The announcement landed with the thud of something both predictable and absurd, Turkey has won the right to host next year’s U.N. climate talks C31 and more consequentially, to preside over them. The deal, struck with its geopolitical frenemy Australia, gives Ankara the gavel at a moment when global climate diplomacy feels like a weary travelling circus looking for cities willing to rent the tent. Yet the symbolism is hard to ignore. Once again, the world has entrusted the steering wheel to a leader whose commitment to democratic norms is, at best, conditional and, at worst, cosmetic.
So the natural, if sarcastic, question emerges: Who’s next? Chernobyl for C32? Pyongyang offering eco-tours of its reforestation zones? The absurdity is tempting, because for many watching these negotiations unfold year after technocratic year, the whole process feels like a slow march toward an environmental cliff while world leaders argue about whose turn it is to hold the map upside down.
But beneath the humour lies a deeper frustration. The climate crisis, we are told with mounting urgency, requires unprecedented cooperation, honesty, accountability. Yet the United Nations keeps handing its most important annual gatherings to governments that bristle at transparency and treat dissent like a hostile invasion. COP30’s drama, those empty seats that once might have held a sharp-elbowed, deal-breaking American president, who instead chose voluntary absence tinged with hostility, exposed the fragility of the entire structure. These conferences are less about science and more about political theater. And the stage managers matter.
In this sense, the choice of Turkey is not an aberration; it is a pattern. Erdoğan’s government, after all, has mastered the art of projecting international clout while tightening the screws at home. Environmental activism within the country is often met with suspicion if not outright repression. The idea that such a government should preside over a summit designed to champion global environmental justice feels like inviting a landlord with a history of eviction to lead a tenants’ rights meeting.
Of course, defenders will say that every nation deserves a seat at the climate table, that the crisis is global, borderless, and requires all voices, even those that crackle with authoritarian overtones. And perhaps there is truth in that. Yet there is a meaningful difference between participation and leadership. One suggests responsibility; the other confers legitimacy. Presiding over a COP meeting is not a ceremonial honour. It means guiding the negotiations, shaping the agenda, framing the debates. It means having moral authority—or at least the illusion of it.
The U.N., in its perpetually diplomatic way, likes to pretend that politics can be neatly bracketed away from the climate challenge, that the conference rooms are somehow neutral territory, insulated from the gritty realities outside the high-security perimeter. But the truth is less tidy. The host country sets the tone, who feels safe, who feels silenced, who gets their side-event approved, who gets their protest corralled into a distant parking lot. These are not trivial details; they shape what the world understands climate justice to be.
Democratic governance is not a luxury additive to climate action. It is the substrate that allows solutions to take root. Communities must be able to speak. Scientists must be able to warn. Journalists must be able to poke at the vulnerabilities. Civil society must be able to demand better. This is not ideological preference. It is operational necessity. Climate policy built without public accountability tends to be either performative or extractive, often both.
Look back to COP30’s disorienting energy, the vacuum left by Trump’s pointed nonparticipation. That absence was not passive; it was a message. It showed how much damage can be done when a major emitter decides the room doesn’t matter. But it also revealed something subtler: how brittle even the most important climate gatherings are when democratic legitimacy falters. Authoritarian leaders do not fill the void with urgency; they fill it with image-crafting and geopolitical manoeuvring dressed in green rhetoric.
Which brings us again to Erdoğan, a leader whose political instincts skew toward control rather than collaboration. He is, to borrow the analogy already floating around, as well suited to preside over a global climate summit as Kim Jong-un would be competent at command, allergic to scrutiny. The comparison is dramatic, yes, but satire exists because reality keeps trying to catch up.
One might hope that the symbolic discomfort of Turkey hosting C31 will spark overdue conversations about who gets to shepherd climate negotiations and why. Instead of rotating the conference like a diplomatic Eurovision, the U.N. might consider criteria that reflect the actual values these summits claim to champion: protection of free expression, transparency, independent science, environmental justice. Not because purity is required, none of the major powers are saints but because leadership should reflect aspiration, not resignation.
Climate change is the defining crisis of our era, but the way we stage its solutions often feels like a parable about misplaced priorities. We fret over gigatons while ignoring governance. We applaud pledges while sidestepping rights. We search for global unity while repeatedly seating the least unifying hosts at the head of the table.
So yes, Turkey will host C31. And the world will show up, because it has to. But the quiet question humming beneath the negotiations, the question leaders prefer not to hear is whether the process can keep tolerating this mismatch between message and messenger. The planet demands action, but action requires trust. And trust, like democracy, is not something you can outsource to the highest bidder or the loudest strongman.
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