Turkey: Fakes filling in as real doctors try to find a job abroad

The fifth incident involving a fake doctor in recent months has been reported in Turkey on Tuesday.

A man dressed in a doctor's uniform that he stole from a room in a hospital in Turkey's southern province of Mersin introduced himself to an ENT specialist as a colleague and persuaded the specialist to examine him. He then left the hospital, still in uniform, only to return late at night.

At his second infiltration attempt, the man raised suspicion as he was entering the gynecology department of the hospital when a tracker attached to his uniform went off.

The man told the security guards that he has mixed up uniforms and that he has come to hand over the one he is wearing.

He then went to the pediatrics department and asked for another uniform, and when he was about to be handed one, the hospital workers somehow realized that he was a fake, and the security guards intervened to hand him over to the police.

The previous cases were far more serious as they involved more than just wearing a doctor's uniform.

A Mustafa Yucel, who introduced himself as a doctor and marketed unlicensed solutions as "cancer cure," faced legal action in September after he threatened an infection specialist by placing at her door two beef tongues in an intimidating gesture, and it was subsequently found out in the course of the investigation that he was not a doctor.

Earlier, it was found out that twenty-year-old A.O. who worked as a "practitioner doctor" in a hospital in Turkey's western district of Cerkezkoy did not have a valid doctor's license.

Upon A.O.'s confession, S.U. who went around introducing himself as brain surgeon was captured in Istanbul.

More recently, a Osman C. was arrested as he was accompanying a patient in an ambulance. The ambulance was stopped at a check point by the police, and the police asked for Osman C.'s documents. The man was unable to present a document, and it was found out in the ensuing investigation that he was not a doctor.

The increase in the incidents coincide with the increase in the number of doctors who are taking steps to work abroad.

It has been recently reported by the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) that a record number of doctors applied for documents to work abroad in the first 11 months of 2022. 2,417 applied for such documents, TTB said on 1 December.