Kazakhstan and Turkey will jointly host annual summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA).

The summit will take place in Istanbul on July 7 and 9.

During the summit, Turkey will take over rotating presidency of CICA from Kazakhstan.

CICA is an inter-governmental security forum in Asia which was initiated by President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan in 1992.

The conference has currently 20 member-states: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, the People's Republic of China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Palestine, South Korea, Russia, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.

Number of member states is expected to increase to 21 after admission of Vietnam during the summit in Istanbul.

Besides the United States, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Ukraine and Qatar, several international organizations such as the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) attend CICA summits as observer.


AA