The event runs from 14 to 16 August at Bugac in Bacs-Kiskun county, about 120 kilometres south of Budapest. It is organised by the Magyar Turan Szovetseg with the Magyar Turan Alapitvany, chief organiser Andras Zsolt Biro, with the Bugac local government as co-organiser. The detailed programme was published by the organisers on 13 July. Friday opens quietly: the craft market at noon, a musical parade at half past three, rehearsals for the nomadic procession and the military review in the late afternoon.
Saturday is the diplomatic day. After the muster at one o’clock, the formal opening at half past one lists as speakers Kubanychbek Omuraliev, the Bugac mayor Laszlo Szabo, Kursad Zorlu, Uzbekistan’s culture minister Yusufjon Usmanov, the TURKSOY president Sultan Raev, Kyrgyzstan’s culture minister Mirbek Mamabetaliev and Biro. Uzbek, Turkmen, Azerbaijani and Uyghur craft pavilions open the same morning in the Eastern Bazaar; Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Mongolian display yurts open alongside them; the organisers have published a Kazakh language version of the programme, and the Kazakh group Arqaim plays on Friday night.
Two details in the organisers’ own text are wrong in ways worth recording. The Hungarian programme calls Omuraliev the president of the Organization of Turkic States, where he is its secretary general. It also makes Zorlu a member of the upper house of the Grand National Assembly of Turkiye, which has one chamber. On 31 July the organisation’s own secretariat described Zorlu as vice chairman of the AK Party responsible for relations with the Turkic states, a party post rather than a ministerial one.
The Turkic calendar’s largest assembly of ministers this month is a Hungarian heritage weekend, and Ankara is sending a party officer.
That is the shape of it. Two Central Asian governments are sending cabinet ministers, the organisation is sending its secretary general, the cultural body is sending its president, and Turkiye is sending a party official who also holds a commissioner’s title. No head of state or head of government appears on the published list from any member country. The formal summit of Turkic heads of state is still pencilled for Ankara in the autumn with no date announced.
The Uzbek presence carries a second weight this week. Nine Central Asians were killed at Nizhnekamsk on 10 August, seven of them Uzbek citizens, and this desk has not found a Turkish condolence over any of them; the ministry’s own release index does not render below number 154, so that is a limit on what the search can reach rather than a claim about the month. Tashkent’s culture minister will be on a Hungarian stage tomorrow. Its consulate general in Kazan is meanwhile still arranging the repatriation of the seven Uzbek citizens killed at Nizhnekamsk on 10 August, four days before the ceremony.