Türkiye should address air pollution as part of its constitutional and international legal obligations to realize the human rights to health, life, and a healthy environment, and in particular Türkiye should halt the expansion of all coal plants in line with those obligations.

While local community members and environmental groups in Türkiye prepare to file a lawsuit against the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change’s approval of the expansion, it is clear that decisions like this undermine Türkiye’s attempts at proving its climate credentials.

Our analysis of air pollution levels in Elbistan shows that the average PM2.5 concentration was more than five times the annual WHO recommended level & almost three times the proposed 2030 EU standards between January 2021 and June 2024.

Satellite data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P mission shows that the average concentration of sulfur dioxide (SO2) was significantly higher over the plant and in the surrounding villages than over the closest monitoring station in Elbistan.

While Türkiye has a total of 380 air quality monitoring stations across the country, the closest to the plant for which public data is available is located in the town of Elbistan, 22 km away.

Hacıkız Savran, 70, can see the plant’s chimney belching out smoke from her living room, and has had severe asthma for more than 7 years:

[My] doctor was surprised to hear that I had never smoked in my life. He said, "Why did you become [this sick] if you never smoked?”.

The decision to greenlight two additional new units at Afşin-Elbistan plant A comes despite local community concerns the expansion will exacerbate the already dangerous health impacts.

People living nearby described a myriad of health problems that academic studies have attributed to toxic air.