ASTANA -- The sixth plenary session of the Turkic States' Parliamentary Assembly (TurkPA) has started in the Kazakh capital of Astana.
Parliamentary delegations from member-states, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkey gathered for the two-day session on December 3 amid tensions between Moscow and Ankara over Turkey's shooting down of a Russian warplane near the Syrian border last week.
Russia introduced sanctions against Turkey after the incident, in which a Russian pilot was killed, and ordered its regions with indigenous Turkic ethnicities -- Altai, Bashkortostan, Khakasia, Tatarstan, Tyva, and Yakutia -- to stop cooperation with the Ankara-based International Organization of Turkic Culture -- Turksoy.
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are members of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union.
The TurkPA was initiated by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev and has been functioning since 2009.
Hungary joined the group as an observer in 2014.