Crisis management in authoritarian regimes: A comparative study of COVID-19 responses in Turkey and Iran

ABSTRACT

The new coronavirus disease, or COVID-19, was first identified in late 2019 and declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020. Turkey and Iran have been heavily affected by the outbreak, with over 460,000 and 890,000 cases reported respectively, so far. Even though these two countries have similar political and ideological approaches and are roughly the same size in terms of population density, as well as despite a high number of reported COVID-19 cases, a fast infection spread rate, and mismanagement of the crisis in both countries, Turkey’s death toll remained lower when compared to the death toll in Iran. Deploying a comparative case study methodology drawing on an analysis of secondary sources, this study investigates Turkey and Iran’s official responses to COVID-19 to further understand authoritarian reactions to large-scale crises and how distinctions between the actions taken by authoritarian regimes might impact crisis management in such contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• Turkey
• Iran
• health policy
• authoritarian regimes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Turkey’s score is 4.09, where the cutoff point is 4. The following are the score ranges for each regime type: authoritarian regimes: 0–4; hybrid regimes: 4–6; flawed democracy: 6–8; full democracy: 8–10.

2 According to the figures obtained from the Turkish Ministry of Health in 2017, the number of private hospitals in Turkey increased from 271 in 2002 to 565 in 2016, a 109 percent increase. Also, while 5,697,170 people were admitted to private hospitals in 2002, this number increased to 71,147, 878 in 2016. Over the same time period, the number of inpatients in private hospitals increased by 628 percent and surgeries in private hospitals increased by 585 percent (Cansu, 2018).