Image from the Peoples’ Climate Summit 2026 Antalya.
Peace Brigades International-Canada is following the ongoing situation for human rights defenders in Türkiye, their safety in the lead-up to the United Nations conference of parties COP31 climate summit taking place in Antalya, Türkiye from November 9 to November 20, 2026, and the ongoing failure of the COP negotiations to improve the security situation for land and environmental defenders around the world.
Global Witness has documented that more than 1,500 land and environmental defenders have been killed since the 2015 Paris Agreement negotiated at the United Nations COP21 climate summit that year.
More should be spent on the climate than defence
The Guardian now reports: “Wealthy countries should spend far more on dealing with the climate crisis than the 5% of GDP [Gross Domestic Product] promised by Nato [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] members for defence because ‘the climate issue is the security issue’, the host of the next UN summit has said.”
The COP31 president-designate is Murat Kurum is the minister of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change in Türkiye.
The article in The Guardian continues: “Kurum said Nato countries should be much more focused on climate spending. He said they had promised to increase their defence budgets to 5% of GDP by 2035 as a result of ‘concerns for their own safety and security’, but had committed much less to addressing the climate crisis despite expressing concerns and it posing an even greater risk. Asked if he thought as much should be spent on climate as defence, he said: ‘Much more.’”
How much does Canada spend on climate vs “defence”?
A report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) and the Climate Action Network (CAN) in Canada (published in February 2023) found that the Canadian government “is currently spending about $10 billion per year—soon rising to $15 billion per year, or about 0.5% of GDP—on greenhouse gas emission reduction efforts across several sectors of the economy.”
In June 2025, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pledged that Canada would spend 5% of annual GDP by 2035 on defence. With that pledge, direct spending on the Canadian military could reach $163.6 billion by 2035.
Canadian weapons sales to Türkiye
Defense News also recently reported: “Between 2019 and January 2024, Canada imposed restrictions on arms sales to Turkey and cancelled a number of export permits, creating a de-facto weapons embargo.”
That embargo was lifted in January 2024.
In 2024, Canada exported $107,875,401.50 in “strategic goods and technologies” to Türkiye. In 2025, Canada that figure was $60,760,039.44.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will be visiting Türkiye from October 21 to 23, 2026. The statement from the Prime Minister’s Office about this upcoming visit notes: “In Ankara, Prime Minister Carney will meet with President Erdoğan to elevate the Canada-Türkiye partnership in key areas, including energy and mining, climate, defence and security, and people-to-people ties.”
The situation for HRDs in Türkiye
Amnesty International has additionally documented that in Türkiye in 2025: “Baseless investigations, prosecutions and convictions of human rights defenders, journalists, opposition politicians and others intensified. …The rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association were arbitrarily restricted. Law enforcement officials used less lethal weapons against peaceful protesters, causing numerous injuries. …Victims of human rights violations, including alleged torture and other ill-treatment by state officials, continued to face a culture of impunity.”
In its annual Freedom in the World report, Freedom House gave Türkiye a score of 32/100 and listed the country as “not free”.
COP31
COP31 will take place in Antalya, Türkiye from November 9 to November 20, 2026.
Human Rights Watch recently commented: “How Türkiye treats its environmental defenders at home will determine whether it can meaningfully fulfill its duties as COP31 co-host. As a co-host, Türkiye should ensure that civil society and environmental defenders can meaningfully participate in the meeting alongside government officials, experts, journalists, and business representatives.”
Video still: People’s Climate Summit organizer Çiğdem Özbas.
Earlier this week, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported: “Cigdem Ozbas of the People’s Climate Summit, a grassroots initiative of more than 100 organisations and individuals, … said so far, more than 1,000 people had committed to joining the People’s Climate Summit, among them over 300 organisations from 100 countries, who will help ‘make our demands visible’ during the first week. During the second week, there will be forums, thematic meetings and evening monitoring sessions to ‘examine proposals that amount to greenwashing, that obscure the real issues, or whose commitments remain unfulfilled,’ she said. …’But in the increasingly authoritarian environment in Turkey, nobody can feel fully secure. Detentions can occur at any time, and often the real reasons behind them are concealed,’ she told AFP.”
Peace Brigades International-Canada has organized webinars featuring human rights defenders at the time of the COP30 summit in Brazil in 2025; the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan in 2024; the COP28 summit in Dubai in 2023; the COP27 summit in Egypt in 2022; and the COP26 summit in Scotland in 2021.
Over the past five years, these webinar have amplified the voices of PBI accompanied defenders in West Papua (Dina Danomira, Teddy Wakum), Colombia (Berenice Celeita, Yuli Velasquez, Danilo Rueda), Guatemala (Walter Rene Lopez Perez, Sandra Calel), Honduras (Christopher Castillo, Juana Ramona Zuñiga), Mexico (Ana Paola Torres Barranco, Valeria Villalobos), Nicaragua (Amaru Ruiz Alemán), Kenya (Gladys Losiki, Nelly Madegwa) and Turtle Island (Eve Saint).
Video still from PBI-Canada COP30 webinar in 2025 that featured Indigenous West Papuan environmental defenders Dina Danomira and Teddy Wakum along with Global Witness policy advisor Javier Garate.
We continue to follow this.
