FETHIYE, Turkey - The "sperm scandal" that
started in the southern Turkish city of Adana
three years ago entered a new chapter when it was
announced last week that standing trial with Dr
Ismet Koker, at the center of the furor, would be
12 other doctors who worked at his clinic.
Dr Koker had an infertility clinic
attached to Balcali Hospital and is accused of
using sperm donations secretly without the
couples' permission to make women pregnant. In
2002 a decision was made not to try the 12 junior
doctors who acted as Koker's assistants, but that
decision has been reviewed and a majority vote
given by senior judges on the matter. Thirteen
doctors
currently still practicing
all over Turkey could be sentenced for between one
and three years for their part in bringing the joy
of parenthood to childless couples.
The
panel's vote has ensured a much larger trial and
an interesting discussion of the ethics of sperm
donation in a Muslim country. There are no sperm
banks in Turkey and it is illegal to donate sperm;
therefore there is nowhere legal to go for women
whose partners are infertile. Yet this is a
culture where the significance of having children
is very high and barren couples are often
encouraged to split up and remarry in the pursuit
of offspring.
The prurient public was
fascinated when the story first broke after
revelations that one of the male patients at
Koker's clinic had remarked to another, "They're
giving my wife someone else's sperm. Are they
going to do the same for you?" The second patient
was a police officer.
What the people
really wanted to know was, did the women's
husbands know? Paternity is a strong theme in
Islam, and women are obliged to wait nine months
after a divorce in Turkey before they can remarry,
so that a new husband cannot be duped into raising
another man's child. The head nurse at the clinic,
Fatma Karabulut, claimed the men knew but were
resigned to their fate as it saved their honor -
no one need ever know they were a Jaffa (a
seedless citrus fruit).
Karabulut said
between three and five people every day were given
"good news" as a result of sperm-swapping.
Dr Mustafa Sis, who is one of the doctors
called to be tried, explained how he thought lax
procedures may have led to the paternity questions
arising.
"When infertile women ... make
the decision to go for IVF [in vitro
fertilization] treatment, we ask them to return
with their husbands. We tell them that we need a
sperm donation from their husbands in order to
carry out insemination. When they return with
their partner the next day, they give the sperm
collected in the 'donation room' to whoever is on
duty ... but when the man and woman are in the
donation room together we give them total privacy;
as a result, we can't monitor precisely who goes
in and out of the room. It's impossible for us to
tell whether the sperm is from the husband or not.
"Some women say to us, 'My house is just
around the corner, can I bring the sperm from
there?' They leave and come back with a vial of
sperm. Who knows where the sperm came from?" said
Sis.
He also adroitly pointed out some of
the flaws in the prosecution's case: "Even if
their [father and child's] DNA is different, how
do we know they didn't bring the other sperm? How
can you prove what happened?"
He summed up
by saying, "If you ask me, all families where the
husband had fertility problems who have
subsequently had children via IVF know that the
sperm is not theirs. And if both of them don't
know it, one of them does."
When he was
arrested, Koker denied running an illegal sperm
bank. "Lots of people who have test-tube babies
worry about paternity issues," he said.
The first week of the trial has been full
of sensation. The latest bombshell is that one of
the doctors on trial is also a possible source for
the donated sperm.
Dr Nuh Baklaci said all
the interns at that time were heavily incentivized
to provide samples for research, and the frequency
of the requests was debated at the time. In return
for sperm for "scientific research" they would get
a week's vacation. He believed the seminal fluid
was going to be used for research, but he claims
he was promised that the sperm themselves would
not be. When he returned to the same hospital as a
doctor five years later, he asked the female staff
if the donations were still going on, and he said
the other staff joked with him that he should go
and find his children.
Dr Yilmaz Atay
denied the charges that staff donated sperm but he
said there was office gossip that donations
occurred at Koker's private clinic outside the
hospital. Koker denies the charges, asserting that
sperm were only ever used for research and they
were freely volunteered. When asked about the high
level of voluntary behavior, he said, "These were
matters of science not quantifiable in units."
The debate is just beginning in Turkey
about IVF and the implications of genetic science
and children. The Muslim outlook will be an
interesting addition to this much-discussed global
issue, particularly if under European Union
regulation homosexual couples start to try for
children in Turkey.
Certainly medical
officials all over Turkey support the
establishment of legal sperm banks. They see the
dangers of back-street practitioners. The head of
the Medical Affairs Office in Adana, Dr Riza Mete,
said: "State supervision of sperm donation is
necessary to stop potential disaster in the future
when a half-brother and -sister might meet and
fall in love."
The head of medical affairs
for Ankara, Dr Sinan Adiyaman, said: "This is
vital, as some couples can't be helped by just
IVF."
Their co-practitioner in Izmir,
Fatih Surenkok, had more ominous warnings: "Unless
we want sperm to go the same way as organs, we
must act to stop a lucrative black market
developing."
One thing has become clear
during the proceedings: whether the fathers were
duped or not, none of them are prepared to come
forward publicly and say they were. Not a single
patient has lodged a complaint against Dr Koker.
It seems that the pressure to produce children
here in Turkey is so high that any child (or
anyone's) will do.
Fazile Zahir
is of Turkish descent, born and brought up in
London. She moved to live in Turkey in 2005 and
has been writing full time since then.
