Turkey may not ratify Paris climate deal, Erdogan
Turkey may not ratify the Paris climate change accord, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced at the end of the G20 summit in Germany on Saturday. As French President Emmanuel Macron tried to ensure the "irreversible" nature of the Cop21 deal, Erdogan said that other countries had their doubts about it after American President Donald Trump's announcement of US withdrawal.
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"After that step taken by America, the position that we adopt is in the direction of not passing it in parliament," Erdogan said at a press conference in Hamburg.
He said he had told French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, "No offence, but we will not pass it in our parliament as long as the promises made to us are not delivered."
Erdogan claims that former French president François Hollande promised Turkey would be classed as a developing economy, not an industrialised one, meaning it would receive money from a global fund for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions rather than pay into it.
Although the summit's final statement declared the Paris deal "irreversible" and, while noting the US pullout, declared the remaining 19 countries committed to it, Erdogan said that some of the 19 had a "problem" with it and are "not renewing their support".
He did not identify the countries.
Macron, who received less media attention in Hamburg than at May's G7 summit in Sicily, focussed on boosting the Paris deal, announcing a new conference in Paris in December and saying that he still hoped to convince Trump to come back into the fold.
He was even late for his own meeting with Putin, apologising for "making you wait so as to sort out the latest things on the climate", Le Monde newspaper reports.
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