Turkey's Health Ministry bought three hospitals in Germany and will convert them to exclusively serve the Turkish community in the country and Europe, a top ministry official announced.
The ministry's undersecretary, professor Eyüp Gümüş, said some 5 million Turks living in Europe faced problems and felt "excluded from society." The news comes one month after an 18-year-old Turk complained of discrimination in Germany's Mannheim when the family of a young man sought to change an "unclean" hospital room. Niyazi Altunok, father of the patient, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that German doctors told them to "go to Turkey if they didn't like the room and have themselves cared for by Erdoğan" in reference to the Turkish president.
It is the first time that the Health Ministry bought a hospital abroad, and Turkey also plans to purchase hospitals in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two close allies.
Gümüş says they had been receiving requests from the Turkish diaspora for a while to have access to "Turkish-quality health service" in European countries where they live. Gümüş says that Berlin approved a deal for Turkey to open hospitals in the country two years ago. "We signed an agreement with a hospital chain. We will also set up a hospital focused on medical training to have Turkish citizens in Germany educated in medicine. We will send healthcare staff from Turkey to staff the hospitals [we bought]," he said.
