COP31: More than 1.5 million expected for UN meeting in Turkey

Ma total of 1.5 million visitors are expected in the city of Antália, the tourist metropolis of the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, for the 31st United Nations climate summit (COP31), which starts on Monday.

According to Turkish Minister for Environment and Urbanism Murat Kurum, president of COP31, the estimate triples the usual number of visitors from the province in November in recent years, although in summer it exceeds two million per month.

The organizers of COP31, which runs until 20 November, confirmed the participation of 85 heads of state or government and about 3,000 journalists, in addition to applications from 45,000 volunteers.

The Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, will host the summit of leaders, scheduled for November 11 and 12, in which, among others, Brazilian President Lula da Silva and British Prime Minister Andy Burnham will participate.

Lula was the host of the previous conference, COP30, in Belém, in the Brazilian Amazon, which houses the largest tropical forest in the world.

The summit of leaders will also be marked by significant absences, such as that of the presidents of the United States, Donald Trump, and China, Xi Jinping.

Beijing announced that it will send the vice president, while the United States announced a Congressional delegation.

France, Germany, India and Russia were also off the provisional list of speakers of the summit of leaders, according to UN information released on October 21.

The Portuguese Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, should also not participate in the summit of leaders, and the Portuguese delegation to COP31 should be headed by the Minister for Environment and Energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho.

In the city between the waters of the Mediterranean and the vestiges of the Roman past, a complex of buildings, gardens and pavilions with a million square meters, between fields, orchards and forests welcomes the most important summit on the world's climate, whose mission this year is to move from promises to action and focus on ways to reduce the gap between the rapid advance of the planet's warming and the pace of international commitments to mitigate it.

As usual, the enclosure is divided between the so-called ‘blue zone’ for official delegates and the ‘green zone’ for the general public, which will host four exhibitions in which 120 Turkish artists and 70 foreigners will participate, according to Kurum.

Although there is talk of environment, technology and climate, the Turkish authorities will also take advantage of the tourist, historical, gastronomic and cultural attractions of the region, through numerous parallel activities, workshops and concerts.

Antália is Turkey's main tourist hub, with 14 million visitors in 2025, of which 13 million foreigners, although in the first ten months of this year the number has already exceeded 15 million.

The province has more than 2,700 hotels, with a total capacity of 620,000 beds, distributed over 180 kilometres of coast to the east of Antália, which receives mainly sun and beach tourism.

The flow of visitors is also constant in the city itself, erected on rocky cliffs that surround a fishing port and with a historical center that preserves traces of Roman fortifications.

The summit also won a soundtrack: Tarkan, one of the biggest stars in Turkish pop music, performed ‘Wake Up’ (‘Awake’), the English version of ‘Uyan’, a song he composed for COP31. The music video calls for the protection of nature and animal welfare.

The COP31 will take place between November 9 and 20, led for the first time by two countries: Turkey and Australia.