Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the Organisation of Turkic States (OTS) is a "vital pillar" of East-West cooperation.
Speaking about Hungary’s current six-month European Union presidency at the informal summit of OTS held in Azerbaijan's Shusha on Saturday, the prime minister said he considered it a peace mission and referred to his recent visits to Kyiv and Moscow. He said the city of Shusha in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which returned under Azeri control in November 2020, was encouraging from the point of view of peace for Hungary, a country which he said had been living in the shadow of the Ukrainian war for two and a half years. PM Orbán expressed respect to Azeri President Ilham Aliyev for “giving back the possibility of peaceful life to several hundred thousand people in the Caucasus region”. Commenting on the European Parliament elections of June, he said they had caused a “political earthquake”. People in 20 of the 27 EU countries voted for change, he added. Some pro-war governments had failed or weakened significantly, he said. He said the Patriots for Europe party alliance, to be formed on Monday, would be the third strongest group in the EP.