Turkic Council's Astana Summit: media and information

The heads of state of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey are all expected at the summit, with high-ranking officials from Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Hungary invited as guests of honor. Only Uzbekistan has said it will not participate in the summit. As for Hungary, it will be joining the summit for the first time. Twenty-one federal states within the Russian Federation are a part of the Turkic world and are related in this sense. The Xinjiang Uyghur region in China is also a part of the wider Turkic world. For this reason, the fact that the Russian Federation and China have been invited to next year's Bishkek Summit is expected to have very positive repercussions within the Asian world.

The topic of this year's Astana Summit is going to be media and information. Encouragement will be offered for partnered projects in both public and private sector national news agencies, magazines, television stations and radio stations between the countries attending the summit. Support will also be offered for joint projects and more cooperation within the media outlets of these countries. Despite expectations, the station TRT Avaz has not turned out to be the hoped-for channel for the entire Turkic world. For this reason, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev wishes to see the formation of a new TV channel that will appeal to the entire Turkic world.

This is certainly going to be one of the topics directly concerning joint media outlets and how to support them within the Turkic world. In fact, there will be a decision rendered during this summit about the creation of an international Turkic news channel. The first meeting of ministers of information and media of Turkic Council countries on Aug. 18 of this year saw the signing of a new and important protocol mandating more cooperation in this arena between Turkic language-speaking countries. The various sides signing this agreement approved of the creation of the aforementioned international Turkic news channel.

In connection with the main themes of last year's Bodrum Summit (tourism), this year's Astana Summit is expected to touch on transportation. At the Bodrum Summit, the four member countries worked on preparing the "Turkic Council Silk Road Tour Package," with the aim of attracting more tourism to Silk Road routes in general. In fact, the Turkic Council Customs Work Group held its fifth meeting in Bishkek earlier this summer to further this goal. At this meeting, topics such as the Caravanserai Project, the Silk Road Initiative, increasing border control cooperation and developing border facilities were all discussed.

It is expected that the Astana Summit will include further discussion and decisions on topics such as creating multi-dimensioned transportation infrastructure, developing the relations between the ports of Baku, Samsun and Aktau, creating practical solutions to cargo transport problems in the region and developing further international relations between the Turkic Council and other countries where these topics are concerned, Today's Zaman reports.