Local climate planning in Turkey:

Climate Law No. 7552 and its August 2026 implementing regulation now require every province in Türkiye to adopt a local climate change action plan by the end of 2027, led by its metropolitan or provincial municipality, with district municipalities obliged to take part. Yet two new studies presented in this session point to significant gaps. The first, an assessment of all 1,003 municipalities, finds that 62.1% have no dedicated climate unit and 88.5% have no climate action plan, while only 13.8% belong to any international climate network or platform. Capacity is heavily concentrated in metropolitan municipalities, with district municipalities lagging far behind. The second, drawing on the climate plans of ten metropolitan municipalities and fifteen expert interviews, finds that gender equality is not yet systematically embedded. Women appear mainly as a vulnerable group rather than as actors in climate governance, and limited access to gender-disaggregated data is one of the main obstacles.

The panel brings together two of the authors, Miray Özkan (national assessment) and Nurseli Yeşim Sünbüloğlu (gender study), with two local government speakers: Alp Kargı, Mayor of Merzifon, and Evin Dinar, Head of the Climate Change and Zero Waste Department at Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality, who was interviewed for both studies. The authors present their findings. Merzifon is one of only four of Türkiye’s 403 non-metropolitan district municipalities with a climate action plan. Kargı describes how Merzifon took up climate action with no legal obligation to do so, the partnerships it built with academia, ICLEI and international funders, and the structural constraints it still faces as a district municipality. Dinar draws on Diyarbakır’s 2025 Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan, co-led by her department, to describe the staffing, budget, data and coordination demands of climate planning in practice. Together they discuss what central government, municipal unions, international networks and funders would need to provide to close the gap between the new obligation and existing capacity. They also discuss the role district municipalities should play in the new province-level plans, and how those plans can build in gender equality from the outset.

Speakers: 

Miray Özkan, Mesken

Nurseli Yeşim Sünbüloğlu, academic

Alp Kargı, Mayor of Merzifon

Evin Dinar, Head of the Climate Change and Zero Waste Department at Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality

Moderator: Cem Bico, Heinrich Böll Stiftung Istanbul, Program Coordinator 

📍COP31 Green Zone, Resilient Cities Hub, Resilient Cities Programming Area 1

📌 The event will be held in Turkish with English simultaneous translation.