Government’s Diaspora Policy Draws Strong Interest from the Turkic States

The Turkic states are showing great interest in the Hungarian government’s diaspora policy, the Minister of State for National Policy said in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan on Wednesday.

Árpád János Potápi represented Hungary as an observer at the conference of the Organization of Turkic States on diaspora attended by ministers and heads of institutions. In the framework of the event, Minister Potápi also held bilateral talks with representatives of the Azeri and Kazakh delegations.

On his way to the conference, he also visited the Liszt Institute and the Hungarian School in Istanbul.

After the talks, he said that

the Hungarian delegation’s speech at the conference attracted a lot of attention because of the significant number of citizens of all Turkic states scattered in Russia, Western Europe, and overseas.

In recent years, these states have also become increasingly concerned about how to preserve their national identities in the diaspora. The Turkic states are also concerned, he added, about how to maintain relations with their compatriots abroad.

This is why the presentation by the Hungarian delegation was deemed useful, as it gave a detailed account of the Hungarian government’s responsibility for Hungarians living abroad.

This responsibility extends beyond economic support for Hungarians living in the Carpathian Basin to the educational, cultural, and ecclesial life of Hungarians in other parts of the world.

In his presentation, he described how the Hungarian diaspora forum, convened regularly since 2011, and the program named after Sándor Kőrösi Csoma and Sándor Petőfi, operate.

Potápi felt that the Turkic states – Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkey – were also concerned about how to make it easier for their compatriots who had emigrated or were already born abroad to obtain citizenship. To this end, he presented one of the Hungarian government’s new institutions, the so-called welcome offices. Dialogue is greatly facilitated by the fact that all Turkic states have permanent representations in Budapest, he added.

This is the second time that Hungary has been represented at the conference. The first such meeting was held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, in 2022.

Via MTI, Featured image: Facebook/Rákóczi Szövetség