Rector Lenar Safin visiting Gorno-Altaisk
He was invited to join the 2nd International Scientific and Practical Conference Altai – the Ancestral Homeland of the Turks. Toward the History of the Origins of Turkic Civilization.
The event was organized by the Russian Military Historical Society, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Knowledge Society, and the Russian Historical Society, with the support of the Government of the Altai Republic.
Distinguished guests at the opening ceremony also included Vladimir Medinsky, Aide to the President of the Russian Federation and Chairman of the Russian Military Historical Society; Yerlan Karin, State Counselor of the Republic of Kazakhstan; Marat Imankulov, State Secretary of the Kyrgyz Republic; Anatoly Seryshev, Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Siberian Federal District; and Andrey Turchak, Head of the Altai Republic.
The conference, which brought together participants from Russia, Belarus, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan, included a series of scholarly discussions on the history of the Turkic peoples. In particular, one of the topics was the issue of joint efforts to study and preserve a common cultural and historical space. Discussions included joint archaeological and ethnographic expeditions, the creation of museums, and the revival of traditional crafts.
It should be noted that the history of Slavic, Turkic, Mongol, and other peoples is a cultural heritage of the Russian Federation. The Greater Altai region, in particular, became the site of the formation of a Turkic civilization and statehood, a kind of geographical starting point from which the Turks expanded throughout Eurasia.
Today, the largest number of Turkic-speaking ethnicities live in Russia, as well as in the territories of modern-day Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and other countries.
The experience of centuries of coexistence has laid a solid foundation for the modern integration of Russia and the Central Asian states, based on a common historical, territorial, governmental, legal, and cultural basis.