Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday met with world leaders on the sidelines of the G20 Rome summit.
Erdoğan met Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi at the La Nuvola Convention Center, which host the 2021 summit in Italy, the first in-person summit since the coronavirus pandemic.
The 35-minute closed-door meeting was also attended by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and his Italian counterpart Luigi Di Maio, as well as Turkey’s Treasury and Finance Minister Lütfi Elvan, Communications Director Fahrettin Altun, and Justice and Development (AK) Party spokesman Ömer Çelik.
An official statement by the office of the Italian prime minister described the Erdoğan-Draghi meeting as “constructive.”
“Constructive exchange of views on EU-Turkey relations, the Afghan crisis and stability in the Mediterranean, with particular attention to the developments in the intra-Libyan political process,” it said.
The Turkish president also received Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. The two officials held a 30-minute closed-door meeting.
Separately, Erdogan met with EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen for a 30-minute talk. The closed-door meeting was also attended by Çavuşoğlu.
“Good exchange with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. We took stock of ongoing work on a range of issues, from the pandemic to economic recovery, the situation in Afghanistan and beyond,” von der Leyen said on Twitter.
Later, the Turkish president held a 30-minute closed-door meeting with his Indonesian counterpart Joko Widodo.
The meeting was also accompanied by Çavuşoğlu, Elvan, and Altun.
Erdoğan is also set to meet with his US counterpart Joe Biden on Sunday afternoon.
