Turkish experts, NGOs launch 'Love Flower Alliance' at COP26

ANKARA

A group of experts and leaders of various non-governmental organizations from Turkey launched a new environmentalist initiative on Nov. 3 at the U.N. climate summit currently underway in Glasgow, Scotland.

The “Love Flower Alliance,” which aims to sustain a “livable ecosystem” was launched at the U.N. Climate Change Conference, or known as COP26 this year.

“I invite all environmental friends to the ‘Love Flower Alliance’,” Halil Ibrahim Yılmaz, deputy chairman of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce and president of Ankara Citizens’ Assembly, said during the launch at the Turkey stand.

“As an environmental friend who founded Turkey’s first ‘Climate Assembly’ and is proud to say that we serve the same purpose as COP26, I call on all humanity to share the blessings of a love-oriented world fraternally,” Yılmaz added.

The new alliance takes its name from a local endemic plant known as Golbasi Sevgi Cicegi (Love Flower), Yılmaz told Anadolu Agency.

He further said that the new initiative invites all humanity to place environmentalist concepts on the leaves of this very special flower: love, respect, empathy, environmental awareness, human rights and welfare, human responsibilities, protecting and improving nature, compassion and tolerance, conscious consumption, and animal welfare.

Yılmaz said that despite various efforts to fight climate change, “we have been helpless to mitigate the effects of global warming.”

He said Turkey witnessed forest fires lasting for weeks, the mucilage affecting the Sea of Marmara, and floods in cities on the Black Sea coast in the last three months.

“Although we have an impact of only 1% on global carbon emissions, the size of the disasters we have experienced in our country and the prices we have paid have far exceeded our responsibility.

“As a country that makes 40% of its annual exports with developed economies, we certainly do not want the Green Transformation to create a barrier to our trade. Our Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change, Ankara Metropolitan Municipality, and other local administrators; all took responsibility in areas such as environmentally friendly energy, smart buildings, and waste recycling,” Yılmaz said.

The Turkish delegation led by Yılmaz also included Seyit Ardıç, who is the deputy chairman of Ankara Chamber of Industry, the president of Ankara Chamber of Industry 2nd and 3rd Organized Industrial Zone and the head of Organized Industrial Zones Supreme Organization; Baran Bozoğlu, the president of Climate Change Policies and Research Association, and Cemalettin Komurcu, the chairman of the Board of Trustees of Ankara Bilim University.

The COP26 will continue until Nov. 12 with numerous panels, meetings, and side events, all looking for remedies to reduce the levels of global warming by keeping it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.