Turkey to drop curfews starting July 1

ANKARA / ISTANBUL

Amid a nationwide fall in COVID-19 cases, Turkey is set to end pandemic curfews as of July 1, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced on June 21.

Turkey will also lift intercity travel restrictions and restrictions on urban public transport and the country will return to normal working order in public institutions and organizations as of July 1.

Musical activities may be performed until 12 at midnight, according to the government’s decisions taken at a three-hour-plus cabinet meeting at the presidential complex in the capital Ankara.

Turkey had been implementing a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. from Monday to Saturday, and a full lockdown on Sundays.

On June 1, Turkey eased some measures to fight the virus as the number of virus cases in the country dropped following a 17-day lockdown.

At a press conference after the cabinet meeting, Erdoğan also stressed how “vital” it is for everyone to get jabs when their turn comes in the country’s vaccination drive.

Urging the public to pay no heed to “manipulations,” he said they should instead listen to scientists and doctors about the need for vaccinations.

“Our goal is to make everybody in our nation over the age of 18 eligible for vaccination within a few weeks,” he said.

Erdoğan stressed that Turkey is a country that has administered vaccine doses to the largest share of its population over the last week.

“As of today, the number of vaccine doses that we administered approached 43 million,” he said, adding that he wants to ensure that Turkey is one of the first countries to overcome the pandemic crisis with the least harm.

“Although the problems in the world will continue for a while due to the new variants of the virus, Turkey will successfully leave this phase behind,” he vowed.

The Turkish leader also urged the public to continue to follow hygiene, mask, and social distancing rules and thanked healthcare workers and security forces for their efforts since the beginning of the pandemic.

Over the last seven days, Turkey became the number one country in the world in giving the most COVID-19 vaccines per 100 people, Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter on June 21.

“Turkey has the top performance in the speed of the vaccination.”

“On June 14-20, Turkey became the country with the highest vaccination rate, surpassing China and Germany,” Koca added, citing figures from the Our World in Data website.

Using the website’s rolling seven-day vaccination averages, Koca wrote that over the last week, an average of 1.45 out of every 100 people in Turkey was vaccinated.

Separately, Koca yesterday announced that the country lowered the COVID-19 vaccination eligibility age to 25.

People over 25 years of age can make an appointment as of tomorrow, he said on Twitter.

Over 43 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered since the country launched a mass vaccination campaign in mid-January, according to the Health Ministry.

More than 28.5 million people have received their first doses, while over 14.5 million have been fully vaccinated.

Meanwhile, the country on June 21 reported 5,294 new coronavirus cases, including 429 symptomatic patients, as well as 51 new fatalities and 5,093 recoveries over the past 24 hours.