ISTANBUL: It was the height of Turkey’s summer of upheaval, and riot police were hammering protesters. The tear gas at Istanbul’s Taksim Square was so thick that doctors trying to treat the wounded in a makeshift clinic could barely breathe or see.

So a group of doctors set off to find relief in a nearby hospital. They turned into an alley and came face-to-face with police, just yards away. The officers took aim, lifted their guns and launched tear gas canisters straight at the medics in their white lab coats. “It was clear that we were doctors,” said Dr Incilay Erdogan.

While some medics this summer complained of mistreatment as they treated protesters against the Turkish government, the extent of the harassment has now become much clearer. In interviews over the five months since, more than a dozen doctors said authorities had assaulted them with tear gas, chased and beat protesters in hospitals, pressured them to reveal the names of patients and ignored calls for more resources, including ambulances.

Nor has the crackdown stopped since. A prosecutorial indictment signed last month against a doctor and a medical student, starkly contradicts a government statement that it would take no action against medical personnel giving care to protesters. And a bill passed by the Turkish parliament last week, and now before Turkish president could give authorities new powers to prosecute doctors for giving unauthorised care, critics say.

The medical community says its professionals are hidden victims of a violent lashing out against dissent that has undermined the reputation of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a democratic reformer.

In late May and June, hundreds of thousands of Turks took to the streets calling for greater democratic freedoms, in protests initially sparked by opposition to government plans to develop Gezi park in downtown Istanbul. Police fired water cannons, rubber bullets and tear gas, and beat protesters with batons, resulting in thousands of injuries and five deaths.

Doctors at Taksim Egitim ve Arastirma Hospital and the German Hospital — both near the centre of the Istanbul protests — said tear gas was sometimes fired directly at the emergency room doors, seeping inside and hampering their work treating the injured.

On several occasions, doctors say, the police gassed temporary clinics while patients were being treated. On June 22, police fired tear gas through a gap under a door shuttered for protection at a clinic, according to doctors present.

Doctors in hospitals said that they felt pressure not to provide extra care to the protesters. A doctor at the government-run Taksim hospital said he witnessed government inspectors reviewing security footage in the hospital to determine whether medical personnel had volunteered services outside shifts in the overwhelmed emergency rooms.

Gunera Polatogullari, a nurse at the Taksim hospital, said she was the subject of a Ministry of Health investigation in which she was accused of helping to treat protesters while off duty. She says she was confronted with security video in which she is seen handing something over to two people in white lab coats. She admits to Ministry of Health charges that she did not know who those people in the lab coats were. The investigation’s conclusion calls for disciplinary action.

An indictment by Turkish prosecutors against people involved in the summer protests, dated Dec 6 also accuses a doctor and a medical student, who treated protesters inside the Dolmabahce Mosque in Istanbul, of violating Turkish law. They accuse the two of refusing to provide information on protesters treated, protecting criminals, and illegally providing medical assistance to the protesters in their professional clothes. The charges carry the possibility of more than a year in prison.

Feray Kaya, a pediatric assistant who works in a government hospital, volunteered to treat the injured during the protests. After the protests subsided, Kaya received notices that she was being investigated by the Ministry of Health. A letter from her hospital administration asks why she checked in on a protester brought to the emergency room after being hit in the head with a tear gas canister.

The legislation passed by the parliament calls for fines and imprisonment of up to three years for treatment of patients without authorisation by the Ministry of Health, with the exception of unexpected emergency care until authorised care arrives. The law specifically forbids establishing clinics without government authorisation. A provision that could also limit doctors’ pay had also mobilised doctors against passage.

The Turkish Medical Association says it won’t abide by the legislation if passed. “It’s against universal principles and entirely against ethical values,” says Cerkezoglu of the association’s Istanbul chapter. The United Nations’ special rapporteur on the right to health criticised the bill last month and urged Turkish lawmakers to reconsider.

On the night when Dr Erdogan and her colleagues were fired upon with tear gas, they took shelter in a hospital courtyard near the emergency room. But there was no respite. The police were clashing with protesters directly outside the hospital and launched tear gas into the courtyard.

“Our thinking was: this is a state hospital, there are patients here, we will be safe,” said Erdogan. “Nowhere was safe.”—AP