BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 24. The official opening ceremony of the Solidarity Forum of Non-Governmental Organizations of the Member States of the Organization of Turkic-speaking States (OTS) is taking place at the Gulistan Palace in Baku, Trend reports.
More than 500 representatives of civil society from Azerbaijan, Türkiye, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Hungary, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus will take part in the forum.
This is the largest event in terms of the number of participants organized by the Agency for State Support of Non-Governmental Organizations of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
Meanwhile, the delegations recently visited the Alley of Honorary Burial, the Alley of Martyrs, the Alley of Turkish Martyrs, Victory Park, and also visited the Heydar Aliyev Center.
Two panel discussions will be held as part of the forum.
The panel discussion “The Zangezur Corridor: A Bridge Connecting Turkic Geography” will discuss preparations for the new conditions following the opening of the Zangezur Corridor and initiatives by civil society institutions in the Turkic world in this regard.
The second panel discussion is “1st Forum on Cooperation between Azerbaijani and Kazakh NGOs.” As part of this, bilateral forums on cooperation between NGOs from Azerbaijan and Türkiye (2022), Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan (2023), and Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan (2024). Continuing this series, this year NGOs will exchange experience and knowledge on a bilateral basis with Kazakhstan, and opportunities for deepening cooperation will be explored. Similar events with Kyrgyzstan, Hungary, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and Turkmenistan are planned in the near future.
The discussions will conclude with a creative and cultural program.
On November 25, the forum will continue its work in Nakhchivan.
Moreover, it is expected that an NGO platform for member countries of the Organization of Turkic-speaking States will be established in the city of Nakhchivan, which entered the history of the Organization of Turkic-speaking States with the 2009 Nakhchivan Agreement and has great symbolic and moral significance for the organization. This will be an important long-term legacy of the forum. The platform will be headed by Azerbaijan, as the current chair of the Organization of Turkic-speaking States. NGOs from eight countries will be represented on the platform.
The forum in Nakhchivan will also feature panel discussions on the theme “Towards WUF13 – the first in the Turkic world.”
The panel discussions will focus on the scale and pace of
large-scale construction and reconstruction work carried out by
Azerbaijan in Karabakh and Eastern Zangezur as an example for
post-conflict regions around the world. In addition, NGOs from the
Turkic world will be invited to actively participate in the 13th
World Urban Forum, which will be held in Azerbaijan in 2026.
On November 26, 2025, participants in the Solidarity Forum of
Non-Governmental Organizations of the Member States of the
Organization of Turkic-speaking States will visit a number of sites
in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.
In April this year, the Global South NGO Platform was established in Baku with the participation of civil society organizations from 115 countries in the region, covering two-thirds of the world. This year, Azerbaijan also hosted the first meeting of NGOs from the so-called “Islamic Eight” countries, home to 60% of the world's Muslims. On October 20, 2025, a panel discussion on “Azerbaijani NGOs open to the world: a method of unity against isolation” was held in Khankendi as part of the Forum for Cooperation of Azerbaijani Non-Governmental Organizations. During the discussion, it was noted that the greatest success of Azerbaijani NGOs over the past two years has been their openness to the world. The creation of the NGO Platform of the member countries of the Organization of Turkic-speaking States is an important component of the process being carried out in this direction.
Will be updated