Two family health centers to be converted to police posts: Report

İdris Emen – ISTANBUL

Two family health centers in the Bağlar district of southeastern Diyarbakır province will be converted into police posts, the Turkish Doctors’ Union (TTB) has said in a report. 

Publishing a report about family health centers in Diyarbakır, the TTB said the police had conducted inspections at the family health centers numbered two and three in the Bağlar district. The health centers, which serve around 60,000 people in the district, were aimed at being turned into police posts, the report said. 

If the centers were to be closed, the locals would suffer and the health conditions in the area would worsen, the report added. 

Turkey has beefed up efforts to fight terrorism in the country’s southeast, with aerial campaigns and ground operations targeting militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Local governors have imposed curfews in several towns in the country’s east and southeast to remove militants from the area.  

One of these places was Diyarbakır’s Sur district, where a curfew has been ongoing since Dec. 14, 2015, and where specially-trained commandos have been deployed to fight against the PKK. 

The TTB also said in its report that three family health centers in Sur had been closed for 50 days due to the curfew. 

Sur was the place where prominent human rights lawyer and Diyarbakır Bar Association head Tahir Elçi was shot dead on Nov. 28, 2015, in clashes that erupted after gunmen killed two police officers on a nearby street.