What a strange BBC headline. Turkey has the most cases in the region and the second highest number of deaths in the Middle East; it sought to downplay the crisis in March before taking action. There are a dozen countries that did better by a variety of measures in the region. 
It's convenient the article didn't give us a comparable snapshot, so I made one, for other countries in the Middle East and Greece (a neighbor of Turkey)...from a point of view of death toll or cases per capita or even testing...take a look:
Someone called this chart “misleading”....blocked. I don’t mind if you want me to include other data, but accusing me of “misleading” by putting Turkey in contrast to its neighbors and not Western Europe is bizarre. I don’t have time for trolls.
The pro-Ankara tweets claim Turkey did well compared to “Europe”...no actually it did not do well compared to Eastern Europe which is what Turkey is close to. This idea that Ankara should just be compared to Italy as if it’s in France is nonsensical.
It does show that the Ankara propaganda machine doesn’t view it as comparable to its neighbors like Syria or Lebanon or Azerbaijan.
