Turkey moves toward COP31 amid persistent climate challenges

Ankara, moreover, only approved its first climate law in July 2025. The legislation lays the legal foundations for a national emissions trading system while also introducing a framework for climate governance, institutional arrangements and financing mechanisms. It is a significant step, but one that, according to Selim Yıldırım, a PhD Candidate at TOBB University of Economics and Technology and researcher at Daktilo1984, should be read without easy enthusiasm.

“The adoption of a climate law in Turkey can, in itself, be considered an important threshold”, Yıldırım says. For those who have followed this process closely, he explains, “it is clear that generating such political motivation across the full spectrum of decision-making actors—including the government, the opposition parties, and senior bureaucratic circles—was by no means easy”. In this respect, he adds, “the very existence of the law points to a significant, albeit delayed, stage in the institutionalization of climate policy in Turkey”.

The key question, however, is how far this law truly represents a climate turning point. On this, Yıldırım is far more cautious. “In its current form, the climate law appears primarily designed to establish the legal and institutional foundations of an Emissions Trading System”, he says. Its main motivation, he adds, seems to be “the protection of Turkey’s trade relations with the European Union, which remains its most important export market, and the mitigation of potential costs arising from the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism”. For this reason, he concludes, “the law therefore appears less as a comprehensive response to the climate crisis and more as an adaptive regulatory instrument shaped by external economic pressures”.

This is where the main weaknesses of Turkey’s new legal framework are concentrated. According to Yıldırım, “the absence of clearly defined interim targets, the lack of an independent scientific or technical oversight mechanism, and ongoing uncertainties regarding implementation capacity all constitute major weaknesses of the framework”. Even so, he stresses, “the creation of a legal basis is still important insofar as it formally recognizes climate policy as a legitimate area of public governance and institutional action”.

Power struggles have pushed climate policy into the background

In the Daktilo1984 researcher’s analysis, the domestic political context is crucial to understanding the limits of Turkey’s current climate trajectory. “Turkey’s increasingly pronounced authoritarian trajectory over the last decade also provides an important structural context for understanding the development of climate policy,” he says. With the transition to the Presidential Government System, he continues, “public space, bureaucracy, the judiciary, the media, and cultural instruments have become increasingly centralized, while political competition has become less able to function on equal terms”. In such an environment, “the intensification of struggles over political power and the rising social costs of poor economic governance have pushed climate policy into a secondary position within the national agenda”.

The prospect of hosting COP31 has certainly helped bring the climate file back under the spotlight. Yıldırım acknowledges that “the prospect of hosting COP31 has generated a degree of attention and momentum in this field”. But the crucial question remains how deep and durable that dynamic will be. “Yet it remains uncertain whether this interest will diffuse across broader segments of society and evolve into durable public ownership of the climate agenda,” he warns.

The role of the European Union as a model

Asked about the European Union’s role as a model in tackling climate change, Yıldırım says: “The European Union’s transformative influence over Turkey should be highlighted particularly in the field of climate policy.” In his view, “the recent momentum in Turkey’s climate governance cannot be attributed solely to COP processes; rather, it is more directly linked to the external pressure and policy orientation generated by the European Green Deal”. In this framework, “the Green Deal Action Plan signed by the President [Recep Tayyip Erdogan] in 2021 constituted a concrete institutional expression of this shift”.

Here too, however, the main driver appears above all economic and commercial. “The primary motivation here was clearly to avoid disruption in Turkey’s economic and trade relations with the European Union,” the researcher explains. Nevertheless, he adds, “this external pressure also opened up a new policy space in Turkey and made climate governance more visible and politically salient”. An important role, he further notes, was also played by the debate on carbon markets: “Discussions on the Emissions Trading System also played an important catalytic role in this process”.

His assessment of the impact of the rise of right-wing and far-right parties in Europe is more nuanced. According to Yıldırım, “the rise of right-wing and far-right parties in Europe, by contrast, does not appear to have had a direct transformative effect on Turkey’s climate policies”. Its impact has been felt above all in other areas, “more visible in broader debates around populism, anti-immigration politics, and Euroscepticism than in the substantive direction of climate governance itself”. At the same time, however, he notes that “as the Green Deal has lost prominence on the European political agenda in parallel with the rise of the far right, one can observe a corresponding increase in skepticism toward Europe, particularly among center-right circles in Turkey”.

Turkey’s industry, caution and the energy question

The picture becomes even more complicated when looking at the conditions facing Turkish industry. Yıldırım points out that “Turkey’s industrial sector is operating under severe pressure stemming from high inflation, mounting financing costs, and the relative overvaluation of the Turkish lira against the dollar”. Under such conditions, industrial actors have tended “to approach low-carbon investments, sustainable production systems, and clean energy transitions with caution and hesitation”. For this reason, he adds, “climate policy in Turkey must be understood not only as a normative or environmental question, but also as one that requires a strong industrial and financial policy dimension”.

Finally, there is the energy question. For Yıldırım, “Turkey’s high degree of external energy dependence makes it necessary to assess climate and energy policy together”. The country’s import-dependent energy structure, he explains, “increases economic vulnerability while keeping energy security concerns permanently at the center of policymaking”.

This is also why, in the context of the current regional crisis, strengthening renewables takes on a significance that goes well beyond environmental policy. “Expanding renewable energy capacity is not merely an environmental preference for Turkey, but also a strategic and economic necessity”, he says.

In recent years, he acknowledges, “Turkey has made considerable progress in increasing its installed renewable energy capacity”. But the real turning point lies elsewhere. “The central issue, however, is not simply the expansion of renewables, but the question of how and according to what timetable the country will phase out coal,” he observes. And it is on this ground that the real credibility of Turkey’s path will be tested. “Turkey’s genuine climate transition will only be possible if it can formulate a clear, measurable, and socially just strategy for this shift”.