Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon the second day of the G20* summit in Australia this weekend, Anadolu News Agency reports.
In their meeting, the Davutoglu and Ban Ki-moon discussed issues relating to Syria and Cyprus, along with international counter-terrorism efforts, according to the Turkish Prime Ministry.
Ban and Davutoglu: “discussed the status of the negotiations to achieve a comprehensive settlement in Cyprus, as well as Turkey’s role in supporting the process”, a UN spokesperson for the Secretary General said.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu expressed disappointment over talks at the weekend’s G20 summit for only superficially touching upon the recent refugee crisis coming from Syria.
“Unfortunately, the refugee issue has not been discussed in detail,” Davutoglu told a Sunday afternoon press briefing following the two-day summit in Brisbane.
The Turkish PM stated that the refugee crisis in the Middle East was included only as a reference in passing in the final communique released by G20 leaders, following long negotiations by Turkey.
“We call on international financial institutions to assist affected countries in dealing with the economic impacts of this (Ebola) and other humanitarian crises, including in the Middle East,” said the G20 Australia communique.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Turkey shelters the most Syrian refugees, i.e. 1.9 million – including some 190,000 from the border town of Kobani, as well as 450,000 children and 270,000 women – out of the overall 5.8 million displaced by the almost four-year civil war.
Ankara also has provided nearly $5 billion of aid for Syrian refugees, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan said last week.
“As G20 leaders, we have to see the connections between political and economic issues and should address all problems from a much more comprehensive and open-minded manner in the sense of understanding the sources of crises and to find ways out of these type of crises,” he also said.
Turkey will assume the G20 presidency in 2015.
* The Group of Twenty, known as the G20, is a forum of governments and central banks from 20 major economies, including 19 individual countries – Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom, United State and the European Union.
