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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

You are right to be sceptical, it is indeed a dictatorship but it's not the kind of dictatorship that makes doctors disappear. There is no indication about any major cover-ups, the country is not insulated from the west, has visa-free travel with many Western countries, is part of many western institutions and has many wester journalists based in Turkey.

"I don't like Erdogan and his policies" is not good enough to dismiss Turkey as a closed society, the country is NOT like DPRK or Iran. Turkey is financially and institutionally integrated with Europe and the USA.

This(dismissing the country solely on its current political situation or lack of awareness beyond the stereotype and prejudice) is exactly the mentality that I am talking about and I suspect that it is killing many people in the west.

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I agree it's unrealistic to propose they're hiding bodies. But the death count could be suppressed by merely implementing unreasonable standards for what's reported as a coronavirus death. Articles I've read suggest that Turkey isn't doing particularly well when measured by excess deaths over the historical baseline.

(I agree with the obvious followup, that we should check to see if other countries we believe are doing well look good in the same metric.)

I suspect that too, the death rates in Istanbul are higher than usual and people are asking questions.

That said, it's no different than what's happening some other western countries. There are reports about the UK numbers being higher too, essentially the idea is that some deaths are not reported as COVID-19 deaths if it happens out of hospital or pre-testing.

People are not dying en masse. The mortality is increased and maybe the real numbers are %50 more than the official numbers but even then it's much better than most places.

No, Turkey's official mortality numbers are worse than most places. It's only in comparison to Western numbers that they look good. I checked Mexico (as a good country the US could more easily learn from) and they have over 3x fewer deaths per 100,000.

I don't say that to knock on Turkey, just to explain the perspective. People aren't ignoring Turkey because they don't trust Turkey specifically; it's because they don't trust any of these numbers. The idea that there's some core competency of pandemic response possessed by almost every country in the world but absent in most of the West seems... implausible.

I am a European citizen currently in Turkey, I have perspective on the UK, on Germany and some other EU countries as I lived in those.

I don't know about Mexico, I cannot comment about them but if they are doing even better than Turkey, good for them but I cannot comment on that, I don't know the reality on the ground.

You don't have to hide the bodies, simply don't count them. That's what France was doing with people dying in retirement houses up until a few weeks ago.

The whole thing is about to be so political that everything is buried in noise.

China's numbers cannot be trusted. Turkey's numbers cannot be trusted. WHO cannot be trusted.

Even Germany cannot be trusted; I saw a statement from an Italien doctor saying that reason for the difference between Germany and Italy was that Germany was systematically undercounting deaths (for political reasons).

The recent freedom of press report [1] certainly does not help in building trust, no matter how many western institutions have a presence there.

[1] https://rsf.org/en/ranking

Doctors are all over Instagram, Twitter and so on. There would have been doctors telling things. The medical professionals in Turkey are well paid, they have very strong jobs security, they have influential societies that are quite hostile to the government.

They are overworked and are under the risk of antisocial patients but Silencing a doctor in Turkey is not as easy as silencing a journo. They are well educated, well paid and well organized. It is very unlikely that a doctor would participate in a cover-up in fear of politicians.

They put journalists and opponents in jail, what do you think would happen to them ? Who in his right mind would defend such a country ? I can't even begin to understand the logic behind that, sure it's not the lowest of the low like DPRK but comparing it to EU or the US ... I'm speechless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_arrested_journalists_i...

https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/03/27/turkey-crackdown-social-...

https://ahvalnews.com/germany-turkey/turkey-detains-german-n...

https://cpj.org/reports/2019/12/journalists-jailed-china-tur...

Doctors are not a journalist. Journalists in Turkey are low paid with limited employment options and with %90 of the media being held by Erdogan affiliated businessmen it is easy to purge them.

That's not the situation with the doctors. The doctors in Turkey are picked from Crème de la crème among the students, educated in some of the most prestigious institutions and paid very well. They have money, they have options, they have connections.

Doctors are not journalists, these lists are about journalists and it is correct that Erdogan destroyed the press freedom in Turkey but Doctors don't work for the TV channels and the newspaper and they have access to social media.

I don't think the salary effects who goes in jail or not. The only thing it could change is that people making a good living would be less likely to take risks and lose everything than people already at the bottom.

There isn't much to debate, Turkey is universally seen as a dictatorship and has a track record of doing very shady and questionable things (which are not even close to being acceptable in the EU or US). Feel free to believe whatever you want but you haven't provided any resources besides your own idea of what Turkey is and this view isn't backed by anyone besides Erdoğan supporters.

You don't go to jail just like that in Turkey. This is not DPRK.

They need to accuse you of something and have a trail. All can be unfair and it is often unfair but you don't disappear, you can fight in the process and it catches a lot of public attention. Being a doctor means that the public loves you, trusts you, you have the money and the connections to fight.

If there was a cover-up, I am sure that doctors would have been talking because there are many doctors openly critical to the government and they even have a society for that. This is not Iran, China, DPRK or whatever country where you can just disappear.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/turkey-sentences-doctors-to-pr...

You should probably just stop digging, information is available on internet for free and every single one of your claims can be refuted in a few seconds. They do send people to jail over the most ridiculous things, even doctors.

An expectation of the rule doesn't make it a rule. If you dig deeper I am sure you will stumble upon to doctors who went to jail for other political activities too. You don't understand the nuances here, you don't get public support if you say something against the nationalistic stance, if you dig you will find that doctors involved in the kurdish politics can also be jailed.

Whatever. Believe whatever you want, go ahead believe that I died from COVID-19 but the government is covering up by writing replies to you from my account.

Things are fine in Turkey(regarding the COVID-19 situation), Erdogan being a dictator doesn't change a thing about that, journalist in jail don't automatically count as COVID-19 deaths.

> This(dismissing the country solely on its current political situation or lack of awareness beyond the stereotype and prejudice) is exactly the mentality that I am talking about and I suspect that it is killing many people in the west.

Why would they tell the truth and make their country look bad if they can avoid it ? You won't make me believe Turkey has a better health care system, testing facilities and post mortem checks than EU countries. Do they send people in remote rural areas and check the causes of death from people who died in the last 3 months ? Do they count people with comorbidities ? Do they count people dying outside of hospitals ?

> stereotype and prejudice

It literally is a military dictatorship, like, what ?! do we have to accept everything no matter how fucked up they are these days ? The world isn't rainbow and sunshine, you won't make me trust Turkey on these kind of topics. I simply don't buy it, there is such a long trail of lies, deceptions, propaganda, &c. Look at what Trump gets away with while being under spotlight worldwide, now imagine what a guy like Erdoğan gets away with ...

It's alright, I made peace with people being wrong on the Internet.

I would suggest you do some research, like researching if it's a military dictatorship or not. Check out what happened to the military in 2016 when they attempted a coup. The results may surprise you.

Anyway, the Turkish health system is quite similar to NHS and the doctors are severely overworked so I wouldn't claim that Turkey has a better health system but I would claim that it is handling the COVID-19 response better than the most.

Turkey is not a closed society, there are many ways to verify these claims.

Actually, this deeply flawed understanding of the situation in Turkey is part of the problem anyway. If you can overcome this, you can learn a thing or two from the way Turkey is handling the situation. Take it or leave it.

> The results may surprise you.

The first link that pops when typing "turkey coup aftermath" in google starts with "The aftermath of the failed Turkey coup: Torture, beatings and rape". I'm not sure where I'm supposed to be surprised.

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/aftermath-failed-turkey-coup-tort...

Yes, these things happened to the military personnel but that's not a military dictatorship. In the military dictatorship, the coup succeeds and the military personnel rape and torture people.

In Turkey's case, the military attempted a coup, failed and the civilians did these things to the military.

Pro tip: The guys with the uniform are the military ones, they got beaten on the streets when attempted to establish a military dictatorship.

Why do you thing the coup failed ? The military isn't a single entity that decided to make a coup, otherwise who would have stopped them ? The great Erdoğan himself ?

Wikipedia even state their numbers: "97% of Turkish Armed Forces ranking officers and 66% of the military's top leadership" sided with Erdoğan. The coup was attempted by a little over 10k people.

I frankly don't think you researched any of what you're talking about.

And this makes Turkey a military dictatorship? In the UK 100% of the forces are loyal to the government, that must be one awful military dictatorship then. sight.

I don't claim that Turkey is a functioning democracy but this doesn't make it a military dictatorship. turkey has many problems, that doesn't make it wrong or bad in every other aspect too.

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