Turkish FM: Azerbaijan applied for D-8 membership

Azerbaijan applied for membership in the D-8 organisation (Islamic Eight), Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

He said the organisation now needs to be strengthened and expanded, Yenisafak reports.

"We need to turn the Organisation of Turkic States into a global player. We need to transform D-8 into D-20," he said.

The D-8 is an international development cooperation organisation between Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan and Türkiye. The decision to create the organisation was taken in November 1996 at the Istanbul Conference on Development Cooperation. The idea of uniting Islamic countries was the main programme of the Turkish Welfare Party, led by Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan.

The organisation shifted to a more active role with the rise to power of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party, whose main political slogan on the international stage was the unification of Islamic countries.

The organisation was established at the first summit of the Islamic Eight on June 15, 1997, in Istanbul.