Erdoğan completes US visit with series of bilateral meetings

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held bilateral meetings with a number of world leaders yesterday, on the last day of his U.S. visit.

Erdoğan was in New York to attend the 73rd U.N. General Assembly that hosted more than 140 heads of states between Sept. 23 and 26.

He met U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May and the French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday, in two separate hour-long meetings. However, no details on the content of the meetings were released.

Besides May and Macron, President Erdoğan also met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, President of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi and the President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine.

Apart from the bilateral meetings, the Turkish president also came together with the representatives of America's Jewish institutions.

Earlier Monday, Erdoğan held closed-door talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC) Kudret Özersay, and the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab. He also held talks with the Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel on Monday. Erdoğan also held bilateral talks with the leaders of Greece, Mozambique, Slovenia and Venezuela.

He held a total of 12 bilateral talks in three days in New York.

During his address to the U.N. General Assembly, Erdoğan criticized the structure of the U.N. and its Security Council. He said they do little to serve the needs of humanity and that its structure was a not just. He also wrote an article for the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine published yesterday, focusing on the necessity of reforming the U.N.'s structure.

"[The] U.N.'s pulse, which is expected to be the heart of the humanity, is not beating today," Erdoğan said in the article, emphasizing that the international community has to improve the U.N. rather than damaging it, especially in today's world, where global leadership is more necessary than ever.

"In case of lack of help from the global powers, the rest of the international community should launch a reform process in the U.N.," Erdoğan added.

In the fight against an unjust system "Turkey is the voice of the world when it says ‘The world is bigger than five,'" Erdoğan said in his address, referring to the five permanent members of the Security Council, namely China, France, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S., who hold veto powers.