Medical Humanitarianism Under Atmospheric Violence: Health Professionals in the 2013 Gezi Protests in Turkey

Abstract

During the 2013 Gezi protests in Turkey, volunteering health professionals provided on-site medical assistance to protesters faced with police violence characterized by the extensive use of riot control agents. This led to a government crackdown on the medical community and the criminalization of ''unauthorized'' first aid amidst international criticisms over violations of medical neutrality. Drawing from ethnographic observations, in-depth interviews with health care professionals, and archival research, this article ethnographically analyzes the polarized encounter between the Turkish government and medical professionals aligned with social protest. I demonstrate how the context of ''atmospheric violence''-the extensive use of riot control agents like tear gas-brings about new politico-ethical spaces and dilemmas for healthcare professionals. I then analyze how Turkish health professionals framed their provision of health services to protestors in the language of medical humanitarianism, and how the state dismissed their claims to humanitarian neutrality by criminalizing emergency care. Exploring the vexed role that health workers and medical organizations played in the Gezi protests and the consequent political contestations over doctors' ethical, professional, and political responsibilities, this article examines challenges to medical humanitarianism and neutrality at times of social protest in and beyond the Middle East.

The Colonial Clinic in Conflict: Towards a Medical History of the Palestinian Great Revolt, 1936–1939

“…Medical anthropologists have made clear that the deliberate degradation of medical provision and access to healthcare as a form of collective punishment can be found in many contexts in the contemporary world (e.g. Varma 2020 : 80); the possibilities and perils which face medical workers as they negotiate questions of medical neutrality in times of crisis, meanwhile, are equally widespread (Aciksoz 2016 ; Hamdy and Bayoumi 2016 ; Redfield 2013 ). Rather than treat Palestine as exceptional, then, a medical historical perspective on the great revolt suggests that it was one site at which these wider dynamics played out.…”

“…The guilt experienced by Forster is clearly not on a par with the tremendous risks and pressures from the authorities which doctors in other, contemporary contexts have faced for their work (e.g. Aciksoz 2016 : 211–214; Hamdy and Bayoumi 2016 : 226), nor did the suspicion which attached to his hospital as a ‘centre of resistance’ lead to the kind of infrastructural violence which Omar Jabary Salamanca ( 2011 ) has argued follows from the Israeli resignification of life-sustaining public utilities in Gaza as ‘terrorist infrastructures’ in the early twenty-first century. Yet those Palestinians working at St Luke’s – that is to say, the majority of the staff at the hospital – were more vulnerable to being directly targeted by the military authorities in Hebron as a result of their work.…”

“…Forster insisted on treating British police and military personnel, Palestinian civilians, and wounded rebels alike at St Luke’s hospital, Hebron. But as medical anthropologists working on contemporary contexts of conflict have argued, appeals to medical neutrality can often be taken as a political stance against authorities and the status quo (Aciksoz 2016 ; Hamdy and Bayoumi 2016 ; Redfield 2013 ). In Forster’s case, his dogged attempt to treat all, regardless of their status in the ongoing conflict, put him on a collision course with local British military authorities, and he was forced, eventually, to abandon this assertion of medical neutrality.…”

Medical Neutrality

“…Ethnographies of medical care in conflict provide a window into these tensions, and into how medical neutrality is variably socially and politically constructed and debated by different individuals within different aid and donor organizations-especially various medical providers involved in humanitarian response. For example, Hamdy and Bayoumi (2016) and Aciksoz (2016) demonstrate that while clinical providers provide a unique witness to the physical toll of conflict on the bodies of their patients in Egypt and Turkey respectively, these clinicians also use their position as "neutral" actors as a political stance from which to advocate for social and political change. Their neutrality, in these cases, is not apolitical, exceptional, or immune from the conflicts at hand, but rather explicitly and strategically political and engaged in advocacy on behalf of patients.…”

Challenges in researching violence affecting health service delivery in complex security environments

“…For example, most articles about workplace violence in Turkey were excluded, but an article about violence against health professionals in Turkey during the 2013 Gezi protests was included (Aciksoz, 2015). After the initial screening a citation search was conducted to identify further articles containing original research.…”