By Murat Yıldız
Ahead of its 13th summit in Ankara on Oct. 30, the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) is advancing separate tracks in policing, mobility, education, digital policy, transport, foreign policy coordination and defense. Some already have agreements, funding or permanent mechanisms. Others remain proposals whose scope member states have yet to define.
Türkiye's Directorate of Communications opened a dialogue series ahead of the summit in Astana on Sept. 4 and took it to Baku on Sept. 15. National analytical centers from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Türkiye and Uzbekistan met in Baku on Sept. 16 with representatives from observer participants Hungary, Turkmenistan and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC).
The fifth meeting of OTS security council secretaries runs in Baku on Sept. 16-18. Heads of defense industry institutions are due there from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2. Türkiye will host the OTS Council of Foreign Ministers on Oct. 29 and the leaders' summit the following day.
Policing moves toward a permanent mechanism
At the OTS interior ministers' meeting in Astana on Sept. 10, Türkiye proposed creating a Council for Combating Crime to coordinate work against organized crime, terrorism, narcotics, irregular migration, illegal betting and other cross-border offenses.
Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi said Türkiye aims to have the council's founding agreement signed at the Ankara summit. Official Uzbek reporting said the draft agreement would be submitted for signature at a subsequent meeting of OTS interior ministers.
Further ahead sits TURKPOL, which Çiftçi described as the council's future executive body and compared with Europol and ASEANAPOL. The immediate project is the Council for Combating Crime, and TURKPOL remains a later proposal.
Kazakhstan has backed stronger operational cooperation among OTS law enforcement agencies. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev told the interior ministers that cross-border security challenges required closer coordination.
A permanent council would give member states a standing law enforcement channel even where their foreign policy positions differ.
Travel with identity cards would move cooperation to the border
The Astana meeting also returned to easier movement between member states, including travel with national identity cards and possible common passport control arrangements at airports.
OTS Secretary General Kubanychbek Omuraliev said on May 15 that the organization was working on a Turkic ID project under which national identity cards could eventually replace passports for travel among participating states.
Some bilateral arrangements for travel with identity cards already operate. The OTS has not adopted a passport-free travel system covering the whole bloc and has published no implementation timetable. A wider arrangement would require compatible border databases, document security standards and systems for sharing information.
Education adds a common data system
OTS education ministers meeting in Turkistan on June 8 approved measures covering the Turkic Universities Union (TURKUNIB), the Orhun Exchange Program, higher education data systems, diploma equivalency, quality assurance and student and teacher mobility.
TURKUNIB now includes 170 universities. Ministers backed a permanent secretariat and a dedicated fund for the Orhun Exchange Program, and the OTS Secretariat allocated $1 million to support exchanges.
Alongside the June education roadmap, Türkiye proposed an OTS Education Information Network to collect and compare education data from member and observer states through a common methodology.
Ministers accepted the proposal at the June 8 meeting. Türkiye's Education Ministry says it will coordinate preparatory work with the OTS Secretariat, and the network is intended to produce comparable indicators and policy analysis grounded in data.
The common alphabet is reaching national policy
The Turkic World Common Alphabet Commission agreed in Baku in September 2024 on a proposed 34-letter Common Turkic Alphabet in Latin script.
The project, coordinated through the Turkic Academy and the OTS Secretariat, is advisory. Each state retains control over its national alphabet.
At its Astana meeting on June 15, the commission moved toward implementation guidelines and approved recommended Kazakh and Kyrgyz alphabets derived from the common system.
Uzbekistan changed its own alphabet law on Sept. 10. The Senate approved legislation replacing Oʻ, Gʻ, Sh and Ch with Ö, Ğ, Ş and Ç in the Uzbek Latin alphabet. Ng would no longer be listed as a separate entry in the alphabet.
The change is a national Uzbek reform. Uzbekistan has not adopted the full 34-letter Common Turkic Alphabet, and the law still requires presidential signature and formal publication before taking effect. Uzbek officials have linked the changes partly to problems involving keyboards, search engines, databases, electronic documents and government information systems.
AI, cybersecurity and OTS-SAT form a technology track
Artificial intelligence and digital development formed the official theme of the informal OTS summit in Turkistan in May.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan placed cybersecurity alongside security on land, at sea and in the air and said Türkiye would use its OTS chairmanship to deepen coordination in the field.
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev proposed an OTS artificial intelligence cooperation network, a Digital Turkic Corridor connecting regional data centers and a Turkic Alliance for Cybersecurity and Digital Infrastructure Protection. He also called for faster information exchange among security services.
Tokayev proposed a network of artificial intelligence centers, a joint Turkic IT hub and a unified digital platform for Turkic history and culture. The agenda between Türkiye and Kazakhstan already places AI alongside trade, transport, energy and technology cooperation.
Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov has emphasized AI applications in economic policy, education, health and public services.
OTS-SAT has moved into hardware. Omuraliev discussed the organization's first joint satellite project with Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Zhaslan Madiyev in Astana on July 30. Madiyev also serves as Kazakhstan's minister of artificial intelligence and digital development.
Kazakh engineers have fully assembled the satellite's engineering model at the spacecraft assembly and testing complex in Astana, and launch is planned for 2027. The October 2025 Gabala Declaration had set a 2026 launch target.
The Sept. 15 Baku panel put AI, digital transformation, media coordination and information security on the agenda ahead of Ankara. Panel participants also called for closer defense industry cooperation, more joint exercises and greater coordination between military doctrines. The panel did not turn those calls into OTS policy.
Defense cooperation has clearer political limits
Azerbaijan has pushed the defense file further than most members.
At the OTS summit in Gabala on Oct. 7, 2025, President Ilham Aliyev called for deeper military cooperation and cooperation in defense technology, and proposed an OTS joint military exercise in Azerbaijan in 2026.
No such exercise appears among the remaining 2026 events on the OTS Key Events calendar as of Sept. 16.
Azerbaijan is preparing a separate multinational format. On July 17, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry announced a planning conference for the "Power of Unity – 2026" Joint Military Exercise involving delegations from Azerbaijan, Türkiye, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan.
The ministry said the exercise would be held in Azerbaijan but gave no date. With Iran and Pakistan among the participants, the format extends beyond OTS membership, and Baku has not presented it as the OTS exercise Aliyev proposed in Gabala.
The OTS defense industry meeting in Baku is a separate track. Azerbaijan also combines extensive bilateral military cooperation with Türkiye, training linked to NATO and wider Turkic defense contacts.
Broader political language came from all five member states in Istanbul on March 7. The United States and Israel had begun strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. Three days before the meeting, Türkiye's Defense Ministry said NATO air and missile defense assets in the eastern Mediterranean had neutralized a ballistic missile fired from Iran toward Turkish airspace.
The ministers' joint statement said that "any threats to the security of the Member States of the OTS are a matter of concern for the entire Organization."
Two months later, Tokayev told the Turkistan summit that the OTS was "not a geopolitical project and not a military organization."
The March statement created no mutual defense obligation. It put threats against individual members on the organization's political agenda. Tokayev's remarks limited how far Astana is prepared to read that language.
Foreign policy coordination is becoming more explicit
The March 7 Istanbul meeting also served as a forum for foreign policy coordination. Representatives of all five member states attended, with Kazakhstan represented by Deputy Foreign Minister Alibek Bakayev. Hungary and Turkmenistan were not listed among the participants in the OTS readout.
The meeting produced a joint statement on the Middle East. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the member states had been working to establish a "joint stance" on international developments and described the talks as part of closer coordination on foreign policy issues.
The OTS has no common foreign policy. Its ministerial meetings now produce agreed statements on active regional crises.
The TRNC also takes part as an observer. The OTS has listed the TRNC as an observer member since the November 2022 Samarkand summit, a status separate from bilateral diplomatic recognition.
At the May 15 informal summit in Turkistan, the OTS participant list identified Tufan Erhürman as "President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" and placed him alongside the presidents of the five member states. Erhürman used the summit to promote the TRNC's universities, technology parks and research capacity as areas for cooperation within the organization.
Digital trade rules follow the Middle Corridor
Transport remains central to the economic agenda. The Middle Corridor links Central Asia across the Caspian and South Caucasus to Türkiye and Europe, and customs systems, energy routes and digital networks are being built along the same route between east and west.
Turkmenistan's stated OTS priorities remain economic integration, transport and logistics corridors, trade, investment, energy and the digital economy.
Aliyev and Fidan discussed connectivity at their Sept. 15 meeting in Baku. According to the Azerbaijani presidency, they covered energy cooperation, new routes for carrying alternative energy sources to international markets and the role of Azerbaijan and Türkiye as a logistics bridge between Europe and Asia.
The five OTS member states signed the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement among the Governments of the Member States of the Organization of Turkic States in Bishkek on Nov. 6, 2024.
Türkiye's parliament adopted Law No. 7583 approving ratification on June 11, 2026. TBMM records show presidential approval on June 19, and the law was published in the Official Gazette on June 20. Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan had completed their domestic procedures earlier, and Japarov signed Kyrgyzstan's ratification law in late June.
As of Sept. 16, Kazakhstan was the only member without a published notice of completed domestic ratification. Official Kazakh material showed the ratification measure still moving through the Majilis.
The agreement covers paperless trade, electronic invoicing and payments, electronic signatures, logistics, consumer and personal data protection, cybersecurity and other rules for e-commerce and cross-border digital services.
Ankara will receive files at different stages
Digital trade has four of five domestic approvals. Education has funded networks and a new data system in preparation. OTS-SAT has an engineering model. Turkic ID and TURKPOL remain earlier proposals. On security, all five members have signed collective political language, while Kazakhstan rejects defining the OTS as a military organization.
What leaders sign in Ankara will show which of these proposals gain budgets or permanent bodies and which stay at the level of political intent.
Sources: Organization of Turkic States, Grand National Assembly of Türkiye, Official Gazette of the Republic of Türkiye, Türkiye's Directorate of Communications, Türkiye's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Türkiye's Ministry of Interior, Türkiye's Ministry of National Defense, Türkiye's Ministry of Trade, Türkiye's Ministry of National Education, Government of Uzbekistan, Senate of the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Presidency of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Presidency of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Majilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Presidency of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Presidency of the Kyrgyz Republic, Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Turkic Academy, Government of Turkmenistan, TRNC Presidency, Azerbaijan Center for Analysis of Economic Reforms and Communication, Interfax-Kazakhstan, Bosphorus News review and reporting.