Court dismisses leadership of Turkish Medical Association after criticism of government
BMJ 2023; 383 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.p2886 (Published 06 December 2023) Cite this as: BMJ 2023;383:p2886
A civil court in Ankara has dismissed all 11 elected leaders of the central council of the Turkish Medical Association (Türk Tabipler Birliği; TTB) in a lawsuit brought by government lawyers after the group’s president criticised Turkish military operations in Syria.
The court’s decision was denounced by Turkish civil society groups, which said that the government was seeking to shut down a major voice in the country’s democratic debate, and by international doctors’ groups, including the World Medical Association, Physicians for Human Rights, the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, and the Standing Committee of European Doctors.
The case was brought after the TTB president, Şebnem Korur Fincancı, commented in October 2022 on a video circulated by Kurdish groups that they claimed showed chemical weapons being used by Turkish forces. Interviewed by the Kurdish aligned Medya Haber TV, Fincancı called for independent investigators to be allowed to enter the conflict zone.
State prosecutors charged her with “making propaganda for a terrorist organisation” and “insulting the Turkish nation, the Republic of Turkey, and the institutions and organs of the state.” Soon after that they launched civil proceedings against the central council leadership, alleging that it had strayed from its founding purposes.
Fincancı was convicted in January, after three months of pre-trial detention, and was sentenced to two years and eight months’ imprisonment. Both that verdict and the new civil judgment are subject to appeal. Until then, Fincancı remains free and the leaders of the TTB remain in their posts.
Should the civil appeal fail, five TTB members appointed by the court as trustee directors will take office until the doctors’ organisation can elect a new leadership. Those elections are due next June, and several of the current leaders are at the end of their permitted two terms, so in practice the court’s ruling may have little effect.
The TTB said that its work would continue. “We know that trying to remove elected officials from office by using the judiciary and silencing professional organisations and democratic public representatives have an important place in the political agenda of the government,” said its new president, Ali İhsan Ökten, in front of the courthouse. But he added that the TTB “did not remain silent yesterday and will not remain silent today.”
Long running battle
The Turkish doctors’ group has been under heavy legal and political pressure from the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for a decade. Fincancı was first arrested on charges of “terrorist propaganda” in 2016, but the case was dropped. She was then arrested and sentenced to two years and six months’ imprisonment for signing an academic petition calling for an end to curfews in Kurdish and opposition dominated regions of Turkey. But that verdict was quashed on appeal. The entire TTB leadership was arrested in 2018.1
The TTB has clashed with the government over health reforms that the doctors call a disguised privatisation of Turkish healthcare. A policy allowing patients to refer themselves to specialists has led to overflowing waiting rooms and poor services for all, the TTB alleges. It also accuses the government of fuelling increased violence against doctors through harsh rhetoric against them.2
The group has highlighted the growing exodus of doctors from Turkey, which reached a peak in 2023. “Let them go,” riposted Erdoğan in one speech, casting the doctors as unpatriotic. On other occasions he has denounced the “so called Turkish Medical Association” as “terrorist lovers,” “unthinking slaves,” and “servants of imperialism.”
The doctors’ group also infuriated the government by questioning its figures during the pandemic. Erdoğan, in response, called for the group to remove the word “Turkish” from its name, but the health ministry was ultimately forced to concede that it had been reporting only symptomatic cases to the World Health Organization, not all infections as required.3
The TTB is a regular target of ultranationalist parties that support Erdoğan in parliament. The doctors’ bitterest foe is Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the far right MHP (Nationalist Movement Party) and founder of the nationalist paramilitary group the Grey Wolves. He has repeatedly labelled the TTB “treasonous” and called for it to be dissolved. The newspaper of the smaller, anti-western VP (Patriotic Party) has accused the “elite pro-American-Kurdish” TTB of directing the physician brain drain.
Michele Heisler, medical director at Physicians for Human Rights, said, “This court decision is just the latest in a relentless attack on the medical profession in Turkey. Our colleagues are being unlawfully arrested, threatened with lengthy prison sentences, and harassed simply for standing up for medical ethics, patient centred care, and human rights.”
The cases brought against the TTB and its members were “unfounded and dishonest,” said Jung Yul Park, chair of the World Medical Association. “These allegations are a threat to the entire medical profession.”