Menu
I greet you all with great respect.
Honourable President,
Thank you for hosting us here. The Hungarians regard the Kyrgyz as a friendly – even brotherly – people. Great distances separate us from each other. We Hungarians are the main reason for this, because we moved from the Asian world to Europe one thousand one hundred years ago, when we founded a state there. We are the only Eastern people who, after migrating to the West, managed to survive and establish its own state. One thousand one hundred years is a long time, but the Hungarians have not lost their sense of their origins, and we have always nurtured friendly and brotherly feelings towards the Turkic peoples – including the Kyrgyz. This is why I have always seen it as a matter of fate that six years ago, when Hungary was admitted to the Organization of Turkic States, it happened right here in Kyrgyzstan. In a political sense we have been members of this community ever since. As you know, Hungary is a member of the European Union, and therefore we are doing both the Kyrgyz people and Kyrgyzstan a good turn by acting in your interests in all forums of European politics, working to ensure that Kyrgyzstan can have the deepest and broadest possible cooperation not only with Hungary, but also with the entire European Union. We greatly appreciate your efforts in the region, including your efforts for global security. We greatly appreciate your consistent action against terrorist organisations; and we greatly appreciate your pro-peace stance, because Hungary is a country that for the past thousand days has been living next to a country at war. Ukraine is our neighbour. This war is against the interests of the Hungarians, and we have an interest in bringing it to an end as quickly as possible. The Hungarians are a people who are good at peace, but less good at war. We can do well in peace, and we are glad that Kyrgyzstan is also on the side of peace. Therefore we are both members of the global pro-peace majority, and we are working and praying for peace to come as soon as possible.
Honourable President,
Four years ago we raised our relationship to the level of a strategic partnership, and this has produced results. Trade between our two countries is growing, and this year it will double. At our last meeting, the President identified two areas that he wanted to focus our cooperation on: one is hydropower, and the other is agriculture. Earlier we established a Hungarian–Kyrgyz investment fund, the resources of which will be used – as the President wished – to build a hydropower plant. And we have also achieved results in agriculture. Hungarian companies – agricultural and food companies – have appeared here in your country. We have a world-renowned tradition of seed crop cultivation; the first seed production areas have been designated here by the President, they have been sown, and I see that we will be farming there with good results.
I have assured the President that at the forthcoming COP29 summit in Baku we will support the Kyrgyz initiative to maintain and protect mountain culture and ways of life. Thank you for sending scholarship students to Hungary – two hundred every year. We are happy to see that the programme is heavily oversubscribed, and we would like even more to come. We are ready to welcome them. Naturally I wish the President – and myself – a long term in office, but we will not be in power forever, and so someone will have to continue this Kyrgyz–Hungarian friendship. In the main it will be continued by the young people who can now study in each other’s countries, and so we see this as both an educational issue and a political investment. We have the generation: we have hundreds of Kyrgyz and Hungarians who are committed to continuing our work. We thank the President for the fact that it is now possible to learn the Hungarian language here in Kyrgyzstan.
Honourable President,
Another informal meeting of the Organization of Turkic States will be held in Budapest in 2025. With great respect, I look forward to seeing the President in Budapest!
