Once again, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has announced a curfew because of the Coronavirus pandemic. The curfew will start on Saturday at midnight and end on Wednesday at the same time, said Erdoğan on Monday after an online cabinet meeting at the Huber Villa in Istanbul. The travel restrictions imposed on 31 cities and provinces to contain the coronavirus have been lifted in Adana, Trabzon, Ordu, Denizli, Tekirdağ, Maraş, Urfa, Amed (Diyarbakır) and Mardin.

However, doctors criticize the relaxation of measures against the pandemic and consider normalization to be premature, arguing that the official case numbers are set far too low. Dr. Halis Yerlikaya, a member of the Central Council of the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), told ANF that the number of actual cases of infection is much higher than the number reported by the Ministry of Health every evening in the social media. In comparison to the official data, the data collected by the medical association is four to five times higher, he said.

Turkey prepares for tourism season

Meanwhile, Turkey is preparing to open up to tourism with coronavirus requirements for hotels and restaurants. Starting at the end of May, domestic tourism will gradually be introduced, Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Ersoy told CNN Türk on Sunday. In June, international flights will probably gradually be introduced again. Appropriate test stations are to be set up at the airports, the first one will start operating at Antalya airport. It is planned to have a capacity for about 20,000 PCR tests per day, but it is not necessary to wait for the results. It is sufficient to indicate the hotel or accommodation. No information was given on what measures would be taken in the event of a positive test.

According to Ersoy, the government has developed a certification program for hotels and restaurants with 132 criteria. Among other things, the establishments must comply with rules on distance and hygiene. In addition, the staff will receive pandemic training. Turkey wants to present itself as a safe holiday country. Tourism is one of the country's most important economic sectors. The revenues are used to finance the bloody war against the Kurdish people, which the Turkish state has been waging for 40 years.

3,841 Corona deaths in Turkey

Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus cases in Turkey has risen to more than 139,000. Within 24 hours, 1,114 people tested positive, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced on Twitter. The number of officially reported cases thus rose to 139,771. 55 more people died of Covid-19 within a day, according to Koca, bringing the total number of deaths to 3,841.

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