“It’s The West, you know,” my father said one evening, pausing with the fork halfway to his mouth. The television was flickering behind his back, a Turkish comedian gesturing wildly and making the studio audience laugh. “They are holding us back. All those rules, regulations. They just want to keep our economy down.” My grandmother filled my glass with more tea and then topped my glass off with more water. She was nodding slightly.

It was a typical night at our house, and at houses all over Turkey. At many tables, you would hear similar things. No matter if the people drinking the tea were liberals, conservatives, supporters of the government or if they rolled their eyes when our politicians made another speech on the telly.

Fewer people fall for this sort of malarkey by the day; it has, nonetheless, taken root in the country’s political and social structures for decades. Being one of the people who find the notion of blaming someone else for all our mistakes counter-productive, I can’t say I don’t emphasize with such opposition. Ironically, though, these conspiracy theories and the ability to blame the west for all our problems make the Turkish people less likely to fall for denialism against the biggest challenge of our species today: anthropogenic climate change.

The terms “climate change” and its lexical sibling “global warming” have become buzzwords both among the like-minded individuals with a common interest in saving the planet — and by extension, us humans — as well as to those making countless laughable attempts to debunk and invalidate the already consensualized scientific facts. But the frontline against climate change isn’t just being bombarded by denialism.

The “skeptics” of climate science in Turkey’s media, for instance, are far less prevalent than in the Anglosphere, but that in no way means that the country is taking the issue more seriously. More than two-thirds of Turkey’s population acknowledges the existence of human-induced climate change. So while the country doesn’t go around preaching how the “science” behind global warming is manipulated by the penguin lobby to fit their fishy needs, it’s not quite front page news or on anyone’s mind in general. Given the current political state of this not-so-stable country, I don’t find it too presumptuous to say people often believe they have “more urgent matters” to attend to. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a completely invalid way of thinking. Though it’s hardly an excuse to look the other way when it comes to the destructiveness of what’s ahead.

The key factors for the origins of climate change are our current fossil-fueled energy system, which mainly originates from the industrial revolution of the mid-18th century, which took place in the west. In light of this, it’s become an ever-growing opinion to say, at least in countries like Turkey, that the past and present environmental crimes of ours were, in fact, the crimes perpetrated by the western world. Why is it up to us, as the opinion goes (neglecting how Turkey is among the top 20 carbon emitters on the planet), to fix the problem they created? Why bother at all? What gives them the right to make decisions for us industrially developing nations (whilst hinting at UNFCCC’s Kyoto Protocol and Paris Climate Agreement), all the while they’re burning oil in their cars and won’t give a second thought without having to build another coal power plant? How dare they make us mop up the mess they created?!

Turkey’s Salt Lake becomes ‘flamingo cemetery’ amid climate change. Photo by Burak M. Kılıç

This pseudo-intellectual claim isn’t wrong; at least by its own logic. What’s problematic with this odd reasoning is that it calls into question whether or not we should contribute to the fight against climate change at all. It gives them a great deal of license to turn a blind eye and overlook what we’re up against. It lulls them into a false sense of complacency we can ill afford.

You might ask; so what about the government? Well, the situation with them is relatively different, though hardly any better. Many of its industrial decisions can be counted as a step in the right direction against climate change; but with the country’s increased energy investments in fossil fuels, it’s not exactly a paragon of environmentalism. While the government acknowledges climate change and the danger it poses, and some work is being done, there are currently no plausible strategies or plans to put in motion among its priority checklist. Instead, the country’s latest investments in as many as 40 new coal power plants, in addition to its existing ones, are underway with all the associated excuses of economic development and a need for further industrialization.

Several environmental campaigners continue to fight against these investments with notable success. In 2017, some environmental activists were able to succeed in legal action against Izdemir Coal Plant, near the Aeolian city of Kyme. The plant was opened in 2014 and in the years following its activation, many reports of potential hazards to the nearby area as well as negative impacts on the archeological sites closeby were filed. Both were cited by the judge when ruling for its closure.

Moreover, the Turkish non-profit organization TEMA Foundation have been campaigning against these newly planned thermic plants with legal actions, petitions as well as hashtags like #KömürÜzer (#CoalUpsets). But it’s unlikely the government will change its course on fossil fuels at the given rate. Meanwhile, Turkey’s problems with climate change continue to unfold with droughts, water shortages, unstable weather patterns and it is estimated to get worse.

I might be preaching to the choir when I say climate change is all our problem. It is a sort of threat where we cannot point fingers and say, “it’s them, not us” and somehow hope to get away without having to make all the tedious sacrifices. Putting the burden of responsibility on others will only work to bring us further from the solution and closer to finality; not the other way around. It is, quite simply, a do-or-die situation — and nothing in between.

The true renegades of the fight against climate change aren’t necessarily those who question and deny the actuality of the threat or even those who created it. It’s the ones who acknowledge the matter but choose not to act. Because they have the numbers. They make up the majority of this planet and they will be the final nail in the coffin of our extinction.