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* Photo: Özge Elif Kızıl - Ankara/AA - ** News: AA
Click to read the article in Turkish
Ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) submitted a bill on the prevention of violence in healthcare to the Speaker's Office yesterday (April 8).
The legislative proposal submitted by main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) İstanbul MP Ali Şeker to bring the bill on the prevention of violence in healthcare directly into the Parliamentary agenda was rejected by the AKP and MHP MPs the day before.
What does the bill foresee?
The bill submitted by the AKP and MHP foresees the following:
The sentences given for the offenses of injury, threat, insult and resistance to prevent duty as per the Turkish Penal Code committed against the personnel of the public and private health institutions and organizations while they are on duty will be increased by half.
In the related offenses, the deferment of the prison sentence as per the Turkish Penal Code and the deferment of the announcement of the verdict as per the Code of Criminal Procedure will not be implemented.
In the health institution where the incident of violence occurred, if there are other health personnel that could treat the perpetrator or his/her relatives, the related personnel will serve, rather than the injured.
Turan: Bill foresees prison sentence for all
Addressing the reporters after submitting the bill to the Speaker's Office, AKP Group Deputy Chair Bülent Turan briefly stated the following:
"If the person insulted or injured [a health worker], he or she cannot say, 'I have done it for the first time, I will be only fined.' Our proposal foresees prison sentence for all perpetrators subject to these crimes.
"Everyone is valuable, our every citizen is important for us. But our healthcare workers are now waging a special war for us, we are going through a special period. It is, of course, understandable that our measures about them are also special.
"When we look at the systematics of law, our all citizens are, of course, equal. The execution and penalization of all of them must be the same, but we are going through special circumstances. We are taking this step to ensure that our health workers will not have any problems.
"Therefore, whoever commits this crime, deferment or change into a judicial fine will not be the case. On the very contrary, an article on prison sentence will be added."
'Let's add CHP's proposal as an article'
Bülent Turan also spoke about the rejection of the CHP's proposal by the votes of AKP and MHP MPs. Turan briefly said:
"While the proposal was being debated, there were only 7 CHP MPs at the General Assembly hall. When even the CHP did not approve its own proposal, how could we reject it?
"If you would submit a proposal, would you come with only 7 MPs? Therefore, this issue needs to be approached from a viewpoint free from any political polemics. This issue is the issue of our doctors, our nurses, it is the issue of us all and we have to do this with the support of all parties.
"All parties should evaluate this proposal of ours with commonsense. If they find it reasonable, which I think must be the case, let us add it to the bill of criminal enforcement, I mean to the bill debated today.
"However, as especially the HDP [Peoples' Democratic Party] and CHP have dissenting opinions as to some parts of the bill on criminal enforcement debated now, they have not favored adding it to this law."
Concluding his remarks, Turan made a call to all political parties at the Parliament, calling on them to add the legislative proposal on prevention of violence in healthcare to the bill on criminal enforcement. (EKN/SD)
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