The 100th Anniversary of the First Turkological Congress Celebrated at ASPU

On November 20, a symposium titled “The 100th Anniversary of the First Turkological Congress: Language Issues” was held at the Azerbaijan State Pedagogical University (ASPU), jointly organized by the Faculty of Philology, the Department of Modern Azerbaijani Language, and the Turkology Center. The symposium was organized within the framework of the decree “On the Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the First Turkological Congress,” signed by the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, H.E. Ilham Aliyev, on October 22, 2025. The event brought together ASPU faculty members and students, as well as guests from the Embassy of Türkiye in Azerbaijan, the Turkic Culture and Heritage Foundation, the Institute of Linguistics of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS), Baku State University, Baku Eurasian University, and representatives of the newspapers “Xalq” and “Literature.”

The symposium began with an opening address by ASPU Rector, Professor Jafar Jafarov. Following the opening remarks, a video presentation on the history of the Congress was screened.

The Director of the Atatürk Center, Academician Nizami Jafarov, delivered a presentation entitled “Participants of the First Turkological Congress and the Language Issue.”

The Director of the Institute of Linguistics of ANAS, Professor Nadir Mammadli, provided information on “Archival Documents Related to the First Turkological Congress.”

In their speeches, the Press Counselor of the Embassy of Türkiye in Azerbaijan, Dr. Alptekin Cihangir İşbilir, and the Editor-in-Chief of the “Literature” newspaper, PhD in Philology Azer Turan, spoke about the significance of the symposium.

The international symposium continued with online presentations by foreign Turkologists: Associate Professor Elizabed Bzhalava (Tbilisi State University, Georgia), Professor Alfiya Yusupova (Kazan Federal University, Kazan), and Professor Azamat Akbarov (Silk Road Research Academy, Uzbekistan).