Erdoğan attends G-20 summit in India

ANKARA

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has started his trip to India to participate in the G20 summit, set to take place on Sept. 9-10.

Erdoğan's delegation includes Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek, National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Chief İbrahim Kalın, Presidential Communications Director Fahrettin Altun, chief adviser to the president Akif Çağatay Kılıç and several other figures.

At the summit, Erdoğan is expected to address critical topics related to the fight against climate change and share Türkiye's initiatives with fellow world leaders. Additionally, the president will engage in one-on-one meetings with other leaders.

Notably, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping will not be attending the G20 themselves, instead sending lower-level officials.

Russia and China did not indicate why their leaders were not attending, but neither have traveled much recently and both seem to be putting a greater emphasis on the more like-minded BRICS group of nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. That group agreed at its summit last month to expand to include Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Egypt and Ethiopia.

China’s relations with India continue to be strained over ongoing border disputes, but despite the decision to send PM Li Qiang instead of Xi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Xi discussed the issue face-to-face at the BRICS summit, and China’s Foreign Ministry said Beijing considers India-China relations “generally stable.”

Modi, this year’s host, has pledged Ukraine won't overshadow his focus on the needs of developing nations in the so-called Global South, but the war has proved hard to ignore.

Russia and China, which has been Moscow’s most important supporter in the war against Ukraine, have rejected drafts over a reference to Ukraine that said “most members strongly condemned the war,” the same language they signed off a year ago at the G20 summit in Bali.

The European Union, meanwhile, has said the compromise language suggested by India is not strong enough for them to agree to, while the U.K. said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak planned to press G20 members to take a tougher line against Russia’s invasion.

European Council President Charles Michel told reporters on Sept. 8 that Russia had isolated itself from the world with the invasion of Ukraine and that the EU and others were working to “encourage China to play a positive role at the global level and to defend the U.N. charter and to defend the sovereignty of Ukraine.”

“I do not think the G20 will resolve in two days all the problems of the world,” he said. “But I think it can be a bold step in the right direction and we should work to make it happen and support the Indian presidency.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Bali summit by video last year, but Modi has made a point of not inviting Ukraine to participate in this year’s event.