ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan praised a deal reached with Australia on Saturday to host next year’s UN climate summit, calling the compromise a meaningful achievement for multilateralism.
Resolving a lengthy standoff, the two countries agreed that Turkiye will host the COP31 summit in 2026 while Australia leads the negotiation process. Ankara and Canberra both bid in 2022 to host the conference and had since refused to stand down.
“Taking into consideration that multilateralism has in recent times lost ground, I find this agreement that we reached with Australia to be meaningful,” Erdogan told an event at the Group of 20 summit in Johannesburg on Saturday evening.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Sunday that his country would have “exclusive authority in relation to the negotiations” guiding decision-making at the summit.
In a statement, Albanese said the Pacific region would host a special pre-COP meeting to bring “attention to the existential threat climate change poses to the region.”
A bloc of 18 Pacific Island nations, many at risk from rising seas, had backed Australia’s bid.
“Hundreds of bilateral meetings, climate-oriented visits to tens of countries, days of diplomatic negotiations. And finally Turkiye is the COP31 President and Host!,” Turkiye’s minister of environment, urbanization and climate change, Murat Kurum, posted on X late on Saturday.
“As Turkiye, we guarantee to organize a fair and balanced conference of the parties, focusing not only on our own region but also on fragile regions such as the Pacific and Africa, connecting the north and the south,” he later said in a separate statement from the COP30 meeting in Brazil.
The annual COP conference is the main global forum for driving action on climate change.
Turkiye’s Erdogan praises ‘meaningful’ deal with Australia on hosting COP31 summit
https://arab.news/zp6q4
Turkiye’s Erdogan praises ‘meaningful’ deal with Australia on hosting COP31 summit
- A bloc of 18 Pacific Island nations, many at risk from rising seas, had backed Australia’s bid
8 in 10 British Muslims face ‘financial faith penalty’ when seeking home finance, survey finds
- Restricted choices plague potential buyers
LONDON: Eight in 10 British Muslims say their home finance choices are restricted because of their faith, according to a new national survey that highlighted what researchers describe as a growing “financial faith penalty” in the UK housing market.
The report, published by Islamic home finance fintech firm Offa, found that 80 percent of Muslim respondents believe their religious beliefs limit their access to suitable home finance, while those who do use Islamic products often face slower decisions, heavier paperwork and poorer customer experiences than in the conventional mortgage market.
Based on surveys of 1,000 British Muslims conducted by Muslim Census, and 2,000 non-Muslims carried out by OnePoll, the research calls on providers, brokers and policymakers to modernize Islamic home finance and improve access to Sharia-compliant products.
Among the 24.3 percent of British Muslims who have used Islamic home finance, just 5 percent said they had received a same-day decision.
Some 62 percent waited up to two weeks, while 33 percent waited more than 15 days, including 16 percent who waited over a month.
Long decision times were cited as the biggest challenge by 28 percent of respondents, followed by excessive paperwork (22.6 percent) and poor customer service (18.9 percent).
Islamic home finance differs from conventional mortgages by avoiding interest and steering investment away from sectors considered harmful to society, including gambling, alcohol, tobacco, arms trading and animal testing.
Sagheer Malik, chief commercial officer and managing director of home finance at Offa, said the findings showed British Muslims were being underserved by outdated systems.
Malik said: “Property is the asset class of choice for many of the UK’s 3.87 million Muslims, both as a route to generational wealth and as a long-term financial foundation, yet our insightful research report reveals that British Muslims are being underserved and deterred by slow, outdated and opaque Islamic home finance provision.
“This is not a niche concern. It goes to the heart of financial fairness and inclusion in modern Britain.”
He added that Muslims deserved Sharia-compliant products that matched mainstream standards on “price, speed and simplicity.”
Despite strong demand, uptake remains low.
Only 12.8 percent of British Muslims surveyed said they currently use Islamic home finance, with a further 11.5 percent having done so in the past. More than three quarters (75.7 percent) have never used it.
Faith plays a central role in financial decisions, with 94.2 percent saying it is important that their financial products align with their ethical or religious beliefs. Yet more than half of those using conventional mortgages said they felt unhappy or uneasy about doing so because of their faith.
The study also found that British Muslims share similar home ownership aspirations to the wider population, with 79.1 percent citing the desire to provide a stable home for their family, while 18.6 percent said building generational wealth was their main motivation. Only 2.2 percent said they did not want to own a home.
The report suggests Islamic finance could appeal beyond Muslim communities. While 64 percent of non-Muslim respondents had never heard of Islamic home finance, 63 percent said they favored its ethical principles once explained.
Younger generations were the most receptive, with 43 percent of Generation Z and 37 percent of millennials saying they would consider using Islamic home finance, compared with just 7 percent of baby boomers. More than three quarters of Gen Z and 72 percent of millennials also said it was important that their finance provider avoided investing in ethically harmful sectors.
Offa said the findings pointed to an opportunity to expand ethical finance in the UK, provided the industry can deliver faster, simpler and more transparent services.
