Turkey on Friday (April 10th) ordered residents of 31 cities, including Istanbul and Ankara, to stay cloistered in their homes for 48 hours starting at midnight Friday, as part of new measures to fight the coronavirus pandemic. This containment order will remain in force until midnight Sunday (9 p.m. GMT), including in Istanbul, the economic capital, and in the capital Ankara.

As of this surprise announcement, thousands of residents of Istanbul and Ankara rushed to grocery stores and bakeries still open to make purchases in extremis, causing traffic jams, AFP journalists found. In a subsequent press release, the Interior Ministry sought to reassure by specifying that bakeries, pharmacies, service stations or postal services would remain operational. Employees of newspapers, radio and television stations will also be exempt from this measure.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu insisted that the confinement would end on Sunday midnight. "There is no need to panic," he said.

Istanbul mayor not informed in advance

Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a member of the main opposition party, deplored the sudden nature of the announcement of the confinement and said that he had not been informed in advance.

Most of the 47,029 cases of coronavirus contamination identified in Turkey were in Istanbul, which has more than 15 million inhabitants. The pandemic has so far claimed 1,006 lives in Turkey and 4,747 new cases were detected on Friday. The Covid-19 has also left 98 more dead in the past 24 hours. More than 300,000 tests have already been conducted in this country of 83 million inhabitants, according to the latest official statistics. Turkey has thus become one of the countries where the pandemic is spreading the fastest.

With AFP

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