Turkish

We, 3 young climate activists from Turkey, have filed a lawsuit against our country’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change" to defend our future. Because the inadequacy of the target presented by Turkey in the Paris Climate Agreement directly affects our future. Please sign our petition to stand in solidarity with us in our just cause.

Turkey's decision to increase greenhouse gas emissions, which is incompatible with the Paris Climate Agreement's goal of stopping climate change at 1.5 degrees, violates our human rights. The increase of the climate crisis violates our rights guaranteed under the Constitution, the “United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child” and the “European Convention on Human Rights” on;

• our right to live
• our right to intergenerational equality
• our right to privacy
• our right to health
• our cultural rights
• our right to develop our material and spiritual existence
• our right to live in a healthy and balanced environment
• our right to education
• our right to work
• our right to access healthy food and water

We are suing Turkey's target, which has no scientific basis and is actually a "greenhouse gas increase decision", on the grounds that it violates our human rights. It is our human rights to stop climate change at 1.5 degrees.

Dear decision makers! Do you know what our future awaits because you are not fighting the climate crisis?

• Drought
• Floods
• Wildfires
• Food crisis
• polluted air
• and a deforested Turkey…

With your own hands, you are destroying the future of us, of the young people you speak of as "the future of this country". You are officially doing nothing against the climate crisis that threatens Turkey the most!

During your time in power, that is, for many  many years, you have been attending international climate summits and negotiating climate. However, thanks to you, we are the 6th country from the bottom to ratify the Paris Climate Agreement.

What should Turkey do -but doesn't- in the fight against the climate crisis?

• No commitment to reduce emissions! Turkey commits to a 41% reduction from the emissions it will increase in 2030. However, this is not a real reduction. It states that it will continue to increase its emissions until 2038 and promises an increase of more than 30 percent by 2030.
• Turkey, which states that it will be carbon neutral in 2053, still does not have a consistent and scientific roadmap on how to implement decarbonization until 2053!
• There is no exit date from coal and fossil fuels!
• There is no effective climate action plan in the energy and mining sector!
• The climate crisis is right here, right now! Climate disasters are destroying our homes, leaving us homeless, restricting access to food and water, but Turkey's adaptation plans are not enough to combat the climate crisis. Turkey does not have an adaptation plan to protect us from the climate crisis!

So what does Turkey hold as promises?

• There is a system in which the coal and mining lobby will continue to exist and poison us!
• There is a huge uncertainty!
• There is more unemployment, pollution, vulnerability to climate disasters in the future for young people!
• There is a danger that as young people, our and children's right to life and right to access basic rights such as food, water and air will be restricted or even destroyed!

Don’t Change The Climate, Change The System!

• Set an intermediate target!
• Declare an exit date from coal!
• Make a real reduction commitment!
• Determine Turkey's decarbonization policy with scientific methods and make it binding legal rules.

Atlas Sarrafoğlu
Ela Naz Birdal
Seren Anaçoğlu