The Kurultaj traditionalist event was opened in the Hungarian Parliament in the presence of more than twenty nations. The following dignitaries participated in the opening ceremony: Binali Yıldırım, a former Prime Minister of Turkey, the President of the Council of the Wise Men of the Organization of the Turkic States (OTS), Sultan Raev, the Secretary General of TÜRKSOY, Darhan Kıdırali, the President of TÜRKAKADEMIA, as well as Mehmet Süreyya Er, the Secretary General of the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic States (TÜRKPA). This year the guest of Kurultaj was Kyrgyzstan from where a large group of artists and traditionalists arrived in Hungary, headed by Minister for Culture, Tourism and Sport Azamat Zhamankulov. It was for the first time that OTS was a co-organizer of Kurultaj.
In his opening remarks, Sándor Lezsák, the Deputy Speaker of the Hungarian National Assembly and the chief patron of the event expressed his delight that almost the whole of the Turkic world was represented at the Kurultaj. He was also pleased that this year Kyrgyzstan became a special guest. In the future, it will be followed by other Turkic countries the representatives of which will introduce themselves not only Bugac but in Budapest and other towns in Hungary.
Zsolt András Bíró, the chief organizer of the 7th Kurultaj and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Hungarian–Turan Public Foundation pointed out that Kurultaj was a mission which promotes the reuniting of the Hungarian communities in the Carpathian basin, as well as opens a door to the world of our Eastern relations and brotherly peoples. Kurultaj is a unique venue of preserving our traditions, as well as that of the cultural reunions, and is, at the same time, a parade of nomadic sports. It is a world-wide event that stands on the platform of respecting our traditions. It declares that our future can be secured only on the basis of the values of the past, and in this the messages of the Turkic peoples in Siberia or Central Asia are the same as those of the peoples in the Carpathian basin.
