Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said cooperation with the Turkic states enables Hungary to guarantee secure energy supplies and to prevent a doubling of Hungarian families' utility costs resulting from decisions by Brussels.

Before the Budapest summit of the Organisation of Turkic States, Minister Szijjártó said the crises of recent years had clearly proved that without cooperation with the Turkic states, Hungary would not have a secure energy supply.

All of this, he said, had vindicated the government's foreign policy strategy, which is aimed at developing increasingly close cooperation with the Turkic states.

"Hungary's gas supplies are currently almost fully delivered through Turkiye. Large Hungarian energy companies have acquired stakes in crude oil and natural gas fields in Azerbaijan, as a result of which they appear on international energy markets with millions of cubic metres of gas and hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil each year, representing a completely new dimension," he said.

"Drillings on MOL's crude oil and natural gas fields in Kazakhstan have been successful, and extraction has started. Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are launching nuclear energy programmes for which they will be using Hungarian technology," he added.

Minister Szijjártó said that, consequently, Hungarian-Turkic cooperation represented a serious value added in terms of Hungary's secure energy supplies.

He said that 11-12 years ago the Hungarian government had been "laughed at" in Europe for building relations with Turkic states, but by now European leaders were frequent visitors in the region.

"It has become clear that cooperation with the Turkic states is expressly beneficial for the economy and energy security," Minister Szijjártó said. "We are not starting this only now, we have been developing good cooperation for more than ten years, and it is not only a good cooperation but also a friendship, a strategic alliance from which Hungary has profited much."

He added that this was the first time that the Organisation of Turkic States was holding its summit in Europe, in a country holding observer status in the organisation.