1554 25 SEPTEMBER 2020 • VOL 369 ISSUE 6511 sciencemag.org SCIENCEPHOTO: MEDICAL CHAMBER OF BURSAI
n April, Kayıhan Pala, a prominent pub-
lic health expert at Uludag ̆ University
in northwestern Turkey, was shocked to
find himself the target of a criminal com-
plaint. Pala, a member of the COVID-
19 monitoring group of the Turkish
Medical Association (TTB), had given an
interview to a local website and shared re-
search that showed the number of cases and
deaths from the coronavirus were much
higher than the government had reported.
The complaint, filed by the governor of
Bursa province, accused him of “misinform-
ing the public” and “causing panic.”
Saying it was his job to speak out about
a burgeoning health crisis, Pala called for
the charges to be dismissed. Instead, the
prosecutor’s office asked administrators
at the university to investigate. Only after
a monthslong investigation and national
and international pressure did the univer-
sity conclude on 1 September that Pala had
acted within his duty.
“I am a public health scientist and I have
to talk about this pandemic locally, na-
tionally, and internationally,” Pala says. “It
should not be a crime.”
Yet his case is far from unique. Critics say
Turkish authorities are using judicial ha-
rassment and administrative investigations
to stifle criticism and control information
about the crisis. Since March, they have
launched investigations against doctors,
including leaders of local TTB chapters, af-
ter they discussed the government’s health
policy and coronavirus information. “Our
colleagues have revealed the scientific facts,nothing beyond that,” says TTB Secretary
General Bülent Nazım Yılmaz. A spokes-
person for Turkey’s Ministry of Health did
not respond to a request for comment.
Turkey, a country of 82 million, has re-
ported just over 300,000 COVID-19 cases
so far and more than 7500 deaths. In June,
the government lifted a partial lockdown,
although independent doctors and medi-
cal associations warned the reopening was
premature. In early August, TTB claimed its
data showed the true number of confirmed
COVID-19 cases in the country was higher
than official figures and accused the govern-
ment of not being transparent. Turkey’s Min-
istry of Health has denied the allegations.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca recently
warned that the country is facing an in-
crease in cases and deaths and has imple-
mented extra control measures, but medical
associations say the government is still
stifling information about the pandemic.
Turkey has not regularly released case and
death numbers broken down by city, for
instance, and has not answered scientists’
requests to provide data detailing cases by
demographic groups, such as among the
country’s large refugee population or the
working class.
The government has also declared that
all COVID-19–related research must be ap-
proved by the Ministry of Health. The an-
nouncement, in April, sparked outrage and
was widely seen as intended to deny inde-
pendent scientists access to detailed data.
“We are asking for more data and more
[measures to prevent the spread of the vi-
rus],” Pala says. “This is why they are mad
about people who are speaking right now.”In the southeastern city of S ̧anlıurfa,
hard hit by COVID-19, authorities have
pressed forward with an investigation of
the S ̧anlıurfa Medical Chamber’s co-chair,
Ömer Melik, and its secretary general,
Osman Yüksekyayla. Melik was first sum-
moned by police and accused of spreading
fear and panic in early April after posting
the number of COVID-19 cases in the city
on the medical chamber’s official Twit-
ter account. (Although social media have
come under fire for spreading misinforma-
tion in some countries, they have been a
popular and crucial tool for independent
doctors and scientists to inform the public
in Turke y.)
Later that month, Melik was detained
again with Yüksekyayla after the chamber
highlighted the deaths of medical workers,
raised concerns over the number of corona-
virus cases in local prisons, and warned on
Twitter that medical workers lacked ad-
equate protective equipment.
Melik tells Science that police said a gov-
ernment circular stated that only Health
Ministry officials were permitted to share
coronavirus-related information. When he
asked to see the circular, they refused, he
says. “Our work was accurate and this is not
a criminal situation,” Melik says. A court
date has not yet been set in the case.
“If we are not clear about what is happen-
ing, and people don’t know what is going
on, it makes the situation even worse and
the virus spreads faster,” says Özgür Deniz
Deg ̆er, former co-chair of the Van Medical
Chamber. Deg ̆er was summoned by police
in March after an interview in which he
criticized authorities for not including po-
litical prisoners when releasing detainees
from jails where COVID-19 could spread. In
May, he was summoned again over a tweet
that tagged Turkey’s minister of health and
questioned the accuracy of the govern-
ment’s health care worker death toll. He
was accused of issuing “threats to create
fear and panic among the people.”
Two months later, Deg ̆er was informed
the charges had been dropped, but he says
the ordeal has caused him to self-censor.
“This investigation against me was dropped,
but it doesn’t mean that [authorities] won’t
start a new one because of new [social me-
dia] posts,” he says. jProtesters gather in Bursa, Turkey, on 21 July to support Kayıhan Pala, who was accused of “causing panic.” Kristen McTighe is a journalist based in Seattle.By Kristen McTigheCOVID 19Turkey targets critics of its pandemic response
Researchers and physicians who question data or policies face lengthy investigations
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