Economic crisis forces people in Turkey to try selling their kidneys, organs

Duvar English

Data scraped from search engines like Google show that in the midst of a historic economic crisis, with record-high levels of price inflation, people in Turkey are now contemplating selling their kidneys and other vital organs to make ends meet, according to reporting by daily Birgün. 

There has been a 400% uptick in the number of people searching for how to sell their kidneys in Google searches in the past year, while the number of people advertising kidneys for sale on the internet has also increased. 

These searches and advertisements have increased most in Turkey’s largest cities, which have seen the highest levels of price increases, especially in terms of housing and food. The phrase “I want to sell my kidney” was searched most in the Aegean province of İzmir, followed by Istanbul and Ankara. 

Technically, the sale of kidneys in Turkey is illegal. Several people who openly advertised their kidneys for sale on the internet have been detained, including one man who posted an advertisement in the Black Sea province of Samsun. 

In Istanbul’s Sultangazi neighborhood, a man posted an advertisement saying that he needed to sell his kidney due to financial difficulty. 

“Kidney for urgent sale, 0-negative. Due to financial difficulties and debt, my kidney is for sale. All my tests have just been done,” he wrote. 

Another person in the Bornova district of İzmir said the sale of his kidney was “urgent” due to his inability to pay back a loan he took from the bank. 

Many foreign nationals looking to benefit from the sale and trade of organs have been arrested in Turkey in recent months, including five foreign nationals caught trying to buy organs in Istanbul.

After organ sales, the most commonly searched terms on Google in the past year concerned poverty and unemployment. The number of people submitting search queries related to unemployment benefits has increased by 5,000% in the past year.