BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 30. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev did not travel to Ankara, but his name was nevertheless at the center of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) summit. One of the most notable moments of the 13th summit came when Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev took the floor.
“I express my deep gratitude to His Excellency the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the esteemed Ilham Heydarovich Aliyev, for the significant work carried out by Azerbaijan during its chairmanship of the Organization to strengthen the fraternal ties among Turkic peoples and elevate our relations to a new level,” he said from the summit podium.
Mirziyoyev did more than acknowledge the leader of the outgoing OTS chair. He addressed President Ilham Aliyev by his full name and explicitly credited him with two achievements: strengthening the bonds among Turkic peoples and taking relations within the OTS to a new level. And these words were spoken neither in Baku nor in Tashkent, but in Ankara, in the presence of the leaders of the Turkic world, at a time when some Turkish commentators had chosen to speak about the Azerbaijani leader in a very different tone.
Mirziyoyev was not alone. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev also thanked Azerbaijan for its contribution to the Organization's work during its chairmanship. In the same address, he emphasized that respect for the sovereignty and national interests of member states remains a fundamental principle of cooperation. Against the backdrop of recent weeks, this statement sounds almost like a restatement of the very position defended by Baku.
These assessments reflect a concrete year of work. Azerbaijan assumed the OTS chairmanship in October 2025 at the summit in Gabala, where President Ilham Aliyev proposed that Turkic states act as a single center of power. Over the past year, Baku hosted the second meeting of OTS heads of government and vice presidents, while the Azerbaijani leader took part in the informal summit in Turkistan. It was there, in May 2026, that Mirziyoyev had already thanked President Ilham Aliyev for his effective chairmanship and efforts to strengthen the Organization's international standing.
Mirziyoyev's words are also significant because Tashkent has a particular history with President Ilham Aliyev's Turkic-oriented foreign policy. It was at the 2019 summit in Baku that Uzbekistan became a full member of the Organization. In 2021, in Istanbul, Mirziyoyev opened his address by thanking President Ilham Aliyev for his productive chairmanship, congratulated the Azerbaijani people on Victory Day, and personally congratulated the Azerbaijani president on receiving the Supreme Order of the Turkic World. In 2024, in Shusha, he recalled the words of Heydar Aliyev: “Without Shusha, there is no Karabakh; without Karabakh, there is no Azerbaijan.”
These episodes form a consistent pattern. The leader of Central Asia's most populous country has repeatedly and publicly recognized President Ilham Aliyev's role in the Turkic world at different international forums. This is not an assessment made at a single summit, but a position Tashkent has expressed over five years - in Istanbul, Shusha, Turkistan and now Ankara.
This is the main significance of what happened in Ankara. President Ilham Aliyev's standing in the Turkic world does not depend on whether he is seated at the negotiating table on any given day. He was not in the room, yet the leaders of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan considered it important to recognize Azerbaijan's contribution from the summit podium, while Mirziyoyev went further and addressed President Ilham Aliyev by name. This is how partners speak of a leader whose work is recognized by all participants and whose place in Turkic politics is determined neither by protocol nor by anyone else's approval.
There is also a symbolic detail in this story that is worth remembering in Türkiye. In March 2023, following the devastating earthquake, an extraordinary OTS summit was held in Ankara at the initiative of President Ilham Aliyev. It had originally been planned for Shusha, but President Ilham Aliyev proposed moving the meeting to the Turkish capital to show solidarity with a brotherly country in its time of need. Azerbaijan gave up its venue and its symbolic moment in favor of Ankara because that is what brothers do.
Three years later, in that same Ankara, Azerbaijan's partners in the Turkic world reminded the Turkish hosts of President Ilham Aliyev's role. Recognition of Azerbaijan's contribution came from Tashkent and Astana at a time when some voices in Türkiye were attempting to downplay it. The conclusion is clear: the Turkic world recognizes and remembers those who helped build it. And that recognition does not require President Ilham Aliyev to be physically present in the room.
