Turkey shuns Israel at Cop31 climate summit

<a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/tags/turkey/" target="_blank" rel="" title="https://www.thenationalnews.com/tags/turkey/">Turkey</a> did not invite <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/tags/israel/" target="_blank" rel="" title="https://www.thenationalnews.com/tags/israel/">Israel</a>’s leaders to participate in the Cop31 climate summit, citing the mass killings of Palestinians in Gaza as the reason for its refusal, the minister running the talks has said.

“As the host country for the leaders’ summit, we did not send an invitation to Israel,” Cop31 President Murat Kurum, who is also Turkey's Minister of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change, told Turkish media. “Of course, we will discuss the climate and climate justice here. We say that there can be no climate justice where peace does not prevail.” An Israeli source told <i>The National</i> that as a party to the UN climate change convention overseeing the Cop summits, known as the <a href="https://unfccc.int/node/61087" target="_blank" rel="">UNFCCC</a>, the country was automatically allowed to attend but declined to send a delegation on security grounds.

"For security and other reasons, the relevant authorities decided not to send an official Israeli delegation to the conference in Turkey," the source said. About 90 heads of state and government are gathering in Antalya on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast for the two-day “high-level segment” of the fortnight-long Cop31 conference tomorrow and Thursday. The segment is where leaders address delegates and hold meetings to spur action on climate change as its impact spirals, with climate scientists documenting record temperatures and sea levels.

Most parties to the UNFCCC, including Israel, ratified the 2015 Paris Agreement for tackling climate change and Cop31 is focusing on implementing past agreements, boosting clean electricity usage and financing climate adaptation initiatives. An Israeli delegation is notable for its absence in Antalya, where officials from the Iranian delegation were spotted by <i>The National</i> in the lobby. Israel's regional arch-rival presented a country pavilion decorated with a memorial to 168 people, most of them school children, killed in a strike on February 28, the first day of the US and Israel's war on Iran.

The ensuing conflict caused global energy prices to spiral as Iran and the US blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, and both sides attacked energy infrastructure. At Palestine’s conference pavilion, attendees scrambled for highly-sought after lapel pins shaped like the country's national flag, and banners showed photo montages of the destruction in Gaza. Palestinian hosts wearing traditional keffiyehs and tatreez-embroidered thobes greeted conference participants.

Turkey's shunning of Israel “is a political issue, not a technical issue” and was Turkey’s decision, Zaghloul Samhan told <i>The National</i>. He is the chairman of the Palestinian Environment Quality Authority, which acts as the Environment Ministry. Mr Samhan cited the refusal of the US to allow Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a visa to attend the UN General Assembly in New York in September. The US government is also missing from Cop31, following President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement earlier this year.

Washington has also withdrawn from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world's leading authority on climate science. Mr Trump has called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”, while pushing for an expansion of fossil fuel production. Israeli ministers did not respond publicly to Mr Kurum’s remarks but Israeli media outlet <i>Ynet</i> reported last month that Israeli officials would probably not attend the conference due to a combination of “security concerns and diplomatic isolation”.

Greenpeace Israel said that although the country would not be present at the summit, the decisions reached there would impact Israelis’ futures too. “The conference serves as a key instrument in the global effort to address the climate crisis; it is where governments make decisions regarding the reduction of emissions and the financing of preparations for the crisis's damaging effects,” the organisation said in a statement on Monday. “In a year where the conflict with Iran – alongside broader geopolitical tensions – has exposed the risks inherent in oil and gas (even leading to “fossil fuel inflation”), the climate conference offers renewed hope for change.”

Once-burgeoning diplomatic ties between Turkey and Israel have nosedived since the start of the war in Gaza, where Turkish ministers frequently accuse Israel of genocide. Ankara has cut trade relations worth billions of dollars a year and diplomatic missions run a skeleton service, although ties have not been fully severed. Israel denies accusations of genocide and has widely criticised Turkey for maintaining ties with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Turkey’s position on the Gaza conflict would “continue throughout the [Cop31] conference”, and the summit would include art exhibitions featuring works by Gazan children and Palestinian artists depicting “tragedy” and “injustice”, Mr Kurum said. Human rights organisations and the UN have documented widespread damage to the environment as a result of the war in Gaza. At least 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in the enclave since Israel started a war there following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks, which killed around 1,200 people.

A UN Environment Programme report in September 2025 said the conflict had caused “unprecedented levels of environmental damage” in the war-torn strip, damaging its soil, freshwater supplies and coastline. Since 2023, the enclave has lost 97 per cent of its tree crops, 95 per cent of its shrubland and 82 per cent of its annual crops.