Celik: We Want Activities Of Turksoy To Be More Functional

BAKU - Culture Minister Huseyin Celik said on Wednesday that they wanted activities of Joint Administration Of Turkic Culture And Art General Directorate's (TURKSOY) to be more functional.
Celik, who is in Azerbaijan to attend the 19th Term Meeting of TURKSOY, told A.A correspondent that they wanted the organization to implement projects and they would present some proposals at the meeting.
Turkey was financing activities of the organization at a great extent, Celik said.
Celik noted, ''we make 300 thousand U.S. dollars of financial contribution to the organization.''
They considered TURKSOY as the ''United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)'' of the Turkish world, Celik stated.
Noting that Russian was the main language spoken at such meetings since Turkish republics were a member of the Soviet Union for long years, Celik said that many people in those republics which had gained their independence spoke Russian better than their own languages.
Celik pointed out that he considered this as a deficiency in TURKSOY meetings.
Expressing hope that everybody would speak Turkish in such a meeting of the Turkish language speaking societies, Celik said that this would be achieved in time.