Baku hosts the 7th CICA summit: Mirziyoyev and Japarov arrive, Hakan Fidan to represent Türkiye

The 7th summit of the Council of Heads of State and Government of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) takes place in Baku on 15 October. Azerbaijan chairs the organisation for 2024–2026, and the summit is expected to adopt a Baku Declaration and a package of decisions to strengthen CICA's role.

Leaders of the Turkic states are also coming to Baku. Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev is on a working visit on 14–15 October at the invitation of President Ilham Aliyev and will hold bilateral meetings on the sidelines. Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov arrives on 14 October; according to his press service the summit will discuss regional cooperation in connectivity, digitalisation and sustainable growth. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will represent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, addressing the summit and holding several bilateral meetings.

On 14 October Vietnam's Vice President Vo Thi Anh Xuan and India's Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh also arrived in Baku for the summit. The idea of CICA was put forward by Kazakhstan's first President Nursultan Nazarbayev at the UN General Assembly in 1992; today the organisation has 28 members. The previous, 6th summit was held in Astana in 2022. We will report separately on the summit's outcomes and the speeches of the Turkic leaders.