New Turkish law forbids medical treatment of injured protesters without state permission

Turkey’s parliament has passed a bill that international medical and human rights organisations have warned will expose doctors to prosecution if they provide first aid in emergency situations without state authorisation.

Under the bill, medical professionals who provide independent assistance once official health services are on the scene could face up to three years’ imprisonment or a fine of two million Turkish lira (£560 000; €675 000; $920 000).

Critics of the bill are now urging the Turkish president, Abdullah Gul, not to sign it into law later this month.

The bill, which is part of a larger package of health bills, was passed by parliament on 2 January. Some see it as an alarming move by a state that arrested and intimidated doctors in 2013 for treating injured antigovernment protesters in makeshift medical facilities, after clashes with police around Gezi Park in central Istanbul.

The World Medical Association, the British Medical Association, the United Nations, and the US based medical rights group Physicians for Human Rights have all expressed strong concern that the bill would limit access to care and put doctors in direct conflict with their ethical and professional responsibilities.1 2

Vincent Iacopino, Physicians for Human Rights’ senior medical adviser, said, “The Turkish government’s intolerance of opposition is so great that it is willing to compromise its citizens’ access to care in emergencies and incarcerate physicians for simply following their ethical duty of caring for those in need.”

In May 2013 medical professionals and students provided first aid to people injured by tear gas and water cannon that riot police used against demonstrators. The demonstrations began in response to a construction project in Gezi Park and spread around the country. Physicians for Human Rights has reported that such use of tear gas was illegal and that independent medical professionals treating the injured were intimidated and arrested.3

The Turkish health ministry did not respond to the BMJ’s request for a comment in time for inclusion in this report. However, the health minister, Mehmet Muezzinoglu, has said previously that the bill was drawn up before the Gezi Park protests, because of a lack of regulation in this area. Turkey’s Anadolu news agency reported him as saying that the Gezi Park situation in 2013 proved the need for such a bill because some volunteers providing emergency care were not medically qualified. He added that protesters had hidden among the volunteers, that no records of the care provided were given to authorities,4 and that the health ministry would have been blamed if any patients had had complications of treatment.

“Imagine that someone puts up a tent near the street to provide first aid to traffic accidents. This is not within the rule of law,” Muezzinoglu reportedly said.

But Bayazit Ilhan, secretary general of the Turkish Medical Association, told the BMJ that the law would mean that many antigovernment protesters who were injured in any future “Gezi Park type situation” would simply get no medical attention.

Ilhan said, “Many people were too afraid to go to the state run hospitals because the government was making a list of the names of the injured.”