COP28: Turkey assessed as “critically insufficient” on all climate crisis goals by scientific analysis

Turkey received the worst rating, “critically insufficient”, for all climate crisis goals in an evaluation by Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific analysis site that made an assessment of the EU countries and 39 other countries.­

Its net zero target of 2053 was, meanwhile, rated as "inadequate".

The findings were discussed in articles written for Iklim Masasi and bianet by Ezgi Ediboglu Sakowsky, a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition. They were published just prior to the eve of the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which began in the United Arab Emirates on November 30.

Sakowsky noted that it is frequently emphasised by Ankara that Turkey has relatively low historical responsibility for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but pointed out that its present-day responsibility is increasing: as of 2021, Turkey rose to 14th place among the highest emitting countries. That's partly caused by its continuing commitment to burning increasing volumes of coal to produce electricity.

Climate Action Tracker evaluates only seven countries as "critically insufficient" in relation to climate crisis goals besides Turkey. The other countries in this category are Russia, Mexico, Argentina, Thailand, Vietnam and Iran.

“However, upon closer examination of the details of these countries' plans, it is observed that only Iran received a worse rating than Turkey and this is because Iran has not yet announced a net-zero target,” observed Sakowsky.

He added: “We can express how severe the situation is as follows: According to this analysis, in a scenario where all countries make plans as insufficient as Turkey's, global warming will exceed the target of 1.5°C-2°C set by the Paris Agreement, reaching at least double that, with a temperature rise of 4°C.”

In short, concluded Sakowsky, “Turkey has set an emission target that it can almost achieve without any serious action”.