There are plenty of well-meaning sustainability initiatives under way in Turkey, but a cultural movement for change has yet to take hold

Faced with soaring energy costs amid rapid urbanisation and industrialisation, the Turkish government late last year finally enacted a long-awaited law setting feed-in tariffs for renewable energy generation.

For environmentalists, though, the law contained a major catch. It allowed protected nature areas to be used for production facilities for renewable energy – including the massive hydroelectric dams they have been fighting for years.

The inconsistency reflects what the deputy director of the Regional Environmental Centre’s Turkey office calls a lack of overall vision on environmental issues. “There are a lot of laws but they are not enforced and do not serve a target,” says REC’s Kerem Okumus. “There is no sustainable long-term regulatory framework.”

The situation parallels that of most Turkish companies, which largely adopt individual initiatives that might fall under the heading of “corporate social responsibility” without making deeper changes to their practices and processes.

“Many companies do not get what sustainability is about,” says Aykan Gulten, a former Nike corporate responsibility manager who now works in corporate affairs for Coca-Cola Icecek. “They do not assess their impact on the environment and society but try to be recognised as responsible through donations and PR work.”

Garanti Bank, the country’s second largest private bank, has, for example, been much praised for its longstanding sponsorship of the environmental group WWF Turkey. The same bank has, however, been a target of fierce criticism domestically and in Europe for its support for the Ilisu Dam project, a massive hydroelectric power plant in south-eastern Turkey that would inundate a 2,000-year-old city and displace its current residents. European funders have already pulled out of the project.

“There are a growing number of firms adopting incremental CSR measures, but as far as I can tell, no company in Turkey is truly migrating towards sustainability in a way that meaningfully challenges the business model,” says John Buffington of Karbon Ekonomi, a firm that offers sustainability consulting to Turkish firms.

Many say the government, under current president Abdullah Gul since 2007, gives companies little or no incentive to do so, despite various commendable laws, including ones mandating building energy performance and other efficiency measures.

 

Lacking pressure 

“Environmental regulation in Turkey is pretty sophisticated but there is not enough monitoring, enforcement, and criminal sanctions,” says Gulten. “There are no regulations holding companies back from improving environmental performance but there are not enough encouraging it either.”

According to REC’s Okumus, one of the most important moves the government could make would be to establish an emissions-reduction target that companies would have to figure out how to meet. Turkey’s per-capita carbon emissions are near the world average of 4.5 tonnes a year, but at the current rate of growth, he says, this figure could hit 9 tonnes by 2020, leaving the country trailing.

“Right now there is no motivation, no incentive, no regulatory pressure,” Okumus says, adding that consumer demand and market pressure are also lacking when it comes to sustainability.

In the absence of such factors, individual actors in both the public and private sector become key driving forces, as do pressures from outside Turkey.

“Turkey’s environmental agenda is 100% related to the EU accession process. Every year we’re incorporating new EU regulations and directives and there’s a huge amount of compliance work being done at the company level,” Okumus says, adding that international climate change negotiations also play a significant role.

“[EU accession] has been one of the drivers in the Turkish clean-tech industry,” says a business leader in the renewable-energy sector. “The EU has been pressuring Turkey since its economy has been growing at high rates in the last decade, but without much care for the environment.”

The increasing globalisation of the Turkish economy has had a similar influence, with multinationals operating in the country often at the leading edge of corporate responsibility efforts. “The real drivers right now that I’ve found are a foreign parent company that has a global programme and foreign investors asking for it,” Buffington says.

When looking for a corporate partner for her social entrepreneurship project, Copmadam founder Tara Hopkins likewise found success with Unilever, a large multinational. “We did go to several big Turkish companies, asking them to sponsor a Turkish development programme, and they were less than interested,” she says.

Others remain hopeful, however, that awareness and action are on the rise, particularly in the private sector.

“Turkey is going through the same period the western world completed a few years ago,” Gulten says. “At the end of this period, companies with real commitment will be able to differentiate their position from greenwashers.”

Jennifer Hattam is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul.  



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