COP30 Summit: Defiant Turkey doubles down on hosting demands against Australia/Pacific bid

A defiant Turkey has openly challenged Australia’s bid to jointly host next year’s climate summit with the Pacific, saying Ankara is poised to act as a bridge between richer and poorer countries.

Australia wants to host next year’s UN summit, COP31, in Adelaide, in conjunction with Pacific nations to highlight the perils the region’s island states face from rising sea levels.

But Turkey has also submitted a rival bid which complicates the Australia/Pacific islands move.

If a consensus agreement on the host country cannot be forged by the time the current COP summit being held in Brazil ends on November 21, the site of the 2026 gathering will default to Bonn in Germany.

The Albanese Government remains tight-lipped about reports Australia-Pacific and Turkey could compromise by splitting the summit in two to allow each to host half the gathering.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrote to Turkish counterpart, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for a second time the week before last, saying that he was available and ready to “talk these issues through.”

But Turkey is not ceding. Cevdet Yilmaz, Turkey’s vice president, told the COP30 summit, which opened in the Brazilian city of Belem last week, that his country could act as the link between the developing and developed world.

“Turkey has presented its candidacy to host COP31, demonstrating a very strong commitment to strengthening the climate agenda,” Mr Yilmaz said, according to a translation of his speech.

“In particular, I would like to emphasise that Turkey is ready to assume a bridge function between the south and the north in the fight against climate change.”

He posted on X a photo of himself meeting UN Secretary General António Guterres, and said: “As Turkey, we reaffirmed that, should we host COP31, we will strongly continue fair, inclusive, transparent, and harmonious cooperation with the United Nations and all participating countries.”

Global North is a term used to describe rich, developed countries, while Global South refers to poorer and emerging economies, which regularly argue they are the most affected and short-changed by climate change.

Australia’s bid to host COP31 alongside the Pacific is also an attempt to serve as a link between the two blocs, while also bringing the climate summit to the tiny frontline nations that would otherwise be unable to host a summit that draws heads of state and hundreds of thousands of attendees.

The President of Palau, Surangel Samuel Whipps Jr, urged attendees at this year’s COP to resolve the deadlock.

“Palau and our Pacific family support Australia’s bid to host in the Pacific,” Mr Whipps said.

“The Pacific has long served as the world’s moral compass on climate justice, fighting for the 1.5 degree goal.

“It is now the Pacific’s turn, and we look to our hosts and all of you here to help find a pathway to a successful Pacific COP with Australia — it’s time.”

Wesley Morgan, research associate with the Institute for Climate Risk & Response at the University of New South Wales wrote last week that if Australia succeeds, it would mean Adelaide would host the nation’s largest ever diplomatic meeting in a move likely to bolster Australian influence in the region.

“Success would help cement Australia’s place in the Pacific at a time of increasing geostrategic competition,” he wrote.

Mr Albanese has never attended a COP since becoming Prime Minister, but has said he is “prepared” to travel to Belem if his “attendance makes a difference”.

During his time as opposition leader, he stated that Coalition Prime Minister Scott Morrison was obligated to attend the 26th gathering being held that year in Glasgow.

“He should represent Australia. If he doesn’t, that’s because he’s embarrassed about Australia’s position,” Mr Albanese said in 2021, eight months before he would oust Mr Morrison and become prime minister.

Mr Morrison attended after signing the Coalition partyroom up to signing on to net zero by 2050, a position the current opposition could dump when they meet to discuss the policy on Thursday.

Many leaders, including China’s President Xi Jinping, US President Donald Trump, who has pulled out of the 2015 Paris Agreement, as well as Turkey’s leader, are also not attending this year’s summit.

But President Erdogan’s decision to send his number two to speak at the high-profile opening week and work on gathering diplomatic support for next year’s event is in stark contrast to Australia’s lower-level representation.

Josh Wilson, the assistant minister for climate change and energy who does not sit in cabinet, is representing Australia in Belem until Chris Bowen, Australia’s climate change minister, arrives next week for the start of technical negotiations.

Mr Wilson told the summit that for the Pacific, climate change was not a topic of gradual negotiation but a present and existential threat.

“This is a message that the world needs to hear, and a reality that the world needs to see,” he said.

“And that’s why we are bidding to host COP31 in partnership with the Pacific family.”

It was not clear what high-level meetings Mr Wilson has so far secured and he has not uploaded any photographs of his engagements, as is typical for travelling politicians and ministers when representing Australia.

Speaking to reporters in Canberra, Mr Albanese said he believed countries on Australia’s side were lobbying Turkey.

“They are doing that. I believe that a majority of countries clearly support Australia’s bid and countries are making their position very clear, including countries in the Pacific and in Western Europe. But that’s not the system,” he said.

“If the system were a vote, I would be far more confident about putting forward what the support is. I certainly have received confident, positive statements from not just obviously the countries in the Pacific, but other countries, for example, in the Western Europe group.”