Our History

Emergency Medicine Association of Türkiye (EMAT) was established on May 25th in 1995 in the city of Izmir, Türkiye. After understanding the importance of emergency care services during the late 1980s, a series of meeting was held at the Ministry of Health in the early 1990s. As the result of these meetings, Emergency Medicine field was included into the “profession of medicine bylaws” as an independent medical specialty after being published at official newspaper of Türkiye on April 30th in 1993 initially under the name of “First Aid and Emergency Care.” With the great support of Namik Cevik, MD, Prof. who was the rector of Dokuz Eylul University at that time and with the great effort of John Fowler, MD, who started to work at Dokuz Eylul University Hospital, emergency room after 1990, the first emergency department was established in April 1994. After a specialty examination in medicine, the very first residents began training at Dokuz Eylul Univesity Hospital. Later, Emergency Medicine Association was founded by the group of medical doctors who was interested in emergency medicine. The founder president of the association was Dr. John Fowler, MD. The founder members were Ülkümen Rodoplu, MD, Gürkan Ersoy, MD, Yalçın Enginbaş, MD, Ülkü Ergene, MD, Neşe Nur User,MD and Özgür Karcıoğlu, MD. The first general assembly was held in the city of Izmir on October 18th in 1995. Dr. Fowler was assigned as the chair of the executive board and Dr. Rodoplu were assigned as the secretary-general. Through contributing to a lot of national and international scientific events, it was approved to add “Türkiye” to our organization’s name with the cabinet decree of 2003/5660 on May 23rd in 2003. Since 1996, we have been the member of Turkish Medical Association, Medical Specialty Associations Coordination council.