The role of public policies in combating climate change: The situation of Turkey and European Union countries

In recent years, the climate crisis is one of the top issues on the world agenda. Especially with the growth of industrialisation, this crisis has become an increasing phenomenon. The acceleration of climate change around the world and the resulting problems makes it necessary to take action. Policy makers have the most important role in the mitigation of the effects of climate change. The leaders of the EU Member States, which are exposed to the negative effects of climate change, are aware that their continent is getting warmer and are leading many international programmes to combat climate change. Similarly, Turkey is affected by climate change due to its geographical location. It continues to address this issue through a series of environmental public policies. In this context, it would be useful to examine the relative performance of Turkey, which is in the process of harmonisation with the EU, compared to the EU in terms of the public policy indicators it has put into practice in the fight against climate change. The objective of the thesis is to present the comparative performance of Turkey and EU countries in terms of public policies implemented to combat climate change. In other words, it determines which EU countries Turkey's economy is similarly developed in terms of relevant public policy indicators. In this way, it aims to shed light on the policies to be developed by other countries seeking to combat climate change. A review of the existing literature on the fight against climate change shows that the number of theoretical studies and econometric analyses has increased recently, but the number of statistical studies is limited. This is where the study differs from other studies in the literature. According to the results of hierarchical and non-hierarchical clustering analyses, Turkey is in the same group for public policy indicators as Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland and Sweden.