Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday held a teleconference with leaders of France, Germany and Britain.
The quartet summit with attendance of French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Borris Johnson mentioned doable joint measures in opposition to the worldwide coronavirus outbreak.
“We found opportunity to extensively evaluate many topics ranging from fight against coronavirus and the humanitarian situation in [Syria’s] Idlib, to solutions to Syria crisis, matter of asylum seekers and Turkey-EU relations at the summit,” Erdogan mentioned on Twitter following the summit.
“On this troublesome course of that we move by on the regional and international stage, we’ll function diplomacy and cooperation mechanisms extra actively, and we’ll resolutely proceed our efforts to resolve issues as quickly as doable,” he added.
The summit was beforehand deliberate to be held in Istanbul, however was held through video convention as a part of measures taken to stem the unfold of the novel coronavirus, also called COVID-19.
The virus emerged in Wuhan, China final December, and has since unfold to at the very least 150 nations and territories. The World Well being Group declared the outbreak a pandemic.
Out of over 190,000 confirmed instances, the demise toll now exceeds 7,500, whereas greater than 80,800 have recovered, in keeping with Worldometer, an internet site that compiles new case numbers.
Turkey presently has 47 confirmed instances, most of which have been contracted by international visits to the U.S., EU, or Saudi Arabia. To this point there have been no deaths.
Final month, Turkey opened its borders for asylum seekers searching for a approach to Europe, accusing the EU of failing to maintain guarantees below the 2016 migrant deal.
Ankara additionally warned that as a consequence of incessant assaults on civilians in Idlib, Syria, 1,000,000 refugees have been shifting towards Turkey’s borders.
With 3.7 million Syrian migrants in Turkey already, greater than every other nation on the planet, Ankara says it can not take in one other refugee wave.
