A fertility clinic in the Turkish-occupied north has described a BBC report into alleged donor mismatches as incomplete, one-sided and misleading. Miracle says allegations concerning the period from 2011 to 2015 predate its operation and has reserved the right to pursue legal and administrative action.
Clinic disputes evidence and timeline
The BBC investigation concerned allegations that children were conceived using sperm or eggs from donors other than those selected by their parents. Both the Miracle IVF centre and Dr Firdevs Uğuz Tip were named in the report.
In a statement, the clinic said the principles of press freedom and public interest could not justify publishing allegations without evidence or disregarding official documents.
Miracle said no specific documents, patient records or valid patient consent forms had been presented to establish personal or institutional responsibility on the part of the clinic or Dr Tip.
It also argued that the results of inspections carried out at the clinic by the health authorities in the north had not been adequately publicised. The clinic said Dr Tip’s detailed and documented explanations had also been reduced to a brief denial.
Miracle cited a letter from the Turkish Cypriot health authorities dated 23 July 2026, which it said showed that the Doğuş and Miracle fertility centres were separate legal and institutional entities.
According to the statement, Dr Tip worked at Doğuş between 2009 and 2015 solely as a gynaecologist and obstetrician. She joined Miracle as the doctor responsible for IVF treatment after the centre began operating on 18 April 2019, having obtained a licence from the authorities in the north.
The clinic therefore argued that references in the BBC investigation to the period from 2011 to 2015 did not reflect the facts, as Miracle was not operating at the time.
It said that because the report presented unverified claims, attributed events predating 2019 to Miracle and disregarded official documents, both the clinic and Dr Tip reserved the right to pursue all necessary legal and administrative avenues to protect their personal rights and professional and commercial reputations.
Party calls for inspection findings
The Communal Justice Party was the first political party to issue a statement on the matter. Its health bureau questioned whether the Turkish Cypriot administration would again dismiss the issue as an “attempt to create impressions”.
The party described the BBC report as containing new allegations and called on the Turkish Cypriot “health minister” to publish the findings of an earlier investigation into IVF centres.
It said that if DNA testing had established that donors were different from those selected by parents based on medical histories supplied by a clinic, the matter could not be treated as a simple medical error.
Concerns over consent and traceability
The party’s health committee said using reproductive cells from someone other than the donor selected with a patient’s explicit consent could have extremely serious consequences.
These included implications for patient consent, medical safety, the traceability of genetic and health histories, and children’s rights concerning their biological origins.
It added that IVF treatment was a critical area of healthcare, but stressed that allegations against a small number of centres or individuals should not cast suspicion over the entire health sector.
Source: CNA
