Azerbaijan’s victory also inspired courage for unity and integration within the Turkic world, Tükiye's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Azerbaijan, Birol Akgün, said in an interview with APA.
The ambassador said that Azerbaijan has always been one of the most important links in the Turkic world: “Among the peoples who never lost the vision of a common future or the dream of Turkic unity—even during the Soviet era—were the Azerbaijani people. This dream was always kept alive by Azerbaijani intellectuals, poets, thinkers, and writers even in the 1960s and 1970s, and keeping this topic on the agenda in Azerbaijan led to the formation of this thought both in Türkiye and in Central Asian countries after 1990, that is, during the period of independence. Especially since 2020, following the liberation of Karabakh, President Ilham Aliyev’s words — “Our family is the Turkic world” — reflect shared ideals that have transformed this dream into concrete projects. In June 2021, the Shusha Declaration was signed, and on November 12 of the same year, during the summit held in Istanbul, the name of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States was changed to the Organization of Turkic States (OTS). At that point, the vision for the OTS moved into the implementation phase. If you ask why not earlier, but precisely at that time, I believe it was the result of the Karabakh Victory. In this sense, Azerbaijan’s victory also inspired courage for unity and integration within the Turkic world. I believe that the firm stance of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and President Ilham Aliyev on this matter played a key role in encouraging others as well."
