Director of Communications Fahrettin Altun stated in a thread on his Twitter account that the Turkish government continued to be focused on the coronavirus challenge at home and abroad but they were also working on foreign policy matters such as those in Syria, Libya and the Aegean Sea.
Altun pointed out that the Syrian regime was trying to take advantage of the situation as President Erdoğan indicated, and added, "While Turkey continues to stand by the March 5th agreement with Russia, the regime is conducting provocations but we are determined not to allow regime aggression in Idlib. We will also not tolerate terror groups in this region.”
Reminding that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made it clear that the international community must support the legitimate Libyan government, Altun said, "The legitimate Libyan government’s recent advances against the putschist Haftar forces show that Turkey’s support is paying off. We will continue to abide by our agreement with Libya.”
“It’s not only rogue regimes and putschist forces that are trying to take advantage of the coronavirus environment. The terrorist PKK is trying to conduct operations against our country but we continue to foil them on a daily basis. We will continue our operations nonstop.” Altun stated.
"There are encouraging signs"
Indicating that President Erdoğan emphasized the importance of social distancing measures to overcome this virus, Altun noted the following:
"Our hospital capacity is increasing and there are no serious problems in our supply chain. Our civil servants are on the frontlines distributing necessary items to those in need. Turkey has increased its daily testing to around 40,000/day. There are encouraging signs (decreasing infection rate, increasing recoveries, plateauing of numbers of ICU patients and deaths) that we are ‘flattening the curve’.
We are distributing masks free of charge and have no shortage of medicines or respirators. Under our President Erdoğan’s instruction, our bio-science and manufacturing companies have come together to produce 5,000 respirators by the end of May. R&D programs, certification and manufacturing processes are being closely managed to ramp up production of medical supplies, devices, potential cures. Filters needed for N-95 and N-99 masks are also going to be manufactured domestically.”
“We will overcome the challenge together”
Reiterating that the most recent addition to our national network of city hospital complexes was the Istanbul Başakşehir City Hospital with a total of 2,682 bed capacity and that President Erdoğan opened the first phase of this complex that can serve with a total of 1,035 beds (150 ICU beds) right away, Altun noted the following:
“In order to contain the spread of the virus, our government decided to implement a 4-day curfew in 31 major cities starting April 23. By increasing these stringent measures during the month of Ramadan, we are hoping to start getting back to normal after the Eid.
President Erdoğan ordered a large-scale effort to bring back our expatriates from around the world on the condition that they agree to a 14-day quarantine. Around 25,000 Turkish citizens will be able to return to Turkey for the month of Ramadan.
Our government under President Erdoğan’s leadership has been working very hard to fight the coronavirus. Our people have largely followed the guidelines by authorities. We are grateful to our healthcare professionals on the frontlines. We will overcome this challenge together.”