Erdogan opens COP31 in Antalya as activists report arrests and family pressure

Turkey opened the COP31 climate summit in Antalya with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan casting his country as a guardian of nature, while environmentalists at home described arrests, fines and intimidation that they say have intensified since the government relaxed restrictions on gold and coalmining.

The summit opened with a cinematic video that asked viewers: "When did you decide to look at nature as if it's not your nature?" Addressing world leaders gathered in the Mediterranean resort city, which co-hosts the conference with Australia, Erdogan presented Antalya's multicultural history as fitting for the host role. "The earth is a sacred trust that must be protected and guarded," he said.

Human Rights Watch raised the alarm last month over what the author of its report, Deniz Bayram, called a widening campaign against Turkey's environmental movement. Bayram said that people told her that when they protested, they "faced police violence and abusive tactics by security officers," adding that activists also faced legal harassment through unfair criminal investigations brought with no criminal evidence.

Bayram said the pressure extended to families. In the eastern Black Sea region, security officers contacted the adult sons of women protesters who lived in other cities and told them to stop their mothers attending further rallies. She said the tactic created a chilling effect that kept people away from demonstrations.

Suheyla Dogan, a retired civil engineer who has become a leading voice in protests against gold mines, faces four separate legal cases. She said that at the demonstrations, they "faced a lot of tear gas, water cannon, beatings and so on." Ahead of a planned demonstration in Antalya during the summit, several organisers were detained by police and released a day later, she said, even though the rally had not been banned.

Ismail Hakki Atal, a lawyer who represented villagers fighting to protect the Akbelen Forest near the south-western town of Milas, said police detained him twice within five days after he alleged on a live news broadcast that the government-backed conglomerate Limak breached Turkey's Olive Law by cutting down olive trees and dumping rubble on olive groves. He said that "the ruling AKP has effectively established a judiciary" in Turkey capable of having anyone it wishes arrested. "The judicial system currently hangs over us like the Sword of Damocles."

The government maintains that the right to protest remains protected. Legal experts warn that pre-trial detention has become standard practice, leaving activists in jail for weeks before their cases are heard. Dogan said the burden of frontline protest is increasingly falling on retirees such as herself: "I don't have a job to lose."