Erdoğan Government pays scant heed to world’s virus-combatting lessons

In the statement he made the day before yesterday, putting the number of fatalities at 30 and the number of cases at 1236, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that the total number of tests was 20,345.

Looking at the statements made and the numbers given as midnight approaches each day, even if the image is promoted of Health Minister Koca striving towards “transparency,” on inquiring if this transparency extends to the true picture being given country-wide, this is highly debatable.

This is because, despite the WHO president saying weeks ago that the most effective means of countering the virus is “Test, test, test!” the Health Minister announces in the statement he made at midnight on 22 March that the number of tests conducted until today was 20,345. Moreover, it is by now an indisputable fact that the conducting of fifteen to twenty thousand tests a day underlies South Korea’s success!

And the Health Minister still continues to withhold such data and analyses as which provinces the cases are concentrated in, the reasons for its spread and distribution by age.

ARE THE OVER 65’S SCAPEGOATS?

In short, with the minster’s transparency limited to highly generalised “numbers of cases,” “numbers of tests” and “numbers of fatalities,” the people’s trust diminishes that the measures spoken of are genuine.

The approach towards the flaunting of the curfew by certain elderly people has gone beyond “warnings” and has more or less reached the stage of lynching the elderly.

Yes, there most certainly is a need to chide millions of elderly people into compliance with the curfew. But the turning of this into a witch hunt with the media’s well-known populist methods all but invites the thought that this has to do with efforts to seek a “scapegoat” faced with the virus spreading and the prospect of it turning into a disaster.

In a period in which the anti-coronavirus fight has been subjected to considerable debate worldwide and considerable awareness has accumulated as to the measures that need to be taken, as opposed to Italy, the government has taken no measure in conjunction with the closure of schools to stem the flow of those with the requisite means to the “south,” to holiday areas and their summer homes. Is there an explanation for permitting more than twenty thousand people to make a minor pilgrimage after it had become apparent that the virus would engulf the world (end of February) and, more seriously, sending the returnees home without quarantining them? With it known that the reason for South Korea’s success in tackling the virus was the conducting of fifteen to twenty thousand tests per day, is the total number of tests Turkey conducted during March being down in the twenties thousand and the government being so late in using this most important of counteractive tools excusable negligence?

However, President Erdoğan and health minister Koca have alleged that we are the country taking the most effective measures in the world to counteract the coronavirus!

REDUNDANT WORKERS’ FAMILIES FACING HUNGER!

As the process unfolds, the inadequacy of the measures taken becomes ever more visible. In fact, health experts point to the lack of protective materials against the coronavirus and the low number of health workers. Alongside the necessary action in terms of the supply of materials, heading the demands of health organizations is the reappointing of health workers dismissed under decrees with the force of law and the appointing of doctors and health workers whose placements are kept waiting by the need for security probes.

Conversely, reactions have started to emerge on the labour front with the “package” named the “Economic Stability Shield” supposedly introduced to “counteract” the spread of the virus taking the form of a package for supporting capital, but for the time being these are confined to workplaces.

The sudden redundancy of hundreds of thousands of workers and their being consigned to unpaid leave of uncertain duration leaves minimum-wage earners who in any case manage to subsist by “running up the credit card” and even more so the hundreds of thousands of workers who work outside the rules and do not qualify for the short-time working payment and their families to face hunger and eviction. While funds of as much as one hundred billion lira are channelled into many business under this package, there is absolutely no measure for workers who have been made redundant and put on unpaid leave and their families who number in the millions.

THE MOST CLASS-BASED PACKAGE IS IN TURKEY

With a view to lessening the coronavirus’ impact on workers and wage earners, unions such as the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions, Confederation of Public Employees' Trade Unions, Turkish Medical Association and Trade Union of Employees in Public Health and Social Services are pressing for the immediate implementation of such measures as prohibiting redundancies, support for redundant workers to enable them to stay afloat, payment by the state of basic expenses such as natural gas, electricity, water and rents, halting credit card payments and giving workers and their families the necessary assistance to stay on their feet.

 “Concrete and heart-warming income support” provided to keep wage earners afloat in their daily lives feature prominently in similar “packages” introduced in many countries such as the USA, Canada, Germany, France and Norway. Needless to say, there is also a capitalist system in these countries and the packages drawn up basically serve to rescue capital. However, at the same time, the provision of support has been envisaged to enable workers and hard-pressed sections of the populace to stay on their feet.

As such, it would be no exaggeration to say that the most pro-capital, the most class-based of the packages introduced in the anti-coronavirus fight is the Erdoğan government’s “Economic Stability Shield” package. Erdoğan and the AKP rulership obdurately refuse to heed the lessons of the anti-virus fight in the world.

(Translated by Tim DRAYTON)