Partial shutdown provokes opposition parties to attack government ANKARA: The Turkish government has been criticized for announcing a full lockdown only two hours before midnight, which led to crowds rushing to markets, petrol stations and bakeries, despite the scientific advice for social distancing. The suddenly announced curfew late on April 10 will be valid during the weekend in 31 major cities with 63.6 million people, 76 percent of the population, being locked down at home. The partial shutdown will end on Monday, when people aged 20-65 will go back to work. Several members of opposition parties attacked the handling of the announcement. “You are unable to govern,” Engin Ozkoc, from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), tweeted. He shared images of long queues in front of shops just a few hours before midnight, and added: “The damage that the ruling AKP has caused to our Turkey is greater than the damage caused by coronavirus.” After the number of confirmed coronavirus cases approached 50,000 in the country, some people quarreled in front of shops amid panic buying. The Pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) also criticized the decision in a statement, questioning the purpose of creating a panic atmosphere and sparking a surge in coronavirus cases. Istanbul’s secular mayor from the opposition party, Ekrem Imamoglu, criticized the government’s sudden decision with no prior warning to the municipality. He also underlined that such a decision should be taken with consensus and cooperation, otherwise it was likely to cause confusion and panic. In reaction to images of people rushing to markets following the curfew announcement, Ayse Bohurler, one of the female founders of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), tweeted: “Nobody will starve in two days, especially in a Turkish house where the freezer and storage are full.” However, Sinem Adar, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, accused the ruling government of being detached from people’s realities. “Interesting and thought-provoking to see the ruling party reach a level of blindness to the everyday realities of the people. To have a full freezer or storage is far from true, for instance, in the case of those who live on daily wages,” she said. For Louis Fishman, a Turkey analyst from Brooklyn College, “a two-day curfew will produce very little results. The government’s action only demonstrates lack of clarity in stopping the spread of the coronavirus. For it to work, a two-three-week absolute stay-at-home policy with a clear path is needed — such as the Istanbul mayor has been advocating.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan long resisted calls for a nationwide lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19 over fears of its impact on the ailing economy where the unemployment rate has reached 13.8 percent and with 5 million people expected to lose their jobs due to the pandemic. “During such outbreaks, trust in institutions plays an important role, because citizens need to believe that necessary precautions are taken by the public authorities. The polarized environment in the country has resulted in the politicization of trust in institutions and boosted the partisan evaluations,” Prof. Emre Erdogan, from Istanbul Bilgi University, told Arab News. Prof. Erdogan said that the abrupt curfew decision was also criticized because of the personality of the Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, who made the announcement, as he was widely considered to be an extremely politicized member of the government. “While the majority of the opposition and the public questioned the appropriateness of this abrupt decision, the devotees of the government unconditionally supported it. For the opposition, the government was responsible for the resulting chaos, while for the government supporters it is the public who should be blamed for it,” he said. “The social tensions that were generated by the government’s partial curfew decision once again showed that Turkey is governed in a politicized way, without giving priority to multilateral governance methods. Regardless of the success of the measures being taken, they are feeding into the existing polarized environment.”