Turkey Is Still in Denial about Coronavirus
Despite rampant coronavirus in Iran, continued trade and interaction cases reported in Iraqi Kurdistan, and an international airport hub which President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan inaugurated to compete with Dubai and Doha, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has said no coronavirus cases have occurred in Turkey.
Disease can be a great leveler. Viruses do not differentiate between poor and rich, nor do they respect borders. That does not mean everyone fares equally. Healthcare matters. So too does government capacity. China’s default to secrecy led to hundreds if not thousands of unnecessary deaths. Ditto in Iran, where some of Iran’s revolutionary elite have already succumbed to the Wuhan coronavirus. While dictatorships fare poorly in the face of a pandemic, not all democracies distinguish themselves. Italy may be democratic, but its government is notoriously inefficient and ineffective. It surprises no one that it has fared worse than any other European country. Early Trump administration denial and bureaucratic bungling may have made the American outbreak far worse than it otherwise would have been. Simply put, when faced with pandemic, wishful thinking will never trump transparency and efficiency.
Turks should, therefore, be worried. Despite rampant coronavirus in Iran, continued trade and interaction cases reported in Iraqi Kurdistan, and an international airport hub which President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan inaugurated to compete with Dubai and Doha, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has said no coronavirus cases have occurred in Turkey. While it is true that Turkey did stop at least passenger to and flights from China early, Turkish Airlines brags about its dozens of routes to Africa, flights created to cater for not only Turkish businessmen but also Chinese and Russian ones as well.
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Πηγή: nationalinterest.org
