Protesting in front of Parliament, physicians call strike in Turkey on February 8

* Photo: CHP MP Ali Fazıl Kasap / Twitter

Click to read the article in Turkish

The Turkish Medical Association (TTB) staged a protest in front of the Çankaya Gate of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in the capital city of Ankara today (February 4). Physicians asked why the legislative proposal foreseeing better employee personal rights for healthcare workers had been withdrawn from the General Assembly of the Parliament.

Meeting ahead of their "White Strike Duty" (Beyaz G(ö)rev) on February 8, physicians were also supported by main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) MPs as well as the representatives of several NGOs and labor unions.

'It is time to lay claim to our rights and labor'

Chanting the slogans, "We don't want to die while working" and "We want to live, we want to keep alive", physicians walked from the TTB Central Office to the Çankaya Gate of the Parliament. TTB Central Council Chair Prof. Şebnem Korur Fincancı, making a press statement there, asked why the legislative proposal had been withdrawn from the General Assembly.

"You said, 'We will submit a better one (proposal)', but it has been more than two months. Why don't you make a statement to physicians and healthcare workers," asked Korur Fincancı, calling on all MPs to lay claim to the labor and rights of healthcare workers in the country:

It is now time for the MPs of the people to claim public health and our labor. It is now time to raise your voices for us.

Korur Fincancı also reminded the public that physicians would be on "white strike duty" for their rights on February 8 (next Tuesday).

Noting that they, as the TTB and the medical chambers representing physicians across Turkey, came in front of the Parliament to express their demands, the TTB Chair criticized that the physicians in Turkey "receive one of the lowest salaries when compared to other countries while they are also the ones who are subjected to violence the most."

Low salaries, COVID-19 deaths, violence...

According to Korur Fincancı, the salaries of specialist physicians rank sixth from the end among OECD countries while those of practicing physicians rank 14th among 17 countries after Latvia, Mexico and Lithuania.

Criticizing private hospitals for "increasing their profits further while disregarding the employee personal rights" of healthcare workers, she underlined that the number of physicians who emigrated from Turkey has seen a 24-fold increase in the last 10 years:

Only in a month, 197 physicians applied to the Turkish Medical Association to get a document for working abroad. This number is more than three times the total number of applications in 2012.

Lashing out at the 5-minute time allocated to physicians to examine patients in public hospitals and other public medical institutions, TTB Chair Prof. Şebnem Korur Fincancı noted that Turkey ranks 34th among 37 countries in terms of the number of physicians per patient.

Referring to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak as well, she raised concerns that Turkey is still high on the list of COVID-19 deaths and cases among physicians when compared to other countries. Accordingly, she criticized that the government has failed to take necessary measures in the face of the pandemic and that COVID-19 has not yet been officially recognized as an occupational disease for health workers in Turkey.

The TTB Chair also criticized the increasing violence in healthcare, underlining that "wrong health policies and violence, which have been aggravated further with the onset of the pandemic, are hurting and claiming the lives of healthcare workers in Turkey every day."

Strike on February 8, 2022

Concluding her statement, Şebnem Korur Fincancı recalled that in its statement in late January, the TTB announced that if no legislative proposal foreseeing improvements in healthcare workers' employee personal rights was submitted to the Parliament during their "White Watch" from January 26 to February 4, they would call strike on February 8.

Accordingly, she announced that healthcare workers would be on "white strike duty" across the country on February 8. (RT/SD)