Hungarian house speaker attended Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic Speaking Countries

House Speaker László Kövér attended a plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic Speaking Countries (TURKPA) in Izmir on Wednesday.

“Our Turkic brothers have accepted us as one of them,”

Kövér said in his address to the assembly, referring to the fact that Hungary has been an observer in TURKPA since 2014 and in the Turkic Council since September this year.

Hungarians are linked with Turkic peoples through “kinship, shared traditions, similarities in their languages, as well as historical ties”, Kövér said. He added that their geographical positions and geopolitical challenges also connect Hungary with Turkic countries.

Climate change is an increasing challenge in terms of supplying the population with food and water, while global migration and terrorism pose further challenges for both Hungary and the Turkic world, Kövér said. He also noted that the spread of the internet “not only promotes more efficient communications but has made the moral norms supporting cohesion within societies more vulnerable”. While technological development contributes to improving the quality of life it also facilitates “changing the image of man and questioning some of the most fundamental values of civilisation”, Kövér insisted.

On Tuesday, Kövér met Binali Yildirim, the Turkish house speaker, and Nurlan Nigmatulin, his Kazakh counterpart. On the sidelines of his programme on Wednesday, he held talks with Dastanbek Cumabekov, the Kyrgyz house speaker.

TURKPA was founded in 2008, by the parliamentary speakers of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkey.

Source: MTI