Turkey vs. Corona ... an escalating row between the government and the opposition

Khalil Mabrouk - Istanbul

Today, Turkey has been witnessing remarkable debates between the government and the opposition over dealing with the outbreak of the emerging Corona virus (Covid-19), which included many of the policies and measures taken in the country to deal with the epidemic.

The controversy extended to the parallel sea channel project of the Bosphorus Strait, the curfew system, the donation campaigns launched by the municipalities, and the roads leading to the Basaksehir City Hospital project in Istanbul.

And the mayor of Istanbul, Akram Imamoglu (opposition Republican People's Party), criticized the government for not stopping to attract construction offers related to the construction of the Istanbul marine channel parallel to the Bosphorus Strait in light of the seriousness of the epidemic and the state’s need to harness all its capabilities to confront it.

However, this issue has returned to retreat after the dismissal of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Minister of Transport Mehmed Cahid Turhan and the appointment of his assistant, Adel Karah Ismailoglu, as his successor, in a move that the Turkish government has not yet revealed.

Curfew
The largest opposition party also issued calls to impose a curfew system in all of Turkey, and its president, Kemal Kılıçdaroوlu, has called on many occasions, while the mayor called for the imposition of an immediate curfew on the city of Istanbul in particular.

Imamoglu explained that the city is vulnerable to include about 60% of all infections throughout Turkey, and that its residents do not adhere to domestic isolation and voluntary quarantine.

In an implicit response to those calls, the governor of Istanbul, Ali Yerli, published Caya pictures of vital sites in the city showing that they are empty of people, indicating that the movement in Istanbul has decreased very significantly in response to calls for home commitment to reduce the increase in HIV infections.

Turkish political observers and analysts expect that their country's government will continue to manage the Corona crisis in "soft" ways without resorting to the imposition of curfews unless the curve of HIV infections and deaths rises sharply.

Internal and donations
In another controversial dossier, Turkish Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu announced that the government banned the donation campaign launched by Istanbul Municipality to collect aid to deal with the spread of the epidemic because it did not obtain the required license from the government.

The media reported that Soylu sent a memo to Turkey's 81 provinces, general directorates and the military police leadership, titled "Fundraising" according to which municipalities are prevented from organizing such campaigns without permission from the provinces, and to open an investigation against the organizers.

The Republican newspaper, which is affiliated with the Republican People's Party, accused Erdogan of running a new campaign targeting the municipalities that the party runs throughout Turkey.

Taha Odehoglu, the researcher and political analyst on Turkish affairs, believes that the dispute between the ruling Justice and Development Party and the Republican People’s Party in this particular issue went beyond the issue of donations to a much deeper political dispute.

Taha Ogluoglu said to Al Jazeera Net that the Justice and Development Government is convinced that the main opposition party is trying to operate from outside the frameworks of the state, and that it seeks to weaken the prestige of the current government and form a "state within a state".

He pointed out the return of Ihsanoglu that many statements of deputies and politicians from the Republican People's Party reinforce these convictions, and that they exceeded the city of Istanbul, which the opposition party runs its municipality, to many municipalities and sites in Turkey.

Basaksehir Hospital
As for the new medical city in Istanbul, it was in the eye of a storm of controversy, as activists and media outlets close to the ruling Justice and Development Party published news about the Istanbul municipality’s refusal to build roads leading to the city that ended its work pending the official opening.

The activists said that the municipality attributed its position to the lack of necessary budgets for the project known as "Basaksehir City Hospital".

For its part, the municipality confirmed that the project to construct the subway line and major road construction that began implementation of the project in 2017 was suspended in 2018 during the previous municipality era, and that the current municipal council had approved in a meeting on December 25, 2019 that opening roads to the hospital was given priority And requesting budgets for that from the Ministry of Communications, which has not yet responded to his request.

The controversy does not end
Some observers believe that the difference in the positions of the government and the opposition in Turkey regarding the files related to the management of the Corona crisis is natural, and that some even put it in the field of retreating intellectual and ideological determinants in favor of differences over programs and ways of management.

The researcher in Turkish political relations at Ariel University, Sardar Ozbay, considered that this difference enhances the focus on major community issues, the most prominent of which is currently the spread of the epidemic, considering that this controversy represents a health issue in democratic systems that judge political entities on performance, not on beliefs and ideas.

And on the extent of the citizens' harms from this disparity, Ozbay assured Al-Jazeera Net that the damage could occur if the authorities multiplied and the opposition refused to recognize the sovereignty of the state and its system on the one hand, and if the state exercised its sovereignty without oversight, it reaches the level of prosecution sometimes by the opposition, which are two conditions that are not available in the political environment Turkish.

He added that the political controversy accompanies all issues in Turkey, and that this is not new to the country that has a reasonable tradition of democratic practice.