 and a key ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Tuesday called for the reopening of the country's military hospitals, nearly 10 years after they were transferred to civilian control in the aftermath of a failed coup.){kind=link}
Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and a key ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Tuesday called for the reopening of the country’s military hospitals, nearly 10 years after they were transferred to civilian control in the aftermath of a failed coup.
“The reopening of military hospitals is a matter of national survival,” Bahçeli told lawmakers at his party’s parliamentary group meeting.
Bahçeli linked the issue to Turkey’s role in NATO ahead of a summit Ankara is due to host on July 7 and 8.
“It is regrettable that Turkey is the only NATO country without a military hospital,” Bahçeli said, according to Turkish media.
“This is a historic deficiency for our army,” he added.
Bahçeli said Turkey needed to rebuild its military hospitals, revive the “Gülhane spirit” and train more doctors in battlefield medicine.
Gülhane refers to the former Gülhane Military Medical Academy (GATA), which trained military doctors and ran hospitals for the Turkish Armed Forces before the government stripped it of military status in 2016.
Turkey transferred GATA hospitals, the Turkish Armed Forces Rehabilitation and Care Center, military hospitals, dispensaries and other military health units to the Health Ministry under Decree Law No. 669, issued after the July 15, 2016, coup attempt.
The same decree transferred GATA’s higher education units to the University of Health Sciences and assigned the university to oversee training and research in fields including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense, aerospace medicine, underwater medicine and war surgery.
The decision affected 32 military hospitals and one rehabilitation center in 26 provinces.
The transfer of military hospitals formed part of a wider overhaul of the armed forces that also created the National Defense University and put military education under tighter civilian control.
Critics of the 2016 change say the closure of military hospitals destroyed a specialized medical system and left Turkey short of doctors trained for battlefield injuries.
The issue has returned to the agenda in recent years as Turkey has maintained military operations in northern Iraq and Syria and doctors’ groups and lawmakers have warned that civilian physicians cannot easily replace military doctors in combat conditions.
In October the Defense Ministry said work was continuing to update the military health system to meet the needs of the Turkish Armed Forces, following reports that preparations were underway to return GATA in Ankara to military hospital status.
Bahçeli had also called the closure of military hospitals a mistake in October, saying their reopening would be a “good deed.”