IWF director Aniko Nemeth-Mora briefed IronMind® this morning on the current status of the Turkish Weightlifting Federation.

As reported earlier this week by a number of reputable mainstream news sources, the Turkish Weightlifting Federation has been provisionally suspended by the International Weightlifting Federation due to, "a series of breeches of WADA and IWF anti-doping policies." Specifically, Ms. Nemeth-Mora enumerated the following points:

- violations of the strict requirements for detailing each athlete's precise location at all times
- attempts to have third parties masquerade as the athletes called for testing
- the outright refusal of one person to supply a sample as requested
- threats delivered to the doping-control official, leading her to resign from her position

Ms. Nemeth-Mora was quick to credit the president of the Turkish Weightlifting Federation, Dr. Hassan Akkus, for addressing the matter directly, as he explained to the press that an internal investigation of the charges would be launched.

In the meantime, the Turkish Weightlifting Federation is provisionally suspended, Ms. Nemeth-Mora said, and the IWF Executive Board is scheduled to review the matter on November 15, which effectively bars Turkey, a superpower in the sport, from competing in this year's World Weightlifting Championships.

Although the doping problems in weightlifting are insignificant compared to the recent scandals in baseball, cycling or athletics, for example, weightlifting has often been singled out for criticism by the mainstream press, although the aggressive out-of-competition testing program run by WADA and the IWF, which has effectively caught a number of anti-doping policy violators, has also been hailed at the highest levels of sports administration as an indication of the sport's commitment to and progress toward eradicating banned substances.