The pharmaceutical sector is the latest field where Turkey’s economic crisis is producing alarming consequences. The severe depreciation of the Turkish lira last year and the corresponding increase in foreign exchange prices have led companies to curb supply, with 20% of patients said to be returning empty-handed from drugstores.

Medicine shortages have plagued Turkey for the past three years. It is a serious crisis that is related to Ankara’s policies and regulations in the sector, which relies heavily on imports. In 2004, the Ministry of Health amended pricing regulations, indexing prices to a fixed lira-euro exchange rate. At the beginning of 2018, when a euro was worth 3 liras, the rate was fixed at 2.69 liras for the year. Yet, following the currency turmoil that shook the country in the ensuing months, the price of the euro stands at about 5.95 liras today. The huge gap between the market price and the fixed rate for the pharmaceutical sector has led companies to cut back or halt supplies, fueling an extraordinary crisis that stands out among crises bruising other sectors of the economy.

Erdogan Colak, the head of the Turkish Pharmacists’ Association, told Al-Monitor that the gap between the fixed exchange rate, which is decided by the Ministry of Health, and the real foreign exchange prices is at the core of the crisis. As the currency turmoil unfolded last year and the gap widened, “shortages began in many types of medicines, especially imported ones,” he said. “The supply of myriad medicines was either curtailed or halted by pharmaceutical companies.”

Nurten Saydan, the chairwoman of the Employer Pharmacists Syndicate, explained that pharmaceutical manufacturers and wholesalers based their production and delivery planning on the timing of price increases. “Many medicines are not available on the market both because year-end quotas are up and companies are waiting for medicine prices to be hiked,” Saydan told Al-Monitor. “Pharmaceutical companies and wholesalers keep deliveries to pharmacies at a minimum level because production and imports have been deferred in anticipation of an increase in [the fixed rate]. That’s why the number of medicines not available on the market is sharply increasing,” she added.