Marking one hundred years since the First Baku Turkology Congress of 1926, the Turkic Academy and Al-Farabi Kazakh National University convened the International Conference on Turkology, “The Legacy of the First Baku Turkology Congress and the Turkic World in the 21st Century,” in Almaty on 21 May 2026.

Addressing the conference, OTS Secretary General Ambassador Kubanychbek Omuraliev said that the 1926 congress “laid the intellectual foundations for unity, mutual understanding and closer cooperation among Turkic peoples,” and observed that the intellectual ideas of that gathering have since evolved into today's institutionalized cooperation spanning education, culture, science and youth initiatives. The conference addressed the preservation of the common cultural heritage of the Turkic peoples and initiatives surrounding the Common Turkic Alphabet, with the Secretary General stressing that ongoing cultural and academic initiatives continue to deepen understanding among Turkic societies.

The centenary conference exemplifies the model of cooperation that unites the Turkic world's scientific institutions and its universities: a leading national university, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, co-organizing a landmark scholarly event with the Turkic Academy, the region's principal research institution.

For TURKUNIB member universities – many of which maintain departments of Turkology, philology and history – the centenary offers both a scholarly milestone and an invitation: the questions first posed in Baku a century ago, from language and alphabet to shared heritage, are today being addressed through the kind of inter-university research collaboration that TURKUNIB exists to foster.

Photo: Organization of Turkic States (turkicstates.org)

Photo: Organization of Turkic States (turkicstates.org)

Photo: Organization of Turkic States (turkicstates.org)

Based on official OTS reporting: The Secretary General of the OTS addressed the International Conference on Turkology titled “The Legacy of the First Baku Turkology Congress and the Turkic World in the 21st Century”