Regulatory exclusion and occupational health risk in Turkish firefighting: a legal-epidemiological policy analysis

Article 2(2)(b) of Turkey’s Law No. 6331 on Occupational Safety and Health excludes the intervention activities of disaster and emergency units from that statute’s scope. The exclusion concerns duties performed during response operations; it does not establish that firefighters lack every protection under other legal or administrative instruments. This evidence-informed legal and policy analysis combines a structured, non-systematic occupational-health evidence synthesis, doctrinal analysis, a review of 43 Turkish judicial decisions issued from 1997 to 2024, and a functional comparison with the United Kingdom. International evidence identifies occupational firefighting as carcinogenic to humans (IARC Group 1), links fire suppression with sharply elevated risk of fatal coronary events, and documents substantial psychological and musculoskeletal burdens. In the official sources examined, no nationally binding firefighter-specific instrument was identified that prescribed post-incident decontamination, detailed health-surveillance content, personal protective equipment performance monitoring, or structured psychological support. The judicial corpus was coded across eight analytical categories; its holdings concentrated on pay, personnel status, compensation, procedure, and jurisdiction rather than concrete preventive OSH duties. We interpret these findings through a structural accountability gap model, under which the statutory exclusion may constrain investigation, data generation, standard-setting, and regulatory learning. The model is interpretive, not a tested causal finding. United Kingdom law provides an illustrative comparator because it retains general employer and enforcement duties without a categorical operational exclusion. The article proposes eight evidence-linked policy options. Their effectiveness, feasibility, and cost-effectiveness require prospective evaluation.