Newborn Gang Scandal in Turkiye

News:

The horrifying details of the “newborn gang” scandal in Türkiye have rocked the nation. Individuals, including doctors, nurses and hospital staff, manipulated newborn patient transfers to private hospitals for financial gain. At least 12 babies lost their lives due to the actions of the gang, as critical care was overlooked for profit. Due to this horrific organized crime, 22 of the 47 suspects were arrested, 10 private hospitals in Istanbul were closed, and in the subsequent days, it was revealed that this crime was committed in four more provinces. After the Newborn Gang, the Dialysis Gang scandal also emerged... Corruption in the health sector is a murder committed by the state against its people with its own hands.

Comment:

The capitalist state sees the services necessary for the public’s health as a “sector” among the income sectors that provide profit to the economy and the state. Capitalist ideology, which focuses only on material values, has either ignored human, moral and spiritual values under the name of unlimited freedoms or turned them into means of income. Thus, it has turned the health service, which should exist to keep people alive, into a tool of oppression rather than a service to the human. This terrible corruption, which abuses hospitals, medicines, medical supplies, doctors, nurses and midwives as income-generating tools for the health sector, has given birth to a wild monster that feasts on the human and does not hesitate to even suck the blood of innocent babies. Healthcare, without exception, has never been a right accessible to everyone in any capitalist country.

It turned values like humanity, compassion, service, keeping human alive, and improving the quality of life to exclusive services, reserved for those, who pay enough money. An another evidence, proving that health care is a commercial commodity, is that health services, from which the public is deprived of benefiting in an equal, free and quality way, are offered to foreign "customers" in the form of medical tourism. (For example, in the second quarter of 2024, more than 800 thousand people came to Turkey to receive health services, most of them from "rich" Western countries. (Data from USHAŞ). In other words, quality health services at a cheap price are provided to almost 3 million health tourists annually!)

The newborn gang is a small part of all the evil committed by this capitalism monster that produces crime and cruelty. From day to day the capitalist ruling system produces more and more brutal crimes, like scenes from horror movies. We see that in the case of Gaza, where the whole world is watching a genocide just for the sake of protecting the interests of a handful capitalist. Meanwhile the number and types of crimes committed in Turkiye within a year are no different from a war environment. Just 3 weeks ago, a 19-year-old criminal murdered two young girls at the Edirnekapı walls in Istanbul. He decapitated one of the young girls he killed, threw her head down the historic city walls to her mother's feet, and then committed suicide by jumping off the walls. A few days later, the body of 8-year-old girl Narin, who had been missing for 19 days, was found in a stream bed. Her mother, her elder brother, and paternal uncle are the murder suspects. A few days ago, the body of 21-year-old university student girl Rojin, who had been missing for 18 days, was found.

According to the data of the Ministry of Justice; in 2021, more than 1.5 million crimes were committed against physical immunity, including murder, assault and injury. The number of crimes committed against property such as theft, extortion, plunder and fraud is around 2.5 million. In 2021, 127 thousand people applied to judicial claiming to be sexually assaulted. Approximately 45 thousand of them are children. Every day, 123 complaints are filed with judicial authorities on allegations of sexual harassment.

Additionally, judicial statistics show that there are more than 15 million suspects and more than 10 million victims/complainants in Turkey. (T.R. Ministry of Justice, Justice Statistics, 2021) It goes without saying that these figures are increasing day by day.

All these data show that people in Turkey live in an equally unsafe environment as people in Gaza, Palestine or any other conflict zone in the world. Surely, there are no bombs are not raining on our heads in Turkey. Bodies are not torn apart by bombs, houses are not turned into rubble, fields not burned by bombs... But the freedoms, the hedonism, and greed of the capitalist, secular, democratic order are killing humanity! The human body - even if it is a baby - is treated in the category of commodities, that can be bought and sold, torn apart for animalistic sexual desires, and destroyed for money! Our houses are not turned into rubble under bombs... On the contrary, new buildings are erected every day... But the families living in them are ruined... Our fields and animals are not burned by bombs, but they are rendered unusable - through international agreements such as the Paris agreement - for the sake of feeding the greedy capitalists, by destroying agriculture and animal husbandry, and eventually creating a huge disaster. The country is being pushed into hunger and thirst in the long run.

As long as we stay settled for these puppet rulers of this capitalist colonial system, put all their faith in democracy and secularism and its governing models; and as long as we continue to hope to gain any good (khayr) from them, as long as we continue to seek help from them, Allah (swt) will continue to send more and more calamities. Just a small reminder that these calamities are in fact our Lord's mercy towards us... He sends these, not to punish his believing servants, but to awaken them because of His mercy towards his believing servants, but to punish the oppressors through the hands of the believers.

So, in order to be among those who are saved, both in this world and the hereafter, and in order to get rid of the bloodsucking, human-hating capitalist order, and to end the crimes all over the world, we have to put the necessary Islamic attitude towards those, who have power over us, as soon as possible.

[وَمَا أَصَابَكُم مِّن مُّصِيبَةٍ فَبِمَا كَسَبَتْ أَيْدِيكُمْ] “Whatever affliction befalls you is because of what your own hands have committed.” [Ash-Shura 30]

Since we are already condemned to live in a warlike environment, since neither our lives nor our children whom we love more than our lives, nor our property, our honour, our religion, or our faith are safe, then we have to fight like mujahideen in war and work desperately to change this environment. For this reason, we must strive to either correct our rulers or to replace them.
Rasulullah (savw, said

«أَفْضَلُ الْجِهَادِ كَلِمَةُ حَقٍّ عِنْدَ سُلْطَانٍ جَائِرٍ»

“The best type of Jihad (striving in the way of Allah) is speaking a true word in the presence of a tyrant ruler.” [Abu Daoud].

[يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ اسْتَجِيبُواْ لِلّهِ وَلِلرَّسُولِ إِذَا دَعَاكُم لِمَا يُحْيِيكُمْ وَاعْلَمُواْ أَنَّ اللّهَ يَحُولُ بَيْنَ الْمَرْءِ وَقَلْبِهِ وَأَنَّهُ إِلَيْهِ تُحْشَرُونَ]

“O believers! Respond to Allah and His Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life. And know that Allah stands between a person and their heart, and that to Him you will all be gathered.” [Al-Anfal 24]

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Zehra Malik