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A true Turkish wedding involves a lot of people. Family and friends travel from all over the country, people eat, laugh and dance, and the bride traditionally receives gold coins on her dress from guests. If the couple come from large families, during the celebrations several sheep are sacrificed and kilos of gold are given away.
In spring, wedding celebrations were banned for months due to the corona pandemic. Since July it has been possible to remarry, but authorities are now examining a new ban, because the celebrations are becoming hot spots in the crown.
When event bans and curfews were relaxed in June and July, the government calculated a certain increase in the number of infections. But in recent weeks, the numbers have risen so rapidly that some experts are warning that the virus is out of control.
According to daily communications from Health Minister Fahrettin Koca, authorities currently register around 1,500 new cases and more than 40 deaths a day, but only around 1,000 recoveries. A total of around 270,000 people are ill in Turkey, 7.5 percent of them seriously. Around 6,400 people have died from the Covid-19 lung disease.
Doctors and medical associations in some parts of the country report the overcrowding of intensive care units and the number of victims that goes far beyond official figures from the Ankara government. Infection specialist Mehmet Ceyhan told Habertürk television station that in many countries the actual number of illnesses is ten times higher than what is officially declared. In Turkey, however, it is probably twenty times higher. The country must manage to reduce the number of new infections each day below the number that have been recovered.
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Because Turkey is far from this, Minister Koca has examined new bans. Wedding celebrations are the top priority. Recently, at a single wedding in Anatolia, 32 people became infected: Guests sat together in cars for hours on the way to the celebration, reached into a common frying pan while putting on makeup, and ignored the rules of distance. “We can only win the fight if everyone participates,” Koca wrote on Twitter.
In Istanbul, the country’s largest city with 16 million inhabitants, weddings, engagements and celebrations of circumcision have only been allowed with major restrictions since the beginning of the week. Distant relatives over 65 and children under 15 can no longer celebrate, guests can only have fun with water, dancing is prohibited.
Celebrate a wedding hour, then it’s over again thanks to Corona
In other Turkish provinces, wedding celebrations cannot last more than an hour. A whole new ban on celebrations would hit a lot of couples hard – they need the gifts of gold in order to start a home.
The Turkish wedding industry is in shock. For the second time this year, wedding planners fear a huge loss of revenue due to the new bans. At a protest rally in Bursa, northwestern Turkey, involving some women in wedding dresses, industry representatives complained that the increased number of infections was not due to organized celebrations, but rather to “street weddings. irresponsible and unregulated “.
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It’s not just about weddings. Critics of the government complained that at an event by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the Black Sea coast, many people crowded in front of the head of state’s loudspeaker truck with no one paying attention to distance rules.
The arrival of Russian tourists to Turkish beaches since the beginning of August also raises fears: tourists will not undergo corona tests upon arrival in Turkey, despite an officially announced hygiene concept, criticized Nursel Sahin, president of the association. doctor in the holiday province of Antalya.
As a result, the number of infections among hotel employees in the region is increasing. There are currently more infections in Antalya than at the height of the first wave of the disease in March.
