Almost one year after they were appointed to a new cabinet following the May 2023 general election, two ministers have been replaced by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a minor cabinet reshuffle that was expected after his party’s poor performance in the March local elections.
Erdoğan replaced Health Minister Fahrettin Koca with Kemal Memişoğlu, a medical doctor and the provincial health director in İstanbul. Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Minister Mehmet Özhaseki has been replaced by Murat Kurum, a former environment minister and the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) mayoral candidate for İstanbul in the March 31 local elections. The appointments were made through a presidential decree published in the Official Gazette at midnight.
Erdoğan was expected to make changes to the cabinet after his party sustained its worst election defeat in the March 31 local elections, coming in second for the first time.
There had been rumors about Koca’s departure for several days, which he neither confirmed nor denied.
Healthcare sector strained under Koca’s ministry
Koca, who also served as health minister in the previous cabinet, starting in July 2018, came to public prominence during the coronavirus pandemic when he appeared on TV or posted tweets on a daily basis about coronavirus infections in the country. At the time he and the government received harsh criticism for mismanaging the pandemic by imposing partial curfews on the elderly and the sick, mandating random lockdowns and failing to take sufficient measures to prevent the spread of the virus or to protect medical workers.
Koca and the government were also criticized for underreporting the number of coronavirus-related deaths in order to mask the true scale of the pandemic in the country.
Under Koca’s ministry, a growing number of doctors have left Turkey for overseas jobs.
The reasons for the doctors’ departures include the failure of the AKP government to meet their demands for manageable workloads, increased security and better pay as well as incidents of physical violence against healthcare workers becoming a daily occurrence across the country.
Turkey has the fewest number of doctors in Europe when the populations of the countries are taken into consideration, according to 2021 data from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.
Koca’s term in office was also marked by increasing criticism of the operation of private and public hospitals, including long waits for appointments at public hospitals, which forced people requiring urgent treatment to resort to private, more expensive hospitals.
Koca is the founder of the private Medipol hospitals group and its university hospital in İstanbul which, according to the opposition, benefits generously from state incentives.
A handover ceremony was held at the health ministry in Ankara on Tuesday, when Memişoğlu took over from Koca. In his farewell speech, Koca claimed the problem of violence against healthcare professionals had been resolved during his tenure, although news of such incidents continue to be reported frequently across the country.
Sağlık Bakanlığı görevini yeni bakanımıza devrediyoruz. https://t.co/CfhQ60Our4
— Dr. Fahrettin Koca (@drfahrettinkoca) July 2, 2024
Özhaseki faced pressure
As for Özhaseki, a former AKP mayor of Kayseri, he served as environment minister between 2016 and 2018. He was appointed environment minister again in June 2023 in the new cabinet named after the general election.
Before the issuance of the presidential decree, Özhaseki announced his resignation from the ministry on Monday evening in a tweet, citing health reasons. He implied that he is quitting politics, too, and will try to continue his service to the country through a family foundation to be established.
According to sources in the environment ministry who spoke to the T24 news website, Özhaseki had long been resisting pressure for the award of public tenders for the construction of houses for victims of last year’s major earthquakes to pro-government companies. He reportedly decided to resign when he was overwhelmed by the pressure, which apparently came from Erdoğan or senior AKP figures.
Turkey was shaken by two powerful earthquakes in February 2023 that claimed more than 53,000 lives and caused massive devastation across 11 provinces in Turkey’s south and southeast.
The earthquakes left an estimated 1.5 million people homeless. President Erdoğan promised to build hundreds of thousands of homes for the victims, a promise that still has not been fulfilled. The tenders for the giant construction projects in the earthquake zone are marred by claims of irregularities and favoritism for pro-government companies.
Kurum: a minister with a poor record
Özhaseki handed over his post to Kurum at a ceremony at the environment ministry in Ankara on Tuesday, wishing Kurum success in his new position.
Çevre, Şehircilik ve İklim Değişikliği Bakanlığı Devir Teslim Töreni https://t.co/e5s88KzDdl
— T.C. Çevre, Şehircilik ve İklim Dğş. Bakanlığı (@csbgovtr) July 2, 2024
Kurum’s former term as environment minister between 2018 and 2023 was not without controversy, however, and was marked by decisions often viewed as harmful to the environment and public safety.
Legislation for a so-called “construction amnesty,” under which previously illegal buildings were approved without requiring that they comply with an updated building code, was passed shortly before Kurum’s appointment as minister in 2018. During his term in office, a total of 438,000 property owners benefited from the legislation and had their buildings approved by paying a fine without the need to conform to the building code, putting the responsibility for earthquake readiness on the property owners.
This policy was criticized for increasing the risk of earthquake damage and allowing uncontrolled construction without paying due attention to safety. The major earthquakes in February 2023 increased questions about the government’s responsibility for the high death toll, which many attributed to the actions taken by the AKP such as the construction amnesty.
During Kurum’s term in office, the ministry in 2020 approved an environmental impact assessment report (ÇED) for the Kanal İstanbul project, an artificial sea-level waterway bisecting the European side of İstanbul to connect the Black Sea to the Marmara and Mediterranean seas.
The ministry’s move came despite growing public opposition to the construction of the channel, which Erdoğan dubbed his “crazy project.”
After the ministry received the ÇED report, thousands of İstanbulites formed long queues in front of provincial urbanization offices to sign petitions against the realization of the project. The city’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, is also strongly against the project.
Another controversial incident from Kurum’s time as minister was the use of heavy equipment at Lake Salda, known as the “Maldives of Turkey” for its unique turquoise shores, to create a public garden commissioned by the government.
Under Kurum’s watch, images of construction equipment working on a government project next to the pristine shore drew anger from the public.
Kurum, whose campaign had the personal backing of Erdoğan, lost the mayoral race against İmamoğlu on March 31, getting only 39.5 percent of the vote, while İmamoğlu received 51.1 percent.