At the headquarters of EPİAŞ, the Turkish energy exchange, the welcome to foreign journalists began with an apology for the busy schedule and ended ten minutes past the hour. In between, there was time for a story told with pride: that morning, the Canadian ambassador had received a certificate of guarantee of origin certifying that all the electricity he will consume during his mandate will be renewable. “It’s a positive gift for someone”, summarized the host.
The cordiality lasted until a British journalist asked: whether Turkey is introducing a price for carbonwhy does the Government continue to support national coal? The response from the general director of EPİAŞ, Taha Meli Arvas, came without diplomatic minutiae: “The population does not want to know about carbon targets. You want electricity.” After returning the issue to the United Kingdom and Germany, he concluded: “No one produces or uses coal, or any other type of thermal energy, because they like it. It’s because there is no choice.”
A few days before COP31, which takes place in Antalya between the 9th and 20th of November, the scene sums up the double face of the Turkish presidency: a country committed to welcoming and leading the “implementation” agendaand an energy pragmatism that assumes coal as inevitable and renewables as a question of price, not of climate. “The cliché answer is that everyone loves the Earth and wants to stop the climate change,” said Taha Meli Arvas. “The real answer is that they are cheaper.”
Aytug Can Sencar/Anadolu via Getty Images
Electrification as a business card
In the presidency of the summit, it’s up to Australiawith the Minister of Climate Change, Chris Bowen, leading the negotiations, and Turkey, with the Minister of the Environment, Murat Kurum, the action agenda. That’s where the Turks bet their chips. In June, in BonnMurat Kurum proposed increasing the share of electricity in final energy consumption from just over 20% to 35% by 2035halve global waste growth and cut at least 25% of the energy intensity of buildings.
The “35 by 35” goal has become the presidency’s calling card. “The only letter put on the table so far was from Türkiye itself, with electrification“, notes Francisco Ferreira, from the environmental association Zero. But electrifying only has a significant effect if the electricity comes from renewable sources, he recalls, and this implies that “Turkey itself also abandons coal”.
At the research organization World Resources Institute (WRI), the reading is more benevolent. “Electrification is not in contradiction with transition to abandoning fuels fossils”, argues Nick Wayth, director of the Polsky Center for the Global Energy Transition, for whom being “excessively restrictive” regarding the origin of electricity could alienate some countries. The president of the WRI, Ani Dasgupta, even doubts that it will be possible to get more than 180 countries to agree to include the word “clean” in the final text.
Turkish civil society organizations, in turn, go further. In a press conference organized by İklim Ağı (Climate Network), Yağız Eren Abanus, from the Mekanda Adalet Derneği association, recalled that the framework inherited from the Brazilian presidency had transitioned away from the fossil fuels among the central themes of the action agenda, and that Turkey removed it to put electrification in its place. THE “35 by 35” commitment it does not say what sources the electricity will come from, notes activist Emel Türker Alpay, from Greenpeace Türkiye, and this makes electrification “an end in itself”.
Asked about the connection between the two goals, Murat Kurum says that electrification contributes “indirectly” to the exit from fossil fuels. “This is how they package the situation,” says Özlem Katısöz, climate and energy policy coordinator for Turkey at Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe. Only in the plenary of leaders of the pre-COP, in the Pacificat the beginning of October, the president of COP31 once again spoke explicitly of an orderly and fair transition to abandoning fossils.
The “zero waste” goal, led by Emine Erdoğan, is the other bet, also outside formal negotiations. “If we take him to the negotiating room now, what do you think will happen? Another Paris Agreement”, explained Chris Mensah, advisor to the Zero Waste Foundation (headed by the first lady) and former head of Intergovernmental Relations at UN-Habitat, in a presentation to international journalists organized by the COP31 presidency in Istanbul.
In a COP that presents itself as one of implementation, he argued, it is not advisable to “introduce new things that will derail” the process. Asked about Turkey’s weight as one of the largest plastic producers in Europe, he resorted to an old argument, that of the “environmental space” that countries would need to pollute while developing. “40 years ago, where was Turkey?”
Emel Türker Alpay, however, points out another contradiction: the country that makes zero waste a flag continues to import plastic waste, an import that Greenpeace wants to see completely banned.
Coal at home
In 2025, coal was Turkey’s main source of electricity, with 34% of production, around two-thirds from imported coal, according to think tank Ember. Wind and solar reached 22% and surpassed hydro for the first time, but the political signal goes in the opposite direction. In September 2025, the Turkish Government announced a guarantee for the purchase of electricity from national coal plants between 2026 and 2029, at 75 dollars per megawatt-hour, with a cost estimated by Ember at 8.7 billion dollars. There is no date for the abandonment of coal.
The trend has not reversed this year. In the first nine months of 2026, coal continued to provide almost 30% of electricity, half from imported coal, according to Emel Türker Alpay. Meanwhile, the increase in capacity of an imported coal plant in Çanakkale was announced, and in Akbelen olive groves and forests continue to be cut down to expand the mines. “Our co-presidency should begin its commitments and messages to the world at home”, argues the activist.
For Özlem Katısöz, the argument for energy independence does not work: most coal-fired electricity comes from imported coal, which “doesn’t make sense”. A study carried out by Turkish NGOs pointed to 2030 as a “possible and realistic” date for the exit from coal, but the Government, it says, prefers to “live with coal” and keep it afloat with price guarantees. At the beginning of October, the market paid around 40 dollars per megawatt-hour, while national coal plants are guaranteed 75. “We will pay half with taxpayers’ money.”
On November 5, the Minister of Energy, Alparslan Bayraktar, presented the national energy plan for 2040, with 500 billion dollars of investment planned. The plan foresees 175 gigawatts of wind and solar, wants renewables to increase from 63% to 77% of installed capacity and aims to reach 10 gigawatts of nuclear. But the electrification that the presidency asks the world for by 2035 arrives later in the host country: electricity is only expected to represent 36% of Turkey’s total energy demand in 2040, according to Reuters. Among the announced goals, there is no date for abandoning coal.
The question returned to the United Kingdom in EPİAŞ actually has an answer: coal will leave the British grid in 2024, recalled Nick Wayth, himself British. And the energy security argument can be read the other way around. Since the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, fossil fuels have become a “macroeconomic risk”, argues Ani Dasgupta, and reducing dependence on imported fuels is, for Nick Wayth, the basis of energy security.
The new nationally determined contribution (NDC) follows the same logic. Turkey promises to cut 42% against a scenario in which emissions would almost double, which is equivalent to a ceiling of 643 million tons in 2035, 16% more than in 2023. “A controlled increase”, not a cut, wrote Ümit Şahin, from the Istanbul Policy Center. “Turkey is not reducing emissions, it is increasing them”, summarizes Yağız Eren Abanus.
The Turkish carbon market, created by the first climate law in 2025, begins with a pilot phase in which licenses are allocated free of charge in full, with the assumed objective of reducing exporters’ bills in the European Union’s border carbon adjustment mechanism.
The testimony now arrives in Antalya. On November 3, the Brazilian presidency of COP30 presented the roadmap for transition for the abandonment of fossil fuels, which concludes that this transition is “urgent, inevitable and, nevertheless, possible”, argues that fossil production falls in line with demand and invites the next presidencies to keep the dialogue alive until the global balance of 2028.
Two days later, Turkey presented a plan that goes in the opposite direction. According to the state agency Anadolu, the country wants, by 2040, national production to cover the entire consumption of oil and natural gas, currently 85% imported, which involves multiplying extraction several times, while gas consumption barely changes: from 59 to 57 billion cubic meters.
The showcase to showcase Türkiye’s climate action was also hand-picked. The program for foreign journalists included marine protected areas in the province of Muğla, the same one where the coal mines of Milas and Yatağan have already reached villages and groundwater, and where an urgent expropriation law paved the way for the expansion of the mines. The aim, says Özlem Katısöz, is to “show beautiful places” and make the rest of the story “invisible”. “This is the country that presides over the COP.”
At EPİAŞ, the final question was about the message the scholarship wanted to leave to the world. “We are agnostic about the type of energy that is bought and sold in our market,” replied Taha Meli Arvas, confident that an efficient market will eventually do the work that politics cannot do. It’s a belief that explains, in a way, the story of the certificate offered to the Canadian ambassador: in a country where a third of electricity comes from coal, there is always a way to assure a guest that their part is clean.
PÚBLICO traveled at the invitation of the COP31 presidency
