Turkish surgeon in Gaza recounts impossible life and death decisions

In a hospital in Israeli besieged Gaza, Turkish surgeon Taner Kamaci found himself facing the most difficult decision of his professional and humanitarian career. Two children were born suffering at the same moment. Both were in need of urgent surgery, one with liver damage and the other with a perforated intestine. However, the only operating theatre available could not save them both.

Turkish surgeon: doctors making harrowing life and death decisions in Gaza

Kamaci, who volunteered to work in Gaza, told Anadolou Agency how he had to choose one child to save and leave the other to die. It was an experience he had never had before. He recounted:

I have never made a more difficult decision in my life.

He added:

Gaza is not only a wound on the body, but a wound on the human conscience.

During his two weeks of work in March 2024, Kamaci witnessed the tragic reality behind the casualty figures on the screens. Children and women were the main victims, while Israel bombed hospitals and rendered ambulances unable to transport the wounded. Many families were living in hospital corridors under makeshift covers or in tents made of cloth, without food or water.

Kamaci added that the lack of beds and equipment sometimes forced doctors to stitch wounds on the floor. He told the outlet harrowingly that:

Children who lose their limbs live in pain for months.

Testifying at the Gaza Tribunal

The Turkish surgeon described the situation as “a campaign that amounts to genocide”, noting that the international community has failed to protect civilians in Gaza.

It was why Kamaci was at the ‘Gaza Tribunal’ in Istanbul last week. The independent international initiative aims to document violations and achieve symbolic justice.

Former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories Richard Falk presided over the four-day public hearings. On Sunday 26 October, the tribunal issued its unofficial, but vital moral verdict. It ruling condemned Israel’s genocide and war crimes in Gaza, including:

the mass destruction of residential properties, the deliberate denial of food to the civilian population, torture, and the targeting of journalists.

As Andalou Agency reported, Kamaci testified on his experience operating as a surgeon in Gaza.

TV screens show not even ‘one percent’ the reality of life in Gaza

At this, Kamaci emphasised that what appears on television screens:

is not even one percent of reality.

Witnessing the human suffering first-hand has left a deep mark on his conscience. War is not just numbers, but the faces and tears of children living a daily struggle between life and death, in a city suffocating under the weight of destruction and loss.

In the cramped hospital beds in Gaza, the cries of children mingled with the cries of pain, and the corridors became temporary shelters for bereaved families, while doctors stitched the wounded up on the floor due to a lack of equipment.

Here, Kamaci faced the most difficult decision of his life: choosing who would live and who would die. He saw with his own eyes the human devastation that television screens do not show. Gaza is not just a city: it is a constant cry to the world. Its grief is engraved in the heart of every doctor and every civilian soul living amid the rubble and suffering.

Featured image via TRT World/Youtube.