A gala reception was held at the "Yyldyz" hotel in Ashgabat to mark France's national holiday—Bastille Day, celebrated on July 14. The event was attended by the Minister of Trade and Foreign Economic Relations of Turkmenistan, Nazar Agahanov, as well as diplomats from the EU Delegation and the embassies of Germany, Romania, Italy, Ukraine, and Armenia.

Philippe Merlin, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of France to Turkmenistan, delivered welcoming remarks. He noted that a month earlier, France had hosted the G7 summit in the French city of Evian—bringing together the world’s seven largest industrialized nations (Canada, the United States, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and France itself) as well as European Union institutions—with representatives from India and Kenya also invited to the meeting.

A significant part of the address was devoted to the economic partnership between the two countries. The Ambassador noted that the official visit to France on May 5, 2025, by the National Leader of the Turkmen people and Chairman of the Halk Maslahaty, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov—and his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron—had provided impetus to this cooperation. He thanked the French companies working with Turkmenistan in a number of areas: THALES (telecommunications and security), Bouygues Türkmen (sustainable construction), TotalEnergies (energy), Carpi (water resource conservation), MBDA (use of space data for land management and security), IGN-FI (national security), and CLAAS Tractor (agriculture). The participation of Air Belgium was also noted; the airline plans to launch a direct flight to Ashgabat Airport in the near future.

Particular attention was paid in the speech to cooperation in the fields of education and science: around 20 thousand Turkmen schoolchildren and university students are studying French with the support of the Ministry of Education of Turkmenistan and the French Institute. The Ambassador also reported on the continued work of the French-Turkmen archaeological expedition MAFTUR at the Ulug-depe site, as well as speleological research by the KRAC association in the Koytendag Mountains and cultural projects of the French Institute in Turkmenistan, including a planned photography exhibition by Paul Nadar.

Concluding his remarks, the ambassador quoted Charles de Gaulle, the founder of the Fifth Republic, stating that inaction is tantamount to defeat, and called for the continued dynamic development of relations between France and Turkmenistan.