Turkish Health Ministry’s new step for "female physicians for female patients" has sparked outrage as the Health Workers’ Union has described the project as a reactionary implementation.
Eyüp Gümüş, the Undersecretary of Turkey’s Health Ministry, described the "women-only project" as "good news" for female physicians and patients. "If a woman demands it, we shall organise it within the available possibilities. We need to submit these possibilities to those [women] who look for female technicians and physicians," Gümüş said.
'A DISCRIMINATORY AND REACTIONARY IMPLEMENTATION'
İbrahim Kara, the chair of Turkey’s Health and Social Workers’ Union (SES), talked with a local media, saying that this project is a reactionary implementation. Kara implied that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government regards the people as "objects".
"While rescuing lives, we are just attempting to send people to their homes well and happy regardless of their gender, language, religion, sect or roots. Moreover, they [the government] are trying to infiltrate their reactionary policies and their approach to women as a sexual object into the society with such statements," Kara noted.
Criticizing the government's such implementations as 'women-only polyclinics' and 'women-only pink buses,' Kara said that their union does not accept these reactionary practices, adding that they would wage a legal and active struggle against the government’s reactionary projects.
'THIS IS AN APPARENT CRIME'
Zekiye Bacaksız, the chair of another health workers' union in Turkey, described the government’s "female physicians for the female patients project" as an apparent crime, adding that health employees could not carry out any sexual discrimination. "Patients' gender, religion, language and race would not consider us," she said, calling the implementation as a reactionary project.
Gynaecologist Murat Mahsun also criticised the project, arguing that such a system previously had taken place in Iran. However, the rate of deaths in childbirth had escalated. That is why, Mahsun said, the Iranian government had given up the project, allowing male physicians again to participate in childbirth operations.
AKP government has enforced Islamist impositions on health-related issues and social, cultural and educational life of the society in an attempt to divide individuals as male and female sections with the women-only transportation system, women-only health centres or women-only university projects although most of the people reject such impositions.
