The Party for Life without Impositions intends to represent Turkey’s growing anti-vaccine movement and become an organised opposition to other pandemic measures including mask requirements and PCR tests.
Haci Ali Ozhan, a lawyer and notary in Kirikkale, a province in Turkey’s central Anatolia region, said on Friday that paperwork has been filed to the Interior Ministry to establish a new, anti-vaccination political party called the Party for Life without Impositions, Balkan Insight reports.
Ozhan told Turkish daily newspaper Sozcu that the party objects to coercive interventions to curb the pandemic and to measures that he claimed violate people’s bodily integrity.
“We object to plans for chemical liquids called vaccines which carry chips and aim to enslave people,” he said.
He added that the party also objects to PCR tests, masks and other pandemic measures.
“We want a life without impositions,” he said.
He added that the party will have no political ambitions outside its main aim.
“Our party will be working for one purpose only, which is the [government’s] fight against the pandemic, and the party will dissolve itself when the mission is completed,” he said.
The Turkish anti-vaccination movement has grown over the period of the pandemic and has organised several large protests in Istanbul and other major Turkish cities called “the Great Awakening”.
It recently organised another protest in front of the World Health Organisation’s building in Istanbul.
So far, more than 117 million vaccines have been given to people in Turkey. A total of 55.5 million people have received one dose, while 49 million people have received two.
Turkey has no shortages of vaccine supplies, and is close to producing its own domestic vaccine, Turkovac.
However, vaccinations have not yet reached the authorities’ desired level and daily infections and deaths due to COVID-19 are still high.
“People vaccinated with one dose represent 67.5 per cent of total population while people vaccinated with two doses represent 59 per cent. We have to increase [the latter] to 70 per cent for communal immunity,” Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca told a press conference on Wednesday.
Turkey recorded nearly 30,000 new cases and 228 new deaths on Thursday. The total number of people currently infected stood at 199,000 on Thursday.
