Erdogan's bout with illness yesterday spotlights weaknesses in security
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Following a sudden drop in his blood sugar levels, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday was checked into Ankara's Guven Hospital by his aides and security detail. Though the Prime Minister's condition turned out not to be terribly serious, details which have emerged in the aftermath of the incident point to a number of weaknesses in the protective order surrounding Prime Minister in his capacity as a leader of the country.
When Prime Minister Erdogan told his chauffeur to continue on to the nearest hospital, after feeling extremely weak in front of the Turkish Parliament, the chauffeur raced to Ankara's Guven Hospital in a panic, leading a convoy of security detail to follow the Prime Minister's car in what amounted to a great deal of chaos.
Search for sledgehammer to break open Mercedes' window
On arriving at Guven Hospital, Prime Minister Erdogan's chauffeur, Harun Kandemir, and his closest security detail and aides also lept from the car, leaving the doors on the special armored Mercedes vehicle to lock automatically. With no spare key, and with Erdogan in the back of the car barely conscious, security cadre members called for a sledgehammer, and on getting one from a nearby construction site, proceeded to break open the window across from Erdogan in order to unlock the vehicle's door. Though the entire operation took only 10 minutes, doctors later commented that had the Prime Minister been experiencing any condition more serious than hypoglycemia, the situation involving the locked door could have turned easily into a fiasco resulting in unnecessary death.
Erdogan finally checked out of hospital in the evening
Witnesses report that while the chauffeur, Kandemir, shouted "The Prime Minister is dying" on the convoy's arrival at Guven Hospital, MP Omer Celik, who had been accompanying Erdogan in his vehicle, called urgently for a stretcher. With the sirens on the Mercedes blaring, security members worked to break the Mercedes' window, and finally retrieved Erdogan, putting him on a stretcher that had been brought out, and racing him into the emergency room. Though the Prime Minister checked out of Ankara's Guven Hospital last night, with strict dietary and sleep orders from doctors, authorities are still scratching their heads trying to understand how such extreme chaos surrounded what should have been a situation where everyone behaved more calmly.