Turkish Official Questions Tokayev’s Proposal for OTS Observer Status for Russia

Kürşad Zorlu, a senior official in Türkiye’s ruling Justice and Development Party, has questioned Russia’s eligibility for observer status in the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), citing its language requirements. At the OTS summit in Ankara on October 30, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev proposed inviting Russia to participate through the OTS+ cooperation framework or as an observer. He argued that closer engagement with Moscow would enhance the organization’s international standing. The OTS brings together Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan as full members. Its work now covers trade, transport, energy, and political coordination alongside linguistic and cultural cooperation. Zorlu, a deputy chairman responsible for the party’s relations with Turkic states, cited observer-status rules adopted at the 2021 Istanbul summit in comments to Anadolu Agency on November 3. Under those rules, he said, a country seeking observer status must recognize a Turkic or related language as a state or official language used in government correspondence nationwide. Recognition in individual regions is insufficient. Hungary was granted observer status in 2018, before the rules were adopted. Russia has several republics with substantial Turkic-speaking populations, and some Turkic languages have official status within them. Russian remains the country’s sole state language at the federal level. On November 2, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia’s participation in the OTS would be appropriate, although Moscow had not received an official invitation. Zorlu pointed instead to OTS+, a framework introduced in 2025 to develop relations with countries outside the organization’s formal membership and observer arrangements. It allows meetings with third countries at the level of foreign ministers or heads of state, provided all member states agree. This offers Moscow a channel for cooperation without changing the language requirements for observer status. He linked other countries’ growing interest in the OTS to the strategic importance of the Middle Corridor, a trade route connecting China and Europe through Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Türkiye. Zorlu also proposed reviving cultural cooperation between Russia’s Turkic republics and the International Organization of Turkic Culture (TÜRKSOY). Founded in 1993, TÜRKSOY promotes cultural exchanges among Turkic-speaking communities. Its website lists six Russian republics as observers: Altai, Tuva, Khakassia, Bashkortostan, Sakha (Yakutia), and Tatarstan. Zorlu said their cooperation with TÜRKSOY had been effectively frozen since 2015. That year, Russia’s Culture Ministry called for a halt to contacts amid a sharp deterioration in relations after Türkiye shot down a Russian military aircraft near the Syrian border. The Ankara summit also took place without Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, despite a personal invitation from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Azerbaijan was represented by Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov. Azerbaijani media attributed Aliyev’s absence from the summit to scheduling commitments. The meeting came amid tensions between Ankara and Baku over Azerbaijan’s restrictions on headscarves in schools and its close ties with Israel. Baku has not officially linked his absence to those disagreements.