On April 19, in Antalya, as part of the third and final day of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum 2026, one of the key panel sessions dedicated to the historical and contemporary dimensions of Turkic integration was held. The session, titled “Century of Language and Identity: From Baku Turkology Congress to Turkic Integration,” brought together heads of international organizations, representatives of the academic community, and policymakers from Turkic countries.
The panel featured President of the Turkic Academy, Prof. Dr. Shahin Mustafayev, alongside leaders of Turkic cooperation organizations, as well as representatives of diplomatic missions, international institutions, and the expert community.
The discussion focused on the centennial legacy of the First Turkology Congress held in Baku in 1926, as well as contemporary initiatives strengthening linguistic and cultural convergence across the Turkic world, including the endorsement of the Common Turkic Alphabet and UNESCO’s designation of December 15 as World Turkic Language Family Day. In his remarks, Shahin Mustafayev emphasized that the 1926 Baku Turkology Congress laid the foundation for modern scholarly Turkology and represented the first large-scale effort to establish a shared intellectual space for Turkic peoples.
“The Baku Turkology Congress became the starting point of modern Turkology, and its ideas are gaining new meaning today in the context of the digital era and institutional cooperation,” said the Head of the Turkic Academy.
He also underscored that the intellectual legacy of the Baku Turkology Congress continues to find practical expression in the work of the Academy, which advances projects on writing a shared history of Turkic countries, conducts research in the field of literature, promotes the standardization of terminology, and develops initiatives in the area of digital cultural heritage.
