Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said that international terrorism, including the fight against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), will be one of the topics discussed at the upcoming G-20 summit.
The G-20 summit will be held in Turkey, in the southern region of Antalya between November 15 and 16. Turkey officially took over the presidency of the G-20 from Australiain December 1, 2014. China will preside over the G-20 in 2016.
“We are going to focus priorities on ISIL. We are going to focus on other terrorist organisations which pose a threat to Turkey's security, such as PYD, YPG and PKK," Erdoğan said during a live interview with CNN on Thursday. Erdoğan spoke several days before hosting the world leaders arriving in the city for the two-day summit.
“If we miss any one of those, we will miss collective terrorism because we have paid a huge price in the aftermath of terrorist organisations' attacks in Turkey."
According to the President, the international coalition fighting to root out terrorist organisations needs thorough and meticulous discussions to achieve effective results. “If terrorism or the terrorist mentality in the world shall not be discussed at every length, then we will not be triumphant. If we do that, we will be triumphant," he asserted. “Then, international terrorism and ISIL will be attacked in every way possible and we are determined."
When asked about Russia's ongoing bombing campaign in Syria, President Erdoğan said he and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, failed to take a concrete step forward on this issue when he paid a state visit to Moscow nearly two months ago.
“I have then called him a couple of times but throughout these phone conversations, I cannot say that I have got what I was expecting," he admitted. “I am the President of the country in the geography that enjoys the best and the best-developed relations with Russia, from commercial relations to other relations, but now we have come to a bottleneck which I have some certain expectations."
Erdoğan describes the situation as Turkey being “threatened" on one side while being inundated with refugees at the same time.
The President also called on Turkey's allied states to do more in solving of Syrian crisis. “While we are busy with such an enormous task, we expect our allies and neighbours to do more. Russia is one of them," he said. "Instead, Russian bombing campaigns have created more refugees."
He also expressed annoyance with policies that seek to make a distinction between “good" terrorist groups and “bad" ones, saying, “They are all evil." Turkey is hosting 2.5 million refugees from Syria and Iraq. About 2.2 million of them have fled Syria, while the remaining 300,0000 arrived from Iraq.
Erdoğan said the Turkish government has spent 8.5 billion dollars to cover the humanitarian needs of refugees staying in Turkey, but the international community has only spent 417 million.
