Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday called on Turkic states to strengthen their ties with the Turkish Cypriots as he attended an informal Organisation of Turkic States summit in the southern Kazakh city of Turkistan.

“An aspect which made the summit meaningful for us has been the inclusion of the Turkish Cypriot people, an integral part of the Turkic world. I am pleased to see President Tufan Erhurman at the Turkistan summit,” he said, with Erhurman also having travelled to Kazakhstan.

He added, “I hope that the Turkic world will continue to strengthen its political, economic, and cultural relations with the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”.

The summit’s focus was artificial intelligence and digital development, and on this front, he said that “in terms of shaping the future, it is of great importance that we adopt the vision of a Turkic world developing through digitalisation”.

“One hundred and fifteen years after Gaspirali’s motto of ‘unity in language, thought, and work’, it is now time for us to add the phrase, ‘unity in digital vision’,” he said in reference to the philosophy espoused by Crimean Tatar intellectual Ismail Gaspirali.

That digital vision, he said, “should be built on qualified human resources, strong digital infrastructure, and a data-driven public administration approach”, while at the same time, “the digital connectivity between us should be strengthened”.

“The development of joint technology projects between our countries will undoubtedly support this vision. We are aware that falling behind in the digital transformation process will also be a threat to our independence. To prevent artificial intelligence from becoming a tool of domination, we must approach this matter from the right perspective,” he said.

He added that this perspective must be taken “from the point of view of opportunity”.

“I believe that we should remember Al-Khwarizmi, the father of algebra and algorithms, Al-Farabi, the pioneer of philosophy and logic, Ibn Sina, who illuminated the science of medicine with his work,” he said.