Turkey shuns Israel at Cop31 climate summit

Turkey did not invite Israel’s leaders to participate in the Cop31 climate summit, citing the mass killings of Palestinians in Gaza in 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.”

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. The segment is where leaders address delegates and hold meetings to spur action on climate change as its impact spirals.

Israel is part of the UNFCCC, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, whose members take part in the annual Cop summits. Most of them ratified the 2015 Paris agreement for tackling climate change.

But an Israeli delegation is noticeable by its absence in Antalya, where officials from the Iranian delegation were spotted by The National in the lobby. Neither Israel nor the UNFCCC has confirmed whether any lower-level Israeli delegates will take part in the negotiations after its leaders were shunned.

At Palestine’s conference pavilion, attendees scrambled for highly-sought after lapel pins shaped like the Palestinian flag, and banners showed photo montages of the destruction in Gaza. Palestinian hosts wearing traditional keffiyehs and tatreez embroidered thobes greeted conference participants.

The refusal to invite Israel “is a political issue, not a technical issue” and was Turkey’s decision, Zaghloul Samhan told The National. 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.

Show caption: Activism related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a fr…

US absence

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 Washington has also withdrawn from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world's leading authority on climate science.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 Ynet reported last month that Israeli officials would probably not attend the conference due to a combination of “security concerns and diplomatic isolation”. An Israeli Foreign Ministry official did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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 shrub land and 82 per cent of its annual crops.