People largely complied with the two-day partial lockdown in Turkey, figures by the Interior Ministry shows.
The ministry announced that only 9,583 people were subject to “legal and administrative measures” for violating the curfew, which ended in the early hours of Monday. The measures refer to a fine of TL 3,150 (around $406).
Unlike the previous curfews that lasted throughout the day, the new curfew came into force at night, between 8 p.m. Saturday and 5 a.m. Sunday and again, between 8 p.m. on Sunday and 5 a.m. Monday.
In Istanbul, Turkey’s most populated city, 747 people were fined a total of more than TL 1.7 million for violating the curfew while 798 others were fined a total of more than TL 2 million in the capital Ankara over the weekend.
The weekend curfews will continue until the government decides to lift them. The government had imposed weekend curfews for two months after the first cases were reported in March. At the start of the summer, they were lifted, along with a string of restrictions.
The country spent the summer with relatively low trends in the number of coronavirus patients. Yet, the figures returned to the levels they were in the early days of the pandemic. The country recorded the highest rate of daily fatalities, at 141, on Nov. 20, far higher than the previous peak number of 127 on April 19.
