Katowice, Poland: The annual UN-sponsored climate meet began on Sunday in the Polish city of Katowice with a brief hold up by Turkey, which wants to change its status from a developed country to a developing one. Turkey is listed as an an industrialised developed country in the 1992 UN climate change convention. The rationale for this demand is that as a developing country Turkey can access climate funds, which are otherwise unavailable to industrialised countries. However, it would appear that Turkey is already accessing climate funds far in excess of more vulnerable and poor countries from the European Union The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change which was negotiated and adopted in 1992 states that developing countries will get financial and other support from industrialised countries to undetake actions to tackle climate change. Turkey has argued that it can take measures to significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, however in order to assess the potential for emissions reduction and take the necessary measures it will require financial and technological support. To this end, it will require a change in status from developed to developing country. Turkey applied to the United Nations on November 15, according Turkish agencies, for a switch in status. The meeting in Katowice is not the country’s first attempt to secure this change. It has made this request repeatedly, including at the 2017 climate meet in Bonn.While Turkey has stressed that its status as a developed country precludes it from accessing available climate funds, an analysis by ACT Alliance, a global network of faith-based development agencies, finds that Turkey already receives sizeable amount of funding from the European Union, it receives more than what all the Least Developed Countries receive. The Least Developing Countries is a group of 47 countries recognised by the UN as low-income countries confronting severe structural impediments to sustainable development. These countries are highly vulnerable to economic and environmental shocks and have low levels of assets to meet these challenges. In the period 2013 to 2016 total EU support to Turkey equalled that given to all Least Developed Countries combined.Between 2013 and 2016, Turkey was the single largest individual recipient of climate finance provided by European institutions. It received on an average EUR 667 million a year. By contrast, the only Least Developing Country to make it to the top 10 recipients list is Bangladesh, which got EUR 74 million annual average, driven in large part by considerable amount of climate loans extended to the country. Turkey is the largest direct recipient both of climate loans from European Investment Bank and of climate grants from the European Commission and European Development Fund Experts expect that Turkey will raise its demand for change of session again during the course of the two-weeks of negotiations.