Tracking climate policy in the COP31 host country: Türkiye
22 October 2026
This brief summarises Türkiye’s existing climate policies, notes areas of strength and recommends priority areas for improvement as the country prepares to host COP31.
With a foreword by Dr Ümit Şahin, Climate Change Cluster Coordinator and Senior Scholar at the Istanbul Policy Center, Sabancı University
This brief, produced with the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, summarises Türkiye’s existing climate policies, notes areas of strength and recommends priority areas for improvement as the country prepares to host COP31.
Türkiye’s Climate Law of 2025 sets a direction towards net zero and establishes an emissions trading system (TR-ETS). The authors suggest 12 priority actions for Türkiye to ramp up its efforts on both mitigation and adaptation, building on this law and other existing policies.
The recommendations range from establishing a climate advisory body to setting an absolute, declining emissions cap for the TR-ETS, updating the nationally determined contribution (NDC) with more ambitious climate targets for 2030 and 2035 and translating the NDC targets into pathways for each sector, committing to phasing out coal power and joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, developing an institutionalised approach to the just transition and more. The recommendations are aimed at policymakers in Türkiye plus climate advocacy groups, civil society organisations, businesses and investors.
The brief leverages insights from a suite of publicly available climate policy tracking initiatives that map, analyse and evaluate policies related to climate change, including Assessing Sovereign Climate-related Opportunities and Risks (ASCOR) and Climate Change Laws of the World.