Turkic States Parliamentary Assembly Convenes In Astana

Parliamentary delegations from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkey will be attending the conference in Astana.

Parliamentary delegations from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkey will be attending the conference in Astana.

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.