A committee in the Turkish parliament on Friday passed a bill that would prevent doctors dismissed from their jobs during a two-year-long state of emergency from working at hospitals subsidized by the country’s social security system.
If President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signs the bill into law, it will affect 18,632 dismissed doctors.
After a failed coup in 2016, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency that was terminated in July during which some 140,000 public servants, including doctors, teachers and judges, were dismissed.
A bill canceling fired teachers’ certificates to work in any public or private school and another one preventing dismissed judges and prosecutors from working within the judiciary were also passed by parliament.
Opposition deputies called the bill “ruthless.”
“This will prevent thousands of doctors from working even in private hospitals,” said Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğllu, who was also dismissed by a government decree while working as a doctor at a state hospital.
Another HDP deputy, Filiz Kerestecioğlu, said public servants who had lost their jobs had not been convicted of any crime and that their appeals against their dismissals were pending in a state of emergency commission, established by the government for dismissed personnel.