​Turkey’s Covid-19 outbreak: The truth comes out and it’s scary

TURKEY - In Brief 27 Nov 2020 by Atilla Yesilada

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There are some predictions Iwish I had gotten wrong, as it happens to me in 90% of cases. This is one of them. Pressured by the health community and the opposition, Health Minister Mr. Fahrettin Koca began announcing Covid-19 “case” numbers rather than “patients”. Overnight, Turkey’s cases-cum-patients figure jumped from 7.5K to 29.5K as of Thanksgiving. When revealing the bitter truth, Minister Koca also spewed out a realm of Covid-19 data, indicating that the virus is everywhere, with ICUs reaching capacity in large cities. Even this admission may be a partial truth, as opposition as well as medical experts I find reliable put the actual figure for daily cases around 40-60K.The daily deaths, which reached 179 as of Thursday, may reflect only one fifth of the true toll, judging by mortality statistics collected from Municipality Funeral Directorates. To put things in a perspective, Turkey is second in Europe after Italy, according to Worldometer.com, and among the top five nations in the world. Such a massive outbreak can only be slowed down by nation-wide curfews, which President Erdogan is hesitant to order, because the Treasury lacks the funds to bankroll an expansion of social welfare benefits and direct aid to small businesses.I personally think he will be forced to lock down the country for at least 2 weeks in 10 days or so.If he fails to do so, I expect rapidly escalating deaths and a collapse of the health system.Neither Erdogan, nor AKP can escape the massive voter backlash in this scenario. The lockdowns, on the other hand, will add to unemployment, already estimated to have increased by over 2 mn restaurant, bar and cafe service workers, or roughly 10% of t...