22-05-2025
Overweight people are publicly weighed and ordered to slim down under new rules in Turkey - with inspectors patrolling public spaces
Turkey has rolled out a nationwide scheme to stop and weigh people in public, with inspectors then telling them to slim down if they are found to be overweight.
Health workers have been deployed across each of the country's 81 regions with weighing scales and tape measures as the drive to assess 10 million people by July 10 is underway.
Passersby are stopped by medical examiners for spot body mass index (BMI) checks while walking through town squares, shopping centres and parks, and even as they prepare to board buses or head to football matches, according to reports.
Speaking at a nursing conference last week, Turkey's Minister of Health Kemal Memişoğlu declared that '50 percent of our society is overweight.'
He pointed to the various health risks associated with being overweight, telling the meeting: 'Being overweight means being sick, it means we will get sick in the future.
'Our young children are overweight, their body resistance is high and that's why they don't get sick, but when they start getting older, that weight will turn into joint and heart diseases.'
But Memişoğlu was not spared the scales in Ankara last week - and was told by health officials that he was among the large proportion of the population counted as 'above normal weight'.
'Which dietitian should I go to?' he reportedly said afterwards, before adding in a follow-up post on Thursday: 'Turns out I'm a little over. It's up to me now, I'll be walking every day.'
Pictures from around Turkey have shown people being guided onto weighing scales and having their height measured before their weight is calculated
Another person who was checked by the inspectors, psychiatrist and academic Gökben Hızlı Sayar, wrote on X: 'I got caught in a fat checkpoint in Üsküdar Square. Luckily, they scolded me a little and let me go.
'Like drivers warning of speed traps, I tipped off three other chubby people heading that way. Solidarity, my fellow fat comrades!'
Memişoğlu responded to people joking about the scheme on social media: 'Dear young people, I read what you write on social media. You are very entertaining, but the issue of being overweight is serious.'
Pictures from around Turkey have shown people being guided onto weighing scales and having their height measured before their weight is calculated.
The anti-obesity campaign, which is described by officials as a 'national fight' and is running under the tag line 'know your weight, live healthy,' began on May 10 and plans to survey one in eight Turks.
People with a BMI over 25 are referred to state-run Family Health centres and Healthy Life centres, where they can receive free nutritional counseling and follow-up services.
Turks have hit out at the measures, which many have argued point to the government being out of touch with the daily realities of soaring food prices and wage stagnation, and the impact this can have on healthy eating.
The Erdogan government has also been criticised for the very public nature of the scheme, with Turks questioning why people need to be weighed in public.
Meanwhile an article in Turkish daily newspaper Evrensel pointed out that the scheme was rolled out in the same week that a new generation weight loss injection was launched in Turkey - something it labelled 'a 'strange' coincidence'.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated in 2023 that some 30 per cent of Turkish people are obese.
Health experts warned earlier this year that a BMI score is not 'nuanced' enough to measure obesity, with more assessments needed before someone is told they are obese.
The new Lancet Commission of more than 50 experts from around the world argued that doctors should only diagnose patients as clinically obese if they have illnesses directly caused by obesity alone, such as type 2 diabetes.
BMI first gained popularity in the 1970s as a way of judging body fat. A healthy BMI is typically measured between 18.5 and 25.
Anything under 18.5 is considered underweight. BMIs between 25 and 29.9 fall into overweight territory, and above 30 is considered obese.
It is useful for tracking population trends in body weight, but has well-known limitations when applied to individuals, Dr Arya Sharma, an obesity researcher at the University of Alberta in Canada, told Live Science.
For example, many professional athletes qualify as overweight or obese based on solely their BMI. But they have much more muscle mass, which weighs proportionally more than fat.
