As delegates gathered to negotiate climate finance and a transition away from fossil fuels at this year’s Cop29 in Azerbaijan, Palestinian and climate advocacy groups are fighting to ensure Palestine is on the agenda.

They have particularly reviewed Azerbaijan and Turkey’s role in delivering Israel with crude oil via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.

The pipeline carries Azerbaijani crude oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan and supplies Israel 28 percent of its oil imports at a time when Israel is at war with Gaza and Lebanon.

The pipeline is majority owned by BP, with Azerbaijan’s state oil company Socar as the second largest shareholder.

Three activist groups – Energy Embargo for Palestine, Filistin icin Bin Genc (“1,000 Youth for Palestine”) and Global Energy Embargo for Palestine – have called on people to protest at the Turkish and Azerbaijani embassies, as well as the offices of BP and Socar, during the police summit

“We identify several pressure points. The first is the Turkish state which represents the final stop in the BTC pipeline where oil is shipped to Israel.” said the groups.

And their call was heeded: on November 11, protests were organized outside the Turkish and Azerbaijani embassies in London, Zurich, TokyoBerlin, Dublin and Zagrebas well as others in Palestine, Jordan and Turkey itself.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg issued one statement supporting the protests and shouting “Turkey and Azerbaijan’s complicity in the violence against Gaza”.

At Cop29 in Baku, the Climate Justice Coalition, a coalition of trade unions, NGOs and grassroots campaigns, held a meeting and hosted panels linking the issues of climate change and Israel’s war on Gaza.

One Thousand Youth for Palestine, a Turkish group, has driven the review of Turkey.

“Turkey is not just a spectator, it is also a significant obstacle to Palestinian liberation. Not only by fueling genocide by supplying oil, but also essential goods such as steel, textiles and chemicals,” the group’s Seyma Altundal told MEE.

Performative solidarity

Turkey’s relations with Israel have soured since the Gaza war began, especially after local elections in Turkey where the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was punished in part for its weak response to the conflict.

Last week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey was cutting all ties with Israel. Israeli President Isaac Herzog even failed to appear in Baku for police because Turkey refused to let him use its airspace.

“It was very clear to us that (Turkey’s) performative solidarity was not going to develop into actual, concrete solidarity with Palestine.”

– Bala Ersay, A Thousand Youth for Palestine

Still, the activists of One Thousand Youth for Palestine, which was formed in January, believe that Turkey has not done enough to pressure Israel. The group has targeted Turkish ports and the offices of Socar and BP to protest ongoing oil shipments from Ceyhan despite Ankara’s launch of a trade embargo with Israel in May.

“We realized that Turkey was trying to present itself as the defender of Palestine… but it was very clear to us that this performative solidarity was not going to develop into an actual, concrete solidarity with Palestine,” Bala Ersay, one of the group’s member members, told MEE .

Earlier this month, the Turkish Ministry of Energy denied that all oil tankers bound for Israel had left the port of Ceyhan since Ankara began its trade embargo.

It added that Botas, Turkey’s state oil company, which operates the Turkish section of the pipeline under an agreement, has “no authority or involvement in the purchase or sale of oil” and that “companies transporting oil through the BTC pipeline for export to global markets from The Haydar Aliyev terminal has respected Turkey’s recent decision not to engage in trade with Israel”.

But Lorne Stockman, the author of a Report of the advocacy group Oil Change International, which tracked oil shipments to Israel through July, said its data sources showed several shipments from Ceyhan since May.

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“Our data doesn’t show deliveries after April 28, but then we only tracked to July 15 for the report,” Stockman told MEE.

“We contacted our data sources and they see shipments registered as coming from the BTC terminal, which is Ceyhan, and arriving in Ashkelon in September and October and November.”

A Turkish official has previously told MEE that BP sells oil to middlemen, which Ankara cannot control, and tankers pick up the oil “without declaring their final destination”.

“There is no real reason to assume that these shipments have been stopped. Azerbaijan has a very strong relationship with Israel, it is the largest single source of oil for Israel in our data,” Stockman said.

Azerbaijan’s oil exports to Israel increased fourfold since the beginning of this year, ballooning from 523,554 tons in January to 2,372,248 tons in September.

Surrendering control

Under a 2000 host-government agreement, Turkey is unconditionally bound to ensure the free flow of oil through the pipeline, and would have to pay significant monetary compensation if Ankara violated it.

“Turkey may not have a huge amount of control,” Stockman told MEE. “For the BTC pipeline to go forward in the first place, there may have been some control that was handed over. There may have been a guarantee from the countries hosting the pipeline that they would not interfere with it.

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“We have had similar questions around some of the African exporters, because some of the African countries that are regular suppliers to Israel have made public statements condemning the occupation and Israel’s actions, but their oil continues to flow.

“We think it may be because the agreements these governments have made with the companies that produce their oil bind them not to interfere.”

However, some have argued that Ankara could stop the flow of oil through Ceyhan using South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which Turkey joined in August.

According to Turkish lawyer Yusuf Akseker, while Turkey can be sued by BP or Socar for breaching its agreement, the courts will have to wait for the outcome of the ICJ case.

“Even if the courts do not rule on the crime of genocide, they will establish a crime against humanity, and therefore Turkey will win any possible lawsuit that will be filed,” he said.

Should the ICJ find that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, countries such as Turkey, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan could be seen as violating the obligation to prevent genocide by supplying fuel and raw materials to Israel.

Not a separate issue

In Baku, the Climate Justice Coalition is helping raise the profile of the Palestinian cause at Cop29.

“We came here with two priorities,” Asad Rehman, director of the aid group War on Want and a member of the Climate Justice Coalition, told MEE.

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“One has been our call to rich countries to pay up the public finances needed for debt relief and climate debt, and the other is to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and offer an end to the genocide.”

But as with previous police conferences, calls for Palestinian solidarity are heavily censored.

According to Rehman, activists during a pro-Palestine protest on November 11 were silenced and banned from putting up pictures of Palestinian activists who have been killed by Israel.

“The only thing we’ve been able to do so far is completely silent protests with a fixed number of people,” Rehman said. “And it has required a tremendous amount of organization.”

Azerbaijan, a close Israeli ally, has escalated a crackdown on civil society since Baku was announced as the host of the conference last December. Staging protests outside the conference and engaging with Azerbaijani activists is simply not possible.

According to Azerbaijani human rights defenders, approx 300 people remain detained on politically motivated charges, including climate advocate Anar Mammadli, who has been in custody since April 30.