President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech at the 74th session of UN General Assembly in New York, United States on 24 September, 2019 [Murat Kula/Anadolu Agency]
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rejected an offer to join a dinner with the US President Donald Trump upon seeing the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi accompanying him, local Daily Hurriyet reported yesterday. Erdogan was expected to join Trump for dinner at the same table after the opening of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York. However, he was reported to have refused to sit at the table “after walking into the room and seeing Trump was joined by Sisi.”
“President Erdogan left the room when he saw Sisi sitting at the same table with Trump,” the local agency said on Twitter. The dinner table was said to have also included UN Secretary-General António Guterres, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the Polish President Andrzej Duda. Erdogan has been an outspoken critic of Sisi’s rule since he seized power from the country’s first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in a 2013 coup.
He recently urged the UN to launch an official investigation into Morsi’s recent death in prison.
Source: Middle East Monitor