Ankara to help Kyrgyz army

Turkey will grant the Kyrgyz Armed Forces military and technical aid worth $1 million annually, said Chief of the Kyrgyz General Staff Asanbek Alymkozhoyev yesterday after a meeting with Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz. Aid will be granted to the Border Guards, then National Guards and the Defense Ministry of Kyrgyzstan.

Turkey will consider helping build the Military Institute in Bishkek. Alymkozhoyev said that there had been an institute in Almaty, where he had studied, in Tashkent. The institute in Bishkek was a flying unit that would become the Military Institute. The Kyrgyz and Turkish Defense Ministers, Abibillah Kudayberdiyev and Ismet Yilmaz, signed an inter-governmental agreement on cooperation in military medicine, an agreement on military and financial cooperation and a protocol on financial assistance yesterday.

Kyrgyz officers will get free treatment in Turkey.

Yilmaz has been on a visit to Kyrgyzstan on September 23-25.