Any effort to isolate Russia is bound to fail, says Turkish President Erdogan

New Delhi: As the Delhi G20 leaders summit called for the immediate revival of the Black Sea grain initiative to ensure that developing and least developed countries, particularly those in Africa, don't suffer, Turkiye President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday said that any initiative to isolate Russia is bound to fail.

Addressing reporters after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the culmination of the G20 summit, he said: "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."

Following an earlier-than-anticipated arrival of a consensus, the Delhi Declaration, adopted at the summit, said that the G20 called for the "full, timely and effective implementation" of the MoU between Russia and the UN on promoting Russian food products and fertilisers to world markets and the Initiative on the Safe Transportation of Grain and Foodstuffs from Ukrainian Ports, or the Black Sea Initiative.

"In this context, emphasising the importance of sustaining food and energy security, we called for the cessation of military destruction or other attacks on relevant infrastructure," it said.

On July 17, Russia had said that it would be revoking its involvement in the agreement that allowed grain to be moved from Ukraine to Africa and Asia to tackle the food crisis caused by the war, which pushed up prices to eye-watering levels.

Russia had said that it will honour the deal after "the part of the Black Sea deal related to Russia is implemented".

Meanwhile Erdogan thanked India, saying: "I thank India for a gracious and very successful term of presidency. I would like to thank PM Modi for the gracious hospitality that was shown to me, my spouse and my entire Turkish delegation. This year, our theme was one world, one family and one future. And within the first session of the summit, we had talked about the environmental challenges that our planet currently encounters. Climate change, the loss of biological diversity and especially there is the dimension of extensive pollution is a trio of challenges which we can feel even more profoundly now."

"India is among our greatest trade partners in Asia and there is huge potential to this partnership," he added.

On the proposed India-UAE-Europe economic corridor, Erdogan said: "Regarding the corridor, as far as our work regarding the corridor is concerned, first of all, the Gulf countries are included in it. Iraq is also part of it. And opening up a corridor through Turkey would mean the following taking up the Gulf and opening it up all the way into Europe and tying it all the way into Europe.

"Now, regarding such a corridor, particularly United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Turkey are acting sensitively and in a fast manner. We hope to be able to implement this project. We're working on it, and as we speak, our ministers of foreign relations and ministers of transportation work together. And we will try and work to be able to implement this in the coming couple of months."

"Met President @RTErdogan. We talked about ways to further cement trade and infrastructure linkages between India and Türkiye. @trpresidency," Modi posted on X after meeting Erdogan.