A Cabinet shuffle was announced after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appointed two ministers early Tuesday.
According to the Official Gazette, Murat Kurum was appointed to replace Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Minister Mehmet Özhaseki, who recently tendered his resignation over health issues.
Kurum was Özhaseki's predecessor and served as minister between 2018 and 2023. He was also the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) candidate for Istanbul mayor in the recent municipal elections.
The Official Gazette also stated that Health Minister Fahrettin Koca had asked to be removed from his post and was replaced by professor Kemal Memişoğlu, who has served as the head of the Istanbul Health Directorate.
“My tenure included many painful and staggering events, like the Jan. 22, 2020, the Elazığ earthquake, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Feb. 6, 2023 earthquakes in southeastern Türkiye,” Koca said Monday at a handover ceremony in the capital Ankara.
The Elazığ earthquake, measuring magnitude 6.7, claimed 41 lives and injured over 1,600 people in eastern Anatolia, while the Feb. 6 earthquakes left over 53,000 people dead across 11 provinces.
“All of these were traumatic events and posed a major test for us, which I believe our health care system has done well in,” said Koca, who was appointed in July 2018.
Under Koca, the Health Ministry has built 18 state hospitals, oversaw the production of domestic vaccines and diagnosis kits, and launched a “white reform” aimed at addressing snags in the health care system, like improving working conditions and personal benefits for health professionals.
Koca said he is handing over to Memişoğlu reforms, domestic production, as well as the new public hygiene project, which he said would end Türkiye’s dependence on outside resources.
Memişoğlu praised the “revolutionary leaps in health care over the past 22 years” and assured the ministry would prioritize patient and worker satisfaction and fundamental health care services during his tenure.
“One of Türkiye’s biggest goals is to not just health tourism but to produce health technology and become a global provider,” he said.
The new health minister, originally hailing from Trabzon, was born in the northeastern Rize province in 1966. After graduating from the faculty of medicine in Ankara’s prestigious Hacettepe University in 1990, Memişoğlu became a general surgery specialist at the Okmeydanı Research Hospital in 1995.
From 1996 to 2016, he served at various hospitals, including as chief assistant, assistant doctor, chief surgeon and general surgery professor.
Memişoğlu also has many scientific articles in national and international magazines. He is married and a father of three.
He and Kurum are set to attend Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting chaired by Erdoğan for the first time before taking their oaths at Parliament.
With Kurum’s appointment, his deputyship fell and the AK Party’s parliamentary seats dropped to 264. The party is expected to appoint a new lawmaker to his seat and elect a new chief for the Parliamentary Environment Commission.
An Ankara native born in 1976, Kurum is a civil engineer by training and the son of a father who worked in the same ministry he led for years. He is credited with spearheading the government’s efforts to transform cities with better buildings and rebuilding in areas already affected by earthquakes, such as 10 provinces devastated by the February earthquakes last year.
He is married and a father of two.
The Official Gazette also announced the appointment of 302 new civil administration chiefs with Erdoğan’s decree.
The Interior Ministry’s headquarters got 10 new civil administrators, while 292 new officials were appointed as vice governors and rural institutions as deputy governors.
