Engaging Climate Change in Transnational Spheres: Cosmopolitan Concerns, Local Mobilization and Environmental Civil Society in Turkey

Even though a strong societal opposition has recently emerged in Turkey in relation to environmental issues, contesting nuclear, thermal and hydroelectric power plants, urban regeneration, mining, and mega infrastructural projects, mobilization for climate change has remained limited, an issue that excites hardly any concern among policy makers and the general public. The research focuses on environmental civil society actors to address the questions of what aspects of the issue they emphasize and what channels they use to mobilize support and advocate change in relation to climate change. Crucially, the role of environmental civil society is conceptualized in interaction with transnational environmental networks. The paper analyzes the extent and nature of participation of environmental civil society in the transnational public sphere of climate change as well as the impact of the climate justice networks on the local/national context. It shows how the dynamics of local mobilization embedded in particularistic attachments can infuse with cosmopolitan concerns beyond immediate localities and borders, albeit in contested ways.

The research is built on in-depth interviews with representatives of national NGOs in Turkey that work on climate change (e.g. Greenpeace Mediterranean; The Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion, for Reforestation and the Protection of Natural Habitats; Doğa Association; Climate Network of Turkey) as well as members of selected local mobilizations (e.g. against a thermal power plant, a hydroelectric power plant and a mega infrastructural project). It will be complemented by fieldwork carried out at the COP21 in December 2015 to understand the dynamics of participation of some of these environmental NGOs in transnational spaces of climate action as well as their exchange with relevant organizations and networks.