Against the backdrop of the COP31 climate summit co-hosted by Turkey and Australia in Antalya, high-profile climate activist Greta Thunberg joined a diverse panel of campaigners from Nepal, Australia, Palestine, and Canada at a standing-room-only Thursday press conference to deliver a sharp rebuke to the Turkish government. Thunberg explicitly called on Ankara to immediately halt all oil and energy transfers originating from its territory to Israel, framing the ongoing fuel flows as a direct enabler of what she described as the ongoing genocide against Palestinian people in Gaza.
Thunberg’s remarks landed only hours after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used his official COP31 opening address to condemn the cascading harms facing the Gaza Strip, stating that the enclave was suffering not just a genocide of its population, but a deliberate ecocide that had devastated its natural and built environment, and demanding unimpeded emergency aid access to the war-battered territory. Murat Kurum, Turkey’s environment minister and the official president of COP31, had already confirmed to local Turkish media earlier in the week that Israel’s leadership had not received invitations to the global climate summit, a decision he attributed to the mass killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
While campaign collective Energy Embargo for Palestine (EFFP) publicly welcomed these official Turkish statements and policy moves, the group emphasized that a glaring, unaddressed contradiction hangs over Turkey’s entire COP31 hosting tenure. A group spokesperson questioned how a government positioning itself as a global climate leader could allow its territory to remain a critical node in supply chains that deliver fossil fuels to Israel amid its ongoing military campaign in Gaza.
These criticisms draw on newly updated joint research released by EFFP, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and Progressive International, which documents that 77 crude oil shipments totaling nearly 6.46 million metric tons departed Turkey’s Ceyhan port for Israeli destinations between May 2024 and June 2026. This updated dataset expands on a January 2025 preliminary investigation from the same coalition that first uncovered 57 Azerbaijani crude shipments sailing from Turkish ports to Israel between May 2024 and December 2025, a full seven months after Ankara formally implemented a full trade embargo against Israel in May 2024.
The report details that the vast majority of these transfers were deliberately obscured: vessel operators filed falsified end destination paperwork, and regularly disabled their automatic identification system tracking transponders mid-voyage to evade detection. Researchers cross-referenced scattered shipping logs, satellite imagery, and port arrival records to trace the full journeys, confirming that the vessels ultimately docked at Israeli ports after claiming to be heading for Egypt or Italy, where no corresponding port calls were ever recorded. The analysis further establishes that crude transported via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline accounts for over 40 percent of Israel’s total oil imports throughout the Gaza conflict, with the refined fuel directly powering Israeli military fighter jets, tanks, and ground combat vehicles.
Turkish officials have pushed back on the allegations, asserting that they hold no authority over the final destination of crude pumped through the BTC pipeline, which is majority-owned by Azerbaijani state energy firm SOCAR and operated by Turkey’s state-owned BOTAS. In November 2024, Turkey’s energy minister stated that all exporters using the Ceyhan port were complying with the Israel trade embargo, and that no oil was being loaded onto vessels listing Israel as an official port of call. Even so, independent shipping data from tracking firm Kpler, cited by Reuters, shows that Azerbaijani crude exports to Israel surged 31 percent in 2025, hitting their highest annual volume since 2022.
After the release of the first January 2025 investigation, EFFP confirmed that Turkish government ministries reviewed the findings and pledged to launch formal legal proceedings against shipping agents accused of filing false destination documentation for shipments bound for Israel. However, the updated 2026 dataset documents at least 20 additional shipments totaling 2.41 million metric tons of crude leaving Ceyhan for Israel between December 2, 2025, and June 30, 2026, proving the flows continued well after Ankara’s public pledge to crack down on violations.
When contacted for comment by Middle East Eye, Turkish diplomatic representatives noted that the BTC pipeline is governed by binding international agreements and owned by a consortium of 10 global firms, with Turkey’s state-owned TPAO holding only a 6.53 percent stake. They emphasized that no oil owned by TPAO has ever been sold to Israel, and claimed all other firms utilizing the BTC pipeline are fully complying with Turkey’s trade embargo, with no shipments listing Israel as an official delivery point.
Shipping records show the vast majority of the controversial shipments were managed by two Greek maritime operators, Kyklades Maritime Corporation and Thenamaris Ships Management. Prior Middle East Eye reporting, citing data from the No Harbour for Genocide campaign, found that the two firms accounted for 91.23 percent of all crude oil shipments from Turkey to Israel between May 2, 2024, and December 1, 2025. Kyklades operated 19 out of the 20 shipments that occurred after the Turkish government’s December 2025 enforcement pledge, following the same pattern of falsified destinations and disabled tracking signals to avoid scrutiny. Middle East Eye reached out to both Kyklades and Thenamaris for official comment, but received no response by the time of publication.