After meeting with Erdogan, Obama sat down with the leaders of Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, St. Lucia, Barbados and Papua New Guinea to illustrate how small island nations are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The issue for Russia is that even though Putin opposes the Islamic State as a whole, especially after ISIS claimed it brought down the Russian flight that was over Egypt, Russia actually supports Bashar al-Assad, who is the Syrian leader. “I will not remain in this post”. Turkey maintains the SU-24 bomber was shot down after ignoring repeated warnings that it was violating Turkish airspace on November 24.
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Obama huddled privately with Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the summit to focus on the common goal of fighting terrorism and to set aside tensions stemming from the plane incident. Both Russia and the United States see Turkey as the ultimate in order to resolve the conflict in Syria, so Turkey has to be on board for it all to work out.
“I don’t think we should be under any illusions that somehow Russian Federation starts hitting only ISIL targets”, Obama said, using his administration’s preferred term for Islamic State.
Mr Obama told Erdogan that ISIS must be pursued by all sides, echoing a message he delivered to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday. If there is any evidence, let them present it, we’ll consider”, he said, further stating that countries from which Turkey acquires oil are “well-known. “Slowly we then are able to get everybody’s attention diverted where it needs to be – going after ISIL [another acronym for ISIS] in a serious way”, he said.
“They are Turkish descendants”, Erdogan said.
President Putin has refused calls for dialogue until Ankara apologizes for shooting down the plane, something it has ruled out.
The challenge comes as bilateral tensions continue to escalate following Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet last week.
Mr Putin has said Turkey shot down the jet to protect supplies of oil from ISIS, a claim that Mr Erdogan dismisses as “slander”.
“We have received additional data that confirm that Islamic State oil… enters the territory of Turkey”, Putin said.
Besides economic sanctions on Ankara, Russia also intensified airstrikes in Syria against the Turkey-backed rebels in northern Syrian on the Syria-Turkey borders.
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“It is not possible to cover up the violation of the Turkish airspace with unfounded accusations against Turkey”, Davutoglu said.
