Khalil Mabrouk - Istanbul

The population movement in Istanbul continues to decline since the curfew was imposed on those under the age of twenty and over 65 years of age throughout Turkey.

Official statistics for 2019 show that 34.4% of the population is located in the two segments covered by the curfew, with 26.9 million young people and 7.5 million elderly people who together represent a source of concern for the Turkish authorities in their steps to combat the emerging Corona virus.

And last Friday, the Turkish government announced a series of measures to combat the spread of infection, including banning entry into or leaving 31 states, preventing entry to shops or markets without wearing face masks, in addition to partial curfews.

The authorities returned to make adjustments to the curfew, with the exception of boys between the ages of 18 and 20 who regularly work in the private sector and those working in seasonal agriculture.

Central Istanbul has become empty of hikers and fishermen despite the non-imposition of curfews (Al-Jazeera)


Wandering and youth

The Minister of Health, Fakhruddin Kujah, responded that the reason for imposing curfews on the youth category is that their movement and movement is one of the weakest points in facing the virus, especially since many of them do not show symptoms of infection and thus transmit the disease to others easily.

Mawlid Sowaybash - a first-year student at Istanbul’s Sabahuddin University - a leader, demonstrates his understanding of the curfew, but notes that he is forced to breach him at times for important considerations and sometimes only out of boredom.

He explains to Al-Jazeera Net that the hours of his stay outside the house have decreased dramatically, and they no longer exceed the reach of the nearest store to buy some necessities and return quickly to the house for fear of being arrested by the police and reprimanding him, or even imposing a "penalty" on him.

"Even when I go out, I don't meet a lot of friends, everyone is afraid to go out, and there is no place we can go, because the university, markets and cafes are closed, and this increases our commitment to homes."

The Istanbul police have announced that they imposed administrative fines on about two thousand in violation of the procedures followed to deal with the Corona virus during the past week with a value of more than one million and 480 thousand TL.

In addition to the medical considerations mentioned by Minister Cogah, the political researcher specializing in Turkish affairs, Saeed Al-Hajj, believes that the affiliation of the largest segment of boys who are prohibited from traveling to the category of students who are not currently heading to educational institutions due to their disruption is a factor that facilitated their inclusion in the curfew.

He also believes that the small number of workers within this small segment of the age also contributed to the decision to confine them to homes without having negative consequences for their families or their community or for economic and social activity.

Turkey recorded the first infection with the Corona virus on March 10, but the country still has a voluntary sanitary isolation system without the authorities imposing a comprehensive curfew.

Saeed Al-Hajj: The small number of young workers contributed to the decision to confine them to homes (Al-Jazeera)

Accelerated injuries
And with the beginning of April this year, the country officially entered the list of the ten most affected countries, and ranked tenth globally with an average of three thousand injuries and 75 deaths on average daily, without changing the "soft" strategies in the state's treatment of the disease.

Since the outbreak of the contagion crisis began, the Turkish government has taken a series of measures that have begun to reduce the number of working hours in stores and institutions, and to stop congregational prayers in mosques, including Friday prayers, with a call to preserve social spaces and the use of masks and sterilization tools.

The measures have extended to the closures of the most congested congestion sites such as hairdressing and beauty salons, popular markets, and preventing gatherings or eating in restaurants whose activities have limited delivery.

Then the authorities reduced transportation activities to a minimum, closed the Sabiha International Airport in Istanbul, completely stopped domestic flights and transferred school and university education to electronic systems.

On Tuesday night, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a series of new measures that included stopping the sale of masks and allocating five free masks per week to each resident in Turkey, and he announced the progress of works to open two new hospitals in Istanbul with a capacity of one thousand beds each, provided that they enter the service during 45 days.

According to Al-Hajj, Turkey benefited from the early measures it had taken based on the recommendations of the Scientific Committee of the Ministry of Health since the virus appeared, as it stopped flights with Wuhan and then stopped all flights from China, and closed the land borders with Iran as soon as the virus spread in it, then the procedures and decisions began Related to the Turkish interior, by the way

Al-Hajj said that the scene in Turkey is still "not catastrophic", and that the cases go according to the expected, and do not show any deviation from control, explaining that the increase in the number of patients recently has to do with the large population first and then with the increasing number of examinations daily.

He pointed out that the percentage of deaths and patients who need intensive care and ventilator devices, which is the most important segment, is still stable and is within 2% of the number of injured.

Congestion was absent from the maritime transport vessels in Istanbul despite the non-imposition of curfews (Al-Jazeera)

Economic implications
Al-Haj believes that the economic consequences often prevent governments from taking major measures, especially as the spread of the Corona epidemic has affected the Turkish economy primarily in terms of foreign trade, domestic consumption, investments, the tourism sector, and others.

He also saw that the "economic stability shield" plan approved by the government, with the limits of one hundred billion Turkish liras, depletes the economic capabilities of the state, and therefore the imposition of a comprehensive curfew means the cessation of industry, internal consumption and the freezing of the economy altogether.

He says that the Turkish government still feels its ability to deal with the disease without the need to impose curfews, as well as the special sensitivity in Turkey towards the deployment of the army on the streets in case it is needed to impose the ban.

But Al-Hajj stresses that all of this does not prevent the development of measures that may not soon reach the imposition of a comprehensive curfew, even if the quarantine is a candidate for further tightening that may reach the curfew at some point.

In its Article 13, the Turkish constitution gives the government the right to restrict freedoms by law, including quarantine and travel ban measures to deal with emergencies.

But some specialists - including microbiologists and microbiologists at "Mifi Hayat" laboratories, Torquay Ypson - believe that the disparity and difference between infection rates and epidemic outbreaks in Turkey's states makes imposing comprehensive curfews unnecessary.