That’s when an email caught my eye.
It was the latest column by Azime Acar, someone I consider an expert on media communications in Türkiye, and whose weekly articles I always make a point to read. Reading her piece at the very moment one of the world’s best-organized PR events—the Oscars—was unfolding on screen, I’ve got to admit, left me with a heavy heart.
To sum up briefly, Azime Acar analyzed how the recent face transplant surgeries in Türkiye, while undoubtedly a medical success, turned into a PR disaster. She even quoted a column by Rahşan Gülşan from Habertürk:
Rahşan Gülşan highlighted the issue in her Friday column titled “The boy’s mouth is bleeding, for heaven’s sake!”
“It’s been a month since the boy had surgery. But clearly, he hasn’t fully healed yet.
How do I know?
From the horrifying photos published in the newspapers, of course.
During the press conference the other day, at one point, blood started dripping from Uğur’s lip!
Clearly, the transplanted organ is in a very sensitive state.
Clearly, the wounds haven’t fully healed yet, and when Uğur tries to talk, bleeding occurs.
My heart sank when I saw the photo. I was completely shaken.
Isn’t this unfair to the boy?
Sure, it’s a first in our country.
Sure, it’s a testament to the success of Turkish doctors.
But we weren’t even allowed to savor the moment. And has anyone considered what this child will do with this forced fame he now carries? Has anyone remembered that behind that transplanted face is a 19-year-old boy who’s already been emotionally scarred throughout his life?
When the Rector of Akdeniz University, Prof. Dr. İsrafil Kurtcephe, offered him a job in front of the cameras—what exactly did he have in mind for Uğur?
Was he thinking of putting him on the hospital’s medical team or giving him an administrative role?”
Rahşan Gülşan went on to say: “We managed to turn a success story into a cheesy Turkish-style PR stunt. Congrats to us all!”—a sharp and rightful criticism of the situation.
The Rector of Akdeniz University, swept up in the excitement of the cameras, publicly offered the boy a job. It was neither the first nor the last time media hype led to a communications disaster.
When we look at the current state of our country, there are truly incredible stories of individual success. Believe me, we have doctors, engineers, academics, bureaucrats, athletes, artists, and entrepreneurs of global caliber. But they’re all personal successes. Due to systemic issues and our destructive “pull each other down” mentality, no one in this country ever seems to end up where they truly deserve. Meanwhile, many unqualified people remain comfortably seated in positions they’re not even close to deserving. I will continue to confront this distortion, and I have some surprises planned on this topic for the future.
In the face transplant case, I believe every stakeholder made mistakes—hospitals, universities, the media, doctors trying to do damage control, and others involved. Amidst this mess and distortion, we failed to communicate these medical achievements to the world in the way they deserved. And in doing so, we also diminished the true heroes of this story—the doctors. It’s genuinely heartbreaking.
As I’m writing these lines, Iran’s A Separation has just won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. I’m curious to see how our neighbor Iran, which—like us—excels through individual success stories, will react to this moment. There’s no doubt the topic will be widely discussed from now on. But if there’s one real winner here, it’s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the body behind the Oscars—which once again proved its visionary approach to communications. And let’s not forget, even before these real face transplant surgeries took place, Hollywood had already introduced us to the concept through the movie Face Off. That, too, shows just how far ahead the Academy is.
Tag: health
