An Invitation

This book was written in a pause.

The pause before the world arrives. Before the cameras, the motorcades, the headlines of COP31, the UN global climate conference. Before Antalya becomes a name spoken in every language, in every country, for a brief and consequential moment. Most of the city does not yet fully know what is coming. What is COP31?

The shopkeeper arranging his display in Kaleiçi does not know. The teacher preparing her lessons in Kepez does not know. The fisherman mending his nets in the old harbor, the grandmother watering her balcony flowers, the children running through the streets of Muratpaşa; they do not know. But they will.

When they do, we want them to have this book. Not as instruction. Not as warning. But as invitation. An invitation to see their city — our city — with new eyes. To understand what it means to host the world’s most important conversation about our shared future, our climate. It is COP31.

From November 9 to 20, 2026, Antalya will host between 50,000 and 80,000 people from nearly every country on earth. They will arrive with different titles; negotiators, ministers, scientists, activists, journalists, business leaders, but they will share a common purpose: to determine whether humanity can still prevent catastrophic climate change.

This gathering, COP31, represents the thirty-first time the world has attempted this conversation. Some years have produced breakthrough agreements like the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 or the Paris Agreement in 2015. Other years have ended in disappointment, with nations unable to bridge the gap between ambition and action.

Who are we to write this book?

We are not climate scientists. We are not policy architects or sustainability strategists. We hold no patents on carbon capture, no seats at negotiating tables.

But we are citizens of this planet; two people who chose Antalya as home and now watch its coastline retreat, its seasons unravel, its ancient rhythms falter. Between both of us, we carry decades inside the walls of academia, long enough to recognize when an entire civilization is talking past the most urgent question it has ever faced. The climate.

There are times in history when a place is called to be more than itself

Antalya’s Moment · An Invitation

We may not study the crisis professionally. But we know enough to be alarmed. We know enough to know that knowing is no longer enough.

We come to this book from different directions. One of us (Prof. Bassem Khafagy) arrived from far away; a global citizen, shaped by years in Egypt, Europe, America, and many places between. A wanderer who found, unexpectedly, that the wandering stopped here. That this city by the sea offered something no other place had offered: a home.

The other (Dr. Nurgül Karahan) was born on Turkish soil; not in Antalya, but in the heart of this land. A soul shaped by the rhythms and traditions of this country, who came to Antalya and discovered the same thing: a place to belong. A place to root.

We are unique. Our history is diverse. Our languages are not the same, but we share this city now. We walk its streets together. We watch its sunsets together. We have learned to love it; not blindly, not without seeing its flaws; but with the kind of love that wants something to become more fully itself.

This book is written with both of our hearts. Both of our souls, and it will exist in two languages; English and Turkish. Not translated, but rewritten. Because some things cannot be translated. They must be felt again, from the beginning, in the language that holds them.

To Antalya, we say this

You are more than you know. More than the beaches that draw millions. More than the hotels and the restaurants and the ancient ruins that tourists photograph. You are a city with roots that reach back thousands of years. A city that has survived empires and earthquakes, that has absorbed wave after wave of change without losing its soul.

This is not a small thing. This is wisdom. The world is coming to you; not for your sun and sea, but for something harder to name.

Between the last ordinary morning and the first extraordinary one, there is only a pause, and what we choose to carry into it

Antalya’s Moment · An Invitation

Antalya faces the irony of hosting the world’s climate conversation while living its consequences. The city preparing venues for COP31 simultaneously confronts water rationing, heat records, ecosystem collapse, and an economic model threatened by the crisis delegates will gather to discuss.

This is not future projection; this is present reality, happening now, to a city the world will visit in November 2026.

To Antalya we say, we believe; we truly believe that you are equal to it. Not because you are perfect. Not because you have solved your own challenges. But because you know how to welcome visitors. Because you know how to endure. Because you carry, in your stones and your people and your rhythms, a memory of what it means to live in relationship with the land and the sea.

This is what you can offer. Not policy papers. Not technical solutions. But presence. Witness. The quiet reminder that climate is not abstract; it is the air we breathe, the water we drink, the summers we endure.

Wake up, Antalya. Your moment is coming. It is NOW

To the world, we say

Look carefully at this place. Do not see only the postcard. Do not see only the conference venue. See the city beneath the city. The layers of history. The people who live here, who will remain here long after the delegates have gone home.

They are not backdrop. They are participants. Their lives will be shaped by what you decide in your negotiations. Their children will inherit the world you leave behind.

Türkiye has warmed 1.5°C since the 1970s, exceeding the global Paris Agreement target. In 2025, temperatures touched 50°C in some regions. This is not gradual change measured over generations; it is transformation within a single lifetime, within the memory of people still farming the same land their grandparents farmed.

Climate change arrived in Türkiye not as future threat but as present crisis. The droughts, heat waves, fires, floods, crop failures, water shortages, and ecosystem collapse are happening now. Türkiye hosts COP31 not as observer but as victim, not as theoretical case study but as nation already fighting for survival. The front line is here, the battle is now, and retreat is not an option.

This situation is true of almost every place, of course. Every city, every village, and every island. But you are coming here. To this coast. To this sea. And so, for two weeks, Antalya will stand for all of them; for every community on earth that is living with climate change, adapting to it, suffering from it, and hoping for something better.

Listen to what this place has to say. Not in speeches. In the taste of a tomato at the morning market. In the eyes of the old men watching the sunset from the harbor. In the rhythm of a city that still knows how to pause, to breathe, and to live at a human pace.

This is not nostalgia. This is survival. The wisdom to know what is enough. The patience to build on what came before. The hospitality to welcome strangers without losing yourself. These are not small virtues. In a world racing toward catastrophe, they may be the virtues that will save us all.

If Antalya were to speak, it would remind you: the Mediterranean basin warms 20% faster than global average, yet covers less than 1% of the world’s ocean surface. This concentrated vulnerability makes it a climate laboratory, what happens here previews what happens elsewhere. COP31’s location is not symbolic; it’s strategic.

We have warmed 1.2°C globally, but the Mediterranean already exceeds 1.5°C. Each fraction of a degree separates manageable from catastrophic: coral reefs surviving or dying, crop yields declining or failing entirely.

The Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target wasn’t arbitrary; it was the threshold where tipping points multiply.

Because of all of this, we wrote this book. We love this city, this region, and this world. We wrote it also because we believe in the importance of moments.

There are times in history when a place is called to be more than itself. When circumstances converge to create an opportunity for transformation, for voice, and for meaning. These moments do not come often. And they do not wait.

COP31 is such a moment.

What we do with it; what Antalya does, what Türkiye does, what the world does; is not yet written. The future remains open. The story is still being shaped. This book is our contribution to that shaping. It is an attempt to outline the opportunity. To ask the questions we must ask. To remind us all — Antalya and the world — of what is at stake and what is possible.

This is Antalya. A city with wisdom to share. A city with ambitions and hope. This is the place the world has chosen. This is our home.

May we be worthy of the moment.

May we turn toward the future with clear eyes and open hearts.

And may what happens here ripple outward, across the Mediterranean, across the continents, and across the generations as a story of what humanity can do when it finally, fully wakes up and acts.

Prof. Bassem Khafagy
Dr. Nurgül Karahan
Antalya, February 14th, 2026