Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that the country will be heading into its first full lockdown. An early success story, this time last year Turkey was being hailed as a model for its swift actions that ensured the country saw a relatively small death-toll, relative to its size (39,000 people in Turkey have died so far in the course of the pandemic). Now infections are surging: Turkey recorded a total of 61,028 daily cases of Covid-19 and 346 deaths last Tuesday, the highest since the pandemic began. And Erdogan is panicking.
There was some hubris in Erdogan’s early declarations of victory against the virus last year. The ‘common view both domestically and internationally is that Turkey will become one of the star countries of the world that will be reshaped in the wake of the pandemic,’ Erdogan said last summer.
Like every leader who made similar declarations (say, his Greek counterpart), it has come back to bite him.
Will it work? Experience from other countries has shown 21 days may not be long enough
The country has previously imposed restrictions against Covid-19, but these have not been as rigorous as in other countries.
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