 Welcome to People's Health Dispatch, and we are here today to talk about the upcoming election in Turkey with the president of the Turkish Medical Association, Dr. Şebnem Korufinancı. Hi, Şebnem, and thank you for joining us here today. Hello, Yeren. Thank you for just being our voice, actually, for the last few months, particularly. Of course, we've been following what's been going on in Turkey with health workers, especially because we know that the repression that has been going on over the past months and years has been very intense. And of course, what we have seen in recent months has been particularly worrying. So today I wanted to talk a bit more about your expectations of the upcoming election that will take place over the weekend. And I just wanted to start with a very basic question. So what's the spirit in which health workers in Turkey are approaching this election? What are you hoping for? What are you expecting to see? They're all expectant, actually, like all the citizens in the country, because we need a change in the situation. As you know, because we have discussed about the situation, the oppression in the country, the oppressive nature, just leading people to be hopeless. Now there is hope, hope of change. And of course, with the health professionals, particularly, we know that they have been in a serious situation regarding the working conditions and their rights, as for all the workers' rights as well, because with the long period of AKP governance, the rights of the workers have deteriorated severely. And also for the health professionals, also the working conditions have been too harsh for long hours. They had to work for long hours and their performance was only based on the quantity of their activities instead of the qualification of their health services, providing the health services. So this caused hopelessness in this sense. And many of our junior colleagues decided to leave the country and move to other countries to work in better conditions, although it is not excellent all around the world, because of the neoliberal capitalist movement, particularly the rights of the workers have deteriorated all over the world. The globalization caused several backwards of the rights, but anyhow, it is not worse as in Turkey. And also, particularly the president's words regarding the physicians and also the educated people, diminishing their personality, diminishing the profession, caused a serious effect on the health professionals. So everybody is expecting that there will be a change and afterwards everything will be better. But of course, we have to keep in mind that we have to just monitor whoever governs the country, because we know that particularly the neoliberal capitalist movement and the funding companies, would insist on this kind of health policy anyhow. So then we have to monitor the new ruling party or parties or the coalition, if it is in this way, and insist on gaining back our rights and also the value of the profession, values of the profession actually, because with the diminishing value of the health professionals, then we also lost our values in this kind of working conditions. And of course you mentioned, and we reported on that a while ago, that we have seen real attacks on professional organizations in Turkey over the last years, especially when it comes to media associations, but also to health professionals. So I was wondering if maybe you could give me an update on what's been going on in the past weeks, what's the current situation and how is the TMA faring right now. Of course, it's very interesting when we last discussed about the situation, we were just at the doorstep of being shut down. So there were several court cases, both against me and also the Turkish Medical Association and the council members to be dismissed. So it was very interesting of course with the court because particularly the judge decided to wait for the decision of the court of appeal. And the court of appeal couldn't decide immediately, so they still have the pending decision for the timing and the judge decided to postpone the hearing, sorry, the hearing to 22nd of June after the elections. So many of these kind of court cases, particularly mainly such kind of in oppressive nature are not ending at all. So they are pending and most of the court hearings are postponed after the elections because the judges, the prosecutors and the judiciary actually doesn't feel safe for the time being. And this means that the elections also mean a lot for the professional organizations. It's not only Turkish Medical Association. For all the professional organizations actually, they plan to just have amendments in the constitution, as well as the professional organizations own law to just cause a kind of powerlessness in this sense. So everybody now is expecting to have a change so that we will have a better situation and empower the organizations with some amendments now on behalf of the professional organizations. Because with the 1980s actually, they wanted to just have the power taken from the professional organizations. For example, the obligatory membership have been just omitted from the law and also the constitution. And also in the constitution, there is a very particular article telling that some activities out of purpose might lead to dismissal of the governance of these organizations. But actually when we raise our voice regarding the public health issues, then they consider this as activity out of purpose. So we know what they mean by the purpose. It is only on the same line with the governance actually. So anytime we will have this kind of activities to be taken to the court. But if there is a change, then maybe we can have amendments in the constitution and be more powerful as an organization. And then finally there is another aspect that we have been following and talking about with the TMA over the last months and that regards the situation in the health system. And we talked about how this devastating earthquake which hit Turkey and Syria recently has caused a tremendous number of deaths of how much worse it had made the health system which was already struggling because of all of these pressures that you described before. So now turning a bit hopefully to the future, what kind of good change do you think could come out of a new government when it comes to health policy? You know Turkish Medical Association has always raised awareness about the primary health care system and the protective nature, the preventive nature of the primary health care. That should be, but unfortunately they just totally shifted the primary health care to outpatient clinics. Whenever people are ill, they have to just have been admitted to primary health care system. But according to the Turkish Medical Association health policy, we know that it is important to have a population based, regional based primary health care system. With the preventive measures and reaching to people instead of waiting for the people to come whenever they are ill. So taking the precautions before the illnesses is the most important issue. So maybe we can change the primary health care system which unfortunately was destroyed together with the earthquake. All of the family physicians' offices have been under all these destroyed buildings. So there were only very few family physicians who could function and their houses were also destroyed. So with this damage, they couldn't just actively work and afterwards Turkish Medical Association organized the voluntary work to support our colleagues in the earthquake region. So maybe we can change the primary health care system. The health policy particularly prioritizing the preventive health care instead of just treatment based health care. So it is very important and also particularly for the treatment based health care system, qualification, quality might just come in front of the quantity. And instead of having patients every few minutes, we can spare time, enough time for our patients which would be helpful for the patients repetitively visiting the hospitals because they couldn't find any solution for their health problems. So it is for many years that we have the same health policy regarding the public health, prioritizing the public health. And we hope that we can change this health policy in this way. And I think you know it's an idea that the people's health movement with very much back this idea of primary health care which is based in the community and turned to the people. So I think that we all hope to see a good outcome this weekend and we're all really hopeful that this will mean a better time for health and for the people in Turkey. Thank you so much for joining us today, Shednam. Thank you and always you support us and your solidarity is invaluable.