Cancer patient offended by minister delivered medicine by the opposition party

ISTANBUL

Dilek Özçelik, a 23-year-old university student from the Thracian province of Edirne is diagnosed with leukemia. DHA photo

Help continues to pour in for the young cancer patient who made headlines April 14 when she asked Environment and Urban Planning Minister Erdoğan Bayraktar for assistance buying her medicine but was offered cash instead. Dilek Özçelik, a 23-year-old university student diagnosed with leukemia from the Thracian province of Edirne, was hospitalized right after her desperate gesture.

The main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP) Edirne province members said April 17 that they had found the medicine that Özçelik needed across the border in Greece, for the modest price of 15 euros, and delivered it. "The pills are not expensive; the problem is that they can't be found in Turkey. They can be found even in bankrupt Greece," Olkan Bayır, a local CHP member, said.

Health Minister Mehmet Müezzinoğlu visited Özçelik in Edirne on April 16 and promised all possible aid with her medicine. Özçelik told Anatolia news agency that she was still surprised by the reverberations of the incident that occurred a few days ago. She also added that her chemotherapy would start after the medicine was supplied.

Bayraktar's gesture of putting some money in Özçelik's pocket was widely criticized in the media. It greatly offended Özçelik, who approached the minister again on his way out of the Selimiye Mosque, and returned the money. "I was misunderstood. I am not a beggar. I have been disappointed about human kindness again. I can see that you never experienced what it feels like to be helpless," she said, before bursting into tears and running away.