G20 Summit begins in Turkey amid tight security after Paris attacks

Turkey and the U.S. have determined the joint actions to combat the Islamic State (IS), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a press conference with USA counterpart Barack Obama November 15, TRT Haber TV channel reported.

The coordinated terrorist attacks that killed more than 120 people in Paris are dominating the agenda as leaders of the world’s 20 biggest economies meet in Turkey.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Turkey’s Mediterranean city of Antalya on Saturday after a three-day visit to Britain for the annual G20 Summit meeting that gets underway on Sunday. Condemning the Paris attacks on Friday night that left 129 people dead, Erdogan said: “We need to establish a common platform to struggle with terrorism”.

Washington already believes that France will retaliate by taking on a significantly larger role in the US-led coalition’s bombing campaign against the militants, which has failed to provide any significant outcome so far.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are attending the summit.

According to a draft statement seen by Reuters, the leaders of the G20 condemned the Paris attacks as “heinous” and said they remained united in fighting terrorism.

Other nations the USA views warily, like Iran and Syria, have also bombed IS, in a dizzying range of militaries piloting the skies above the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

A few G20 countries, such as Germany and the USA, want Turkey, the host country of the summit, to do more to protect its border with Syria. Yet they were expected to cross paths on the sidelines of the summit.

“It’s only possible to deal with the terror threat and help millions of people who lost their homes by combining efforts of the entire global community”, Putin said Sunday as he huddled with leaders of emerging economic powerhouses Brazil, India, China and South Africa. He was speaking at G20 summit in Turkey. The proposal, discussed over the weekend by foreign ministers in Vienna, appears based largely on a Russian initiative, and envisions negotiations between Assad’s government and opposition groups starting by January 1.

At last year’s summit in Australia’s Brisbane, the G20 set itself an ambitious goal to lift their gross domestic product by at least an additional two percent by 2018, agreeing on measures to lift investment, trade and competition, and employment.