Turkey’s coronavirus death toll reaches 908 with 42,282 cases

Duvar English

Turkey’s death toll from the coronavirus rose by 96 to total 908 and new confirmed cases rose by 4,056 to bring the country’s total to 42,282, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on April 9.

The total number of recovered cases stood at 2,142, with 296 recoveries in the last 24 hours, and the number of tests carried out in that time was 28,578, the highest number yet, Koca said on Twitter.

"Some 296 more of our patients have recovered. The number of patients who have been discharged from hospital has reached 2,142. We are about to reach our daily target of 30,000 tests. Despite the increasing number of tests, the rate of increase of cases shows a declining trend," Koca wrote.

Since the first coronavirus case was confirmed on March 11, Turkey has taken a series of measures to curb the spread of the virus, such as quarantining some towns, banning mass prayers, closing schools, bars and restaurants and limiting inter-city travel.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has repeatedly called on citizens to impose their own quarantine but stopped short of imposing a broad stay-at-home order.

Erdoğan has evoked Turkey's war of independence in calls for unity against the virus, but opposition parties say their exclusion from fund-raising efforts and the detention of government critics is instead fueling division.

The government's initial response to the outbreak appeared to have public support. A survey by pollster Metropoll on April 8 showed a strong rise in Erdoğan's approval rating to 55.8 percent in March, when the first cases emerged in Turkey.

But more than 200 people have been detained for social media posts on the pandemic and Erdoğan, who obtained sweeping new powers in a 2018 switch to a presidential system, has blocked opposition aid campaigns, saying only the state can raise funds.

"The lack of a presidency that embraces all its citizens and unites them is felt more than ever today," Faik Öztrak, a spokesman for the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), told reporters this week.

Mithat Sancar, co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), said the government needed to involve all sections of society to win people over.

"The government in Turkey thinks it can manage this outbreak with fines, detentions and donation campaigns," Sancar told the T24 news website. "They know these methods won't work."