The Council of Forensic Medicine

After attending this presentation, attendees will understand the structure of the council of forensic medicine in Turkey and will have discussed if can it be a model for other countries. This presentation will impact the forensic community by presenting knowledge about Turkey’s forensic medical system. Expertise in forensic sciences is an important tool for law processing in all countries. Forensic examination is needed for an objective solution in majority of cases. Ataturk and his associates founded the Turkish Republic in 1923.

This new Republic encouraged different ways of thinking and higher education, which all lead to developments that have become standards in the modern world.  One area that benefited from these developments was the modernization of the legal arena.  The Council of Forensic Medicine, charged under the Ministry of Justice in 1923, was but one of the institutions formed in the young Republic. The Council of Forensic Medicine is an expert organization located in 50 out of the 81 cities in Turkey.  The Council’s headquarter is in Istanbul.  The Council’s framework includes an assortment of medical disciplines. Located in the Council’s headquarter, are six specialized committees and six specialized departments. The duty of the 1st

Specialized Committee is death investigation, while that of the 2nd is to report on intentional laceration; 3rd on occupational diseases, malpractice cases, and deferment of detention due to old age or illness; 4th on forensic psychiatry; 5th on cases of poisoning and allergy; and 6th on domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse. Among the six Specialized Departments, the Morgue has the duty to perform autopsies, while the Chemistry Department makes toxicologic and narcotic analysis in body fluids. The Biology Department performs paternity testing and DNA applications; the Physics Department’s duty is to perform document examination, trace analysis and ballistic examination; the Traffic Department investigates the forensic cases that have resulted from traffic accidents.

The Psychiatry Department has an Observation Unit, and after a three week evaluation, passes its final opinion on the patients to the 4th Specialized Committee. Under the Ministry of the Interior, there are four gendarme and ten police criminal laboratories located in various city centers throughout Turkey.  Included in these laboratories are various forensic departments. At this time, there are no advanced private forensic laboratories.

Forty-one out of the forty-five medical facilities that are housed in the seventy-five universities in Turkey have forensic medical departments.  These facilities have inadequate infrastructure and personnel.  This limits routine applications.  Courts often require expertise, which comes from various non-forensic institutions.  These institutions are not well organized and lack modern technology. Therefore, the most of the workload is given to the Council of Forensic Medicine in all parts of Turkey. In this presentation, information on the structure of the forensic sciences and forensic medicine in Turkey, as well as the expertise areas, is given. The different aspects of the topic “The Council of Forensic Medicine: A tragedy or good luck for Turkey? Can it be a model for other countries?” is discussed.