaijan during a war in the fall of 2020, which ended after a Russian-brokered peace agreement, and also opened the door to normalization.
This September, the Azerbaijani army initiated a counterterrorism operation in Karabakh to establish constitutional order in the region, after which illegal separatist forces in the region surrendered.
For his part, Aliyev urged Turkic states to strengthen defense cooperation, saying a country's defense potential is the "best guarantor of security."
"Wars and bloody conflicts break out. In this case, the main guarantor of security, first of all, becomes the defense potential. I believe that cooperation between the member states in areas such as security, defense and the defense industry should be further increased," Aliyev told the summit.
The events in September 2023 were connected with Armenia's unwillingness to withdraw its armed forces from the territory of Azerbaijan, holding a so-called "presidential election" in Karabakh and the death of civilians and policemen, Aliyev said.
Azerbaijan then conducted a swift anti-terror operation, fully restoring its sovereignty and constitutional order within 23 hours, in accordance with international humanitarian law, which was verified by two U.N. visits to the region, he said.
"Three years ago, right after the war, Azerbaijan initiated extensive reconstruction and construction efforts in the liberated territories. To date, $7 billion from the Azerbaijani budget has been invested in this endeavor, with at least $2.4 billion planned for next year," the president said.
Azerbaijan also invested over $20 billion in the economy of the OTS states, he added.
Host Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev also emphasized the necessity for Turkic states to “develop in tandem” as well as “unite and help one another” against various threats worldwide.
The OTS convened under the “Turk Time” (or “Turkic Age”) motto in Astana, where Kazakhstan is taking over the rotating chairmanship of the bloc from Uzbekistan at the end of the summit.
Members are expected to sign the Astana Act and Astana Declaration, and implement key decisions in economy, trade, transportation, customs, finance, education, tourism, culture and many other fields.
Erdoğan said the members would “work shoulder-to-shoulder to make the next century the age of Turks” under the Century of Türkiye vision, which aims for major achievements in all fields, from economy to human rights in Türkiye in its second century as a republic.
Similarly, the Turkic world is institutionalizing and deepening its cooperation, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told his counterparts from OTS member states ahead of Friday’s summit, according to Turkish diplomatic sources.
He also stressed the significance of making the Middle Corridor “more attractive” to draw investments, as well as moving resources beyond the Caspian Sea, especially Turkmen natural gas, to Türkiye and Europe.
Erdoğan also lauded megaprojects on interconnecting routes across Central Asia, namely natural gas lines connecting Baku, Tbilisi, Ceyhan and Erzurum, and efforts to ease trade, border crossings and visa processes.
All Turkic states are working to bolster social cooperation in shared languages, cultures and histories, Erdoğan noted, referring to a project to establish a unified alphabet among OTS states.
As for the expansion of the OTS, Erdoğan touted the welcoming of Turkish Cyprus as an observer state at last year's summit and reiterated Ankara's wish to see Turkmenistan as a permanent member “soon.”
Fidan also reaffirmed Türkiye’s support for Turkish Cyprus, saying, “We must stand together against the unjust and inhumane isolation of the Turkish Cypriot people.”
The Eastern Mediterranean island has been divided since 1974 when Türkiye, as a guarantor power, prompted by a coup aimed at Greece’s annexation of the island, launched a military intervention dubbed the Cyprus Peace Operation to protect Turkish Cypriots from persecution and violence.
Only Ankara recognizes TRNC as a state, which is still facing an international embargo in several areas such as access to international communications and postal services, and transport only through Türkiye.
Today, the Turkish side supports a system that would allow equal sovereignty of the two states, while the Greek side wants a federal solution based on the hegemony of the Greeks.
