Despite comments by scientists and Health Minister Koca, who heads the Scientific Advisory Board, “We are just at the beginning of the coronavirus-related epidemic. Tough days lie ahead of us,” President Erdoğan and AKP propaganda would have it that everything is done and dusted. Each day they repeat the claim that countries like Italy, Spain and the USA have been demolished but they have protected Turkey from this disaster with the measures they took.
And to court credibility for such claims, they say, “One week after the epidemic was discerned, we set up the Scientific Advisory Board and started preparations to fight the epidemic.”
Certainly, our wish is for the virus to be brought under immediate control and not to turn into a catastrophe as in Italy or Spain. But the government’s implementations do not inspire hope for such confidence.
It has to be greatly debated, following the creation of the Scientific Advisory Board at the start of January, whether this board was operational and, if so, the extent to which its recommendations were heeded.
This is because, once cases started to appear, it was seen that hospitals are not ready for the pandemic and not only that the number of health staff is inadequate, but also the amount of goggles, masks and protective clothing.
It has emerged that citizens’ needs for hygienic products such as masks and Eau de Cologne went uncalculated and the corresponding measures untaken, no plan for a total lockdown including workers was made and test kits were not even imported. We have witnessed the very late implementation of the most crucial measures in the anti-virus fight and what is not far short of a special effort taken to minimize their effect through piecemeal adoption.
More than twenty thousand people were sent on minor pilgrimage at the end of February and the start of March and the returnees were dispatched to 81 provinces without being quarantined, although the final five thousand returning pilgrims were quarantined in response to the public outcry. The midnight turfing of students onto the street and installing of pilgrims in student hostels laid bare the absence of forethought or the taking of preparations even one day earlier.
Then again, the very late move towards quarantining arrivees from Europe amounted to tacit complicity in the virus spreading.
Nobody can any longer deny that all these measures, taken in the wake of other countries’ wealth of experience, were introduced without advance calculation and planning.
There is plenty to indicate that even the “We are self-sufficient, my Turkey” campaign was started as a countermove to the CHP municipalities’ aid campaign.
The most recent admonition for everyone who goes out onto the street to wear a mask appears not to have been preplanned but to have been mooted by the President without even consulting with the cabinet, because, one day after Erdoğan’s announcement, the Minister of Trade proclaimed that mask sales would be conducted at places close to population centres. Faced with reactions not stopping short of, “They’re even going to sell citizens ten-kurush masks at a profit,” the Trade Ministry stepped to one side and the President moved in: “Masks won’t be sold for money. Every citizen aged between 20 and 65 will have their masks delivered to their homes as post office parcels. Those so wishing should apply by email to the post office.”
However, not only does the post office or any other courier company lack such distribution capabilities, but the post office site collapsed under the intense demand!
Now the wearing of masks, made compulsory as an important measure to prevent the spread of the virus, has ended up morphing into a veritable scandal.
With deadlock emerging over whether Erdoğan and his administration will be able to supply an adequate number of masks and how these are to be distributed, Ankara and Istanbul Metropolitan Municipalities continue to distribute free masks at bus, metro and metrobus stations. And we have yet to hear from Erdoğan or Soylu that these services from these municipalities have been banned, saying, “A state within a state is an endeavour that is beyond negligent.” This, of course, does not mean that we will not subsequently hear about a ban!
Were it to be inquired, “So, apart from the creation of the Scientific Advisory Board, are there any planned and programmed measures that have been taken among the anti-virus measures the Erdoğan AKP administration has adopted, even if by learning from experiences in other countries?” we would unfortunately reply, “No endeavour elicits a “Yes” apart from measures that turn the chaos created by the virus into an opportunity for capital and leaves the working class and populace to pick up the pieces.”
In short, in the AKP administration’s anti-virus fight, there is no strategy that goes beyond trust in “herd immunity,” the measures taken are cosmetic measures and, since the measures were placed into piecemeal implementation, the awaited results were unobtainable.
Put briefly, the administration’s anti-virus fight has been based on neither assembling a true strategy of combat nor measures of a seriousness that such a strategy merits. On the contrary, these measures can be called hunch-based and are being conducted with decisions that occur to the single man and his close circle and whose irrationality is gradually becoming all the more visible. It appears this mindset will remain ingrained going forward.
(Translated by Tim DRAYTON)
İhsan Çaralan
Ceren Sözeri
Yusuf Karadaş
Aras Coşkuntuncel