Health workers call for action against violence

KONYA – Demirören News Agency

Following the murder of Ekrem Karakaya, a doctor in the Central Anatolian province of Konya, on July 6, nearly a thousand doctors and health workers came together in the hospital garden to protest against the armed attack, with some demanding faster and stricter action to prevent violence against healthcare professionals.

After the funeral prayer in absentia, the crowd gathered in the hospital garden and staged a sit-in protest in front of the emergency room for a while.

“Everybody loved him,” said Arzu Tarakçı, Karakaya’s colleague working at the same hospital.

Karakaya was an honest person with dignity who was admired by everyone, with his professional and ethical manner, compassion for his patients, and hard work, according to Tarakçı.

“His murder in such a horrible way is shocking to all of us, I can’t describe our sorrow. We don’t want to experience this pain again,” she added.

“The service received from the health system by people who tend to violence and who have been involved in violence before can be limited by the government,” said Özlenen Özkan, the rector of Akdeniz University in the southern province of Antalya, adding they are grieving the loss of their colleague, Karakaya.

Hacı Mehmet Akçay shot and killed Karakaya with a pistol on July 6.

Akçay, who allegedly committed the murder because he blamed Karakaya for the death of his mother, Kezban Akçay, who died of a heart attack a month ago, committed suicide with the same weapon after the attack.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan expressed his condolences to the doctor’s family over the phone.