Turkish People stage protest against G20 summit

People from different walks of life have staged separate demonstrations in the Turkish city of Antalya to protest the G20 summit of the world’s top 20 economies.

Some 500 Turkish protesters from a nationalist association marched in the Mediterranean city on Sunday to express their opposition to the summit that started earlier in the day.

They held up effigies of US President Barack Obama and called for an end to US interventions in the region.

Separately, hundreds of people from Turkish left-wing groups and trade unions took to streets in central Antalya and condemned the two-day meeting. They held banners that read “Killer, colonialist, imperialist war organization G20 get out!”

Members of Turkey’s ethnic Uighur community also staged a separate demonstration in the city to express their anger over the conditions of China’s Muslim minority who the protesters say have been mistreated by the Chinese government.

The demonstrations were held about 40km away from the summit venue amid tight security.

At least four people were arrested for trying to walk into the venue and delivering letters to the leaders.

The G20 meeting began earlier on Sunday. The leaders were expected to discuss terrorism and asylum seeking on Sunday and focus on corporate tax avoidance, climate change and the world economy on Monday. The summit is however overshadowed by France’s Friday attacks.

The summit will therefore be dominated by discussions over how to respond to Paris attacks and the Takfiri Daesh group’s threat on the global scale.

French President Francois Hollande is the only major political leader absent from the summit. The attendees held one minute of silence at the beginning of the summit to pay tribute to the victims of the attacks in Paris and Ankara.

A series of deadly bomb and gun attacks hit several locations in Paris on Friday, killing some 130 and injuring hundreds others. The attacks, which were claimed by the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, have drawn condemnation from many world leaders.