Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev arrived in Istanbul today to attend a presidential summit of Turkic-speaking countries, Cihan agency reported.
State Minister Cevdet Yilmaz and other officials met Aliyev at the airport.
Bilateral meetings between the Azerbaijani president and his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan are due to be held today.
The main topic on the agenda of the tenth anniversary summit is the completion of the process of creating a new international organization - the Council of Cooperation of Turkic-speaking countries - with headquarters in Istanbul.
A meeting of the heads and representatives of the foreign ministries of Turkic-speaking countries will follow the summit.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev voiced the idea to establish the new body at a summit in Antalya, Turkey, in 2006. In 2009, the Nakhchivan forum embodied this idea in an agreement to establish a new international structure. The Council of Cooperation of Turkic-speaking countries will be the basis for a new regional Turkic union, designed to strengthen the unity of the peoples living in similar lingusitic and cultural environment, and to strengthen political and trade relations.
A wide range of international and regional issues will also be discussed at Thursday's summit. The agenda includes the establishment of a consultative advisory body - the Council of Elders. This council is expected to be headed by Mustafa Isen, the chief of the Turkish presidential secretariat.