In a modern twist on a self-preservation tactic used by cautious kings and pharaohs, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is having his food tested before he eats — not by a human taster, though, but in the lab.
Mr. Erdogan’s physician, Dr. Cevdet Erdol, revealed this week that at least one of the 1,000 rooms in the President’s extravagant $600 million palace in Ankara, the capital, will hold a special food analysis laboratory to test the President’s meals for radioactive materials, poison or certain types of bacteria that could be used in an assassination attempt.
“We know that throughout the world, assassinations no longer take place through arms, but are secretly conducted by contaminating food with poisonous substances,” Dr. Erdol said in an interview published on Tuesday in the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet .
He explained that five on-site experts were on duty for 14 hours a day, analysing the President’s meals for suspicious substances and ensuring that all his nutritional needs are met.
Since leaving the Prime Minister’s office and becoming the country’s first directly elected President in August, Mr. Erdogan has faced criticism for his extravagance, with opponents denouncing him as an ever more authoritarian leader mimicking the habits of a sultan. The presidential palace he occupies is one of the world’s largest executive residences and more than 30 times as large as the White House.
The criticism turned into ridicule in January when Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority President, was greeted at the palace stairwell by 16 warriors in Ottoman-style suits of armour, with swords, spears and shields, in a scene that was called an “Ottoman circus” on social media.
Dr. Erdol’s disclosure about the methodology of checking Mr. Erdogan’s meals — he noted that some food samples were even sent to labs in another city to be checked — was seen by critics as another example of Mr. Erdogan’s excesses, an extension of the ego of a man who has been in power for more than a decade.
Nearly every world leader, of course, takes precautions in the matter of food safety, and the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was known to have a food taster.
The measures do not seem wholly unfounded based on Turkey’s history: The country’s eighth President, Turgut Ozal, died in 1993 of what some claim was a heart attack. Many others though, including Ozal’s family, believe that he was poisoned.
So far, the daily analysis of Mr. Erdogan’s food has not come up with anything alarming.
“We have not had any serious incidents in the analysis we have conducted over the President’s food so far,” Dr. Erdol told Hurriyet . “But some fruits and vegetables contain pesticide residue, so we will pay particular attention when purchasing food.” — New York Times News Service
