ANKARA
Concerns are rising in Western countries amid energy and food crises, the Turkish president said on Monday, adding that Türkiye “does not have such a problem.”
“With the upcoming winter season, concerns regarding energy and food are increasing in the West. We have no such concerns,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at an event in the capital Ankara.
During a visit to the Czech capital Prague last week to attend a European summit, Erdogan said many of the leaders attending the event told him how they would get through the winter.
“I listened to these (concerns) … The leaders were only thinking about the (current) moment. Unfortunately, they weren’t evaluating the developments between Russia and Ukraine with common sense,” he said.
Erdogan added that millions of people from Africa to Asia faced difficulty reaching basic foodstuffs.
He stressed that over 7 million tons of Ukrainian grain had been sent to world markets via Türkiye since a deal signed in July opened a shipping corridor through the Black Sea.
Türkiye, the UN, Russia, and Ukraine signed the agreement in Istanbul on July 22 to resume grain exports from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports which were paused after the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in February.
