Turks hunt for vanishing drugs in currency crisis

A customer buys medicines at a pharmacy in the Turkish capital Ankara on Dec. 13, 2021. (Photo by Adem Altan / AFP)
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Updated 19 December 2021
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Turks hunt for vanishing drugs in currency crisis

  • President Erdogan's “economic war of independence” has accelerated Turkey's currency collapse

ANKARA: Fatih Yuksel is one of thousands of Turks rushing from one pharmacy to another in search of imported drugs that are disappearing as quickly as the lira is losing value.
“Sometimes I have periods where I don’t have the drugs I need and my illness gets worse. I suffer pains,” said the 35-year-old, who has been taking pills to relieve a rare autoimmune disorder known as Behcet’s syndrome, for the past nine years.
“It can be hard but I have to work,” said the shop attendant.
Turks have been rattled by a currency collapse that accelerated when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month launched a self-declared “economic war of independence” that defies conventional market theory.
The veteran Turkish leader is trying to fight spiralling inflation by bringing down borrowing costs — the exact opposite of what countries usually do in similar situations.
The results have been frightening for people such as Yuksel.
The Turkish currency has lost more than 40 percent of its value since the start of November alone. A lira could buy 13 US cents in January. It was worth less than half that this month.
The crisis has wiped out the value of people’s savings and made basic goods prohibitively expensive, plunging swathes of the population below the official poverty line.
It has also made a whole gamut of imported drugs for a range of illnesses — from diabetes to cancer, heart disease to flu — nearly impossible to find across Turkey’s 27,000 pharmacies.

Drug makers blamed

Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has deflected the blame, accusing drugs manufacturers of “trying to sell expensive drugs to Turkey.”
“News that ‘medicines cannot be found in Turkey’ is not based on reality,” said Koca.
Vedat Bulut, the Turkish Medical Association’s secretary general, said it was “pitiless” to accuse companies of trying to sell expensive drugs when the lira had lost so much value.
Medical professionals said a long-term solution involved developing Turkey’s health industry to wean it off its dependence on imports.
But today, pharmacists describe receiving heart-rending notes from patients on messaging apps with photographs, pleading to know where they can find their medication.
The Turkish Pharmacists’ Association said in November that 645 drugs were affected but as the situation grew worse, pharmacist Berna Yucel Mintas told AFP around 1,000 medicines were difficult to find.
“The situation deteriorated because of the lira,” said Taner Ercanli, head of Ankara Chamber of Pharmacists.
“Imagine it like a fire, and gasoline was poured over it.”

Pharmacists seek reassessment

Part of the problem stems from the way Turkey procures medications.
The health ministry sets the standard price for drugs every February based on an exchange rate agreed by the government.
It set an exchange rate of 4.57 lira to the euro for this year. But it now takes nearly 20 liras to buy a euro on the market.
That meant drug manufacturers had “unfortunately” decided against selling medicines to Turkey, Ercanli said, because they made more money in other markets.
Pharmacists want the government to reassess drug prices against the euro at least three times a year.
But there are wider problems.
Global supply chain bottlenecks caused by the coronavirus pandemic have resulted in jumps in the price of most raw materials, which make domestically produced medicine more expensive.
Turkish drug suppliers are also angry with the government over delayed payments, which are doubly painful as these are settled in liras according to the exchange rate agreed at the time.
Employers’ associations warn some companies will be forced to close.

Children’s syrups have been especially hard to find, as grandfather Emin Durmus discovered while trying to treat his five-year-old grandson’s cough.
“They don’t have that medicine so I go back and get a new prescription. Then I come to this pharmacy and that drug is also not available,” said Durmus, 62.
Erkan Ozturk, who manages a private medical center in Ankara, described similar issues finding drugs to address fever, nausea and stomach aches.
“There are major sourcing issues for drugs used to lower children’s temperatures,” the center’s chief doctor said.
“We’re starting to not be able to find medicines needed to treat diabetes, hypertension, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,” pharmacist Gokberk Bulmus said.
“This is going toward becoming a drugs shortage. Whatever is left in our hands, this is all of our stock because we can’t replace it.”


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The king said the new body would institutionalize cooperation and maximize opportunities for both nations. He also reiterated his support for Syrians and the country’s security, stability and territorial integrity, the Jordan News Agency reported.

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The two leaders also emphasized the need to increase efforts to stabilize southern Syria and improve border security.


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STOCKHOLM: Prosecutors said Thursday they plan to indict a convicted Swedish militant for his suspected involvement in the 2014 capture of a Jordanian pilot in Syria and burning him to death in a cage.

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BAGHDAD: Summer has come early for Iraq this year with temperatures hitting 49 degrees Celsius (topping 120 degrees Fahrenheit) in the southern city of Basra on Thursday, the national weather center said.

“It is the highest temperature recorded in Iraq this year,” weather center spokesperson Amer Al-Jabiri told AFP.

He said the early heat was in contrast to last year, when the temperature was “relatively good” in May and “it only began to rise in June.”

In Iraq, summer temperatures often exceed 50 degrees Celsius, especially in July and August, and sometimes reach these levels earlier.

On Sunday, two cadets died and others were admitted to hospital with heat stroke at a military academy in the southern province of Dhi Qar, authorities said.

The defense ministry said nine cadets “showed signs of fatigue and exhaustion due to sun exposure” while waiting to be assigned to battalions.

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Updated 22 May 2025
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JERUSALEM: The Israeli army issued an evacuation warning on Thursday for 14 neighborhoods in the northern Gaza Strip, including parts of Beit Lahia and Jabalia.

The army told residents in an Arabic-language statement that it was “operating with intense force in your areas, as terrorist organizations continue their activities and operations” there.

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It said that one “projectile that was identified crossing into Israel from the northern Gaza Strip was intercepted” by the air force.

It later announced three more launches from northern Gaza, but said the projectiles had fallen inside the Palestinian territory.

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The territory’s civil defense agency said Israeli attacks had killed at least 19 people on Thursday.


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Updated 22 May 2025
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Turkiye’s Erdogan says Damascus must keep focused on Kurdish SDF deal

  • Ankara views the SDF and its factions as a terrorist group

ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Syria’s government must keep focused on its deal with the Kurdish, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) under which it is to integrate into the Syrian armed forces, pressing Damascus for its implementation.

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