UNSC seat should be by rotation: Erdoğan backs India bid

“A country like India being there on the UN Security Council, we would be proud. But as you know, the world is bigger than, larger than five,” Erdoğan said. “When we say the world is larger than five, what we mean is that it’s not only about the US, UK, France, China and Russia…we should only have permanent members and it should work on a rotational system, because right now, you have all these members, 195 countries, who are all members of the UN. So we should have a rotational mechanism where potentially each and every member, every one of those 195 countries can potentially become a member. That’s what we propose so they should be able to enjoy that.”

This came on a day Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a bilateral meeting with Erdoğan on the sidelines of the G20 Summit. “Discussions took place on bilateral cooperation potential in areas like trade and investment, defence and security, civil aviation, and shipping,” an official statement said.

It also said that Erdoğan congratulated Prime Minister Modi on India’s G20 Presidency and also thanked India for the prompt relief under Operation Dost after the earthquake in Turkey in February 2023.

On the ongoing bid to bring back the Black Sea Grain initiative into force, the Turkish President said he is not hopeless about it and it can restart in future. He said any initiative to isolate Russia is bound to fail.

“We believe that any initiative that isolates Russia is bound to fail. Its success is a very little possibility. We believe that any step that may escalate the tensions in the Black Sea should be avoided… In order to support the global food security, food supply security, we are going to bring together the Food Supply Security Study Group, both Russia, Ukraine, as well as the United Nations, and with our stakeholders coming from the international community, we are going to have continuous talks,” he said.

The G20 Leaders’ Declaration on Saturday had called for full, timely and effective implementation of the agreement to ensure the immediate and unimpeded deliveries of grain, foodstuffs, and fertilizers/inputs from the Russian Federation and Ukraine in order to meet the demand in developing and least developed countries, particularly those in Africa.