Short-Term Cancellation: Erdogan Does Not Travel to the Climate Summit
Recep Tayyip Erdogan will not take part in the UN climate conference. The President of Turkey has now announced this. This is because the security measures did not go far enough for him, it was said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cancelled his participation in the World Climate Conference (COP26) at short notice. As a justification, Erdogan referred to concerns about security at the summit in Glasgow, Scotland. Erdogan had met US President Joe Biden on Sunday on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Rome and actually wanted to travel to Glasgow on Monday.
But instead, he flew back to Turkey. Erdogan told journalists on board his government machine that the organizers of the UN climate summit had not responded to the demands of his delegation regarding security measures. “It was not only about our own security but also about the reputation of our country,” said the president, according to the official Turkish news agency Anadolu.
A protester shouts slogans during a protest at the start of the G20 summit. The two-day summit of the Group of 20 is the first face-to-face meeting of the heads of state and government of the world’s largest economies since the beginning of the corona pandemic.
A helicopter fills water to pour on a wildfire destroying the forest in the Mentese discirt, Mugla, on August 4, 2021. – Rescuers used helicopters and water cannons on August 4, 2021, in a fitful fight to save a Turkish power plant from being engulfed by deadly wildfires testing the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. More than 180 wildfires have scorched huge swathes of forest and killed eight people since breaking out east of the Mediterranean vacation hotspot Antalya last Wednesday and then spreading west.
According to a report by the online portal “Middle East Eye”, the dispute revolved around the size of Erdogan’s delegation. The organizers had therefore called for the Turkish travel delegation to be limited.
The two-week COP26 started on Sunday. More than 120 heads of state and government were expected in Glasgow on Monday, including US President Joe Biden and Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU). However, with China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s head of state Vladimir Putin, the heads of state of two major greenhouse gas emitters were missing.
The COP26 runs until November 12. After that, 197 nations will negotiate the further implementation of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. The agreement allows global warming to be limited to well below two degrees, ideally 1.5 degrees, compared to the pre-industrial age. However, experts and the UN warned that the earth is currently heading for a warming of 2.7 degrees in this century.
