The Organization of Turkic States (OTS) is a “vital pillar” of East-West cooperation, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Saturday at the informal summit of OTS held in Azerbaijan’s Shusha.
Commenting on Hungary’s current six-month European Union presidency, he 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.
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”. “We hope to find that path in Europe, too, in the near future,” he added.
Orbán: We caused a political earthquake
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.
Orbán highlighted the danger that the world could be again split into blocs of power as a consequence of the Ukraine war.
He said that considering the sad experience from history, he gave preference to an image of the future built on restoring global cooperation and the joining of forces. “As a result, we view the Organization of Turkic States as a vital pillar of maintaining cooperation between East and West,” he added.
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