A Turkish court on Friday sentenced 11 members of the Turkish Medical Association (TTB)’s central council to imprisonment for their statement criticising the country's military operation in northwest Syria last year, news site Gazete Duvar reported on Friday.

In January 2018, TTB issued a statement titled “War is a matter of public health” ahead of Turkey's cross-border operation into Kurdish-populated Afrin. The statement called on Turkey’s political leaders to stop the military action and seek peaceful solutions instead.

A penal court in Ankara found the doctors guilty of “provoking the public to hatred and hostility” by releasing the statement.

Each doctor has been hit with two separate ten-month prison sentences, while one of the doctors, Hande Arpat, received a one-and-a-half year sentence for her social media posts.

"We say it one more time, being against the war is within the universal principles of medicine," the TTB said on social media in response to the verdict.

The statement earned the doctors the wrath of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who denounced them two days after it was published as “terrorist lovers”, leading to threats of violence being levelled at the union.

The pro-government media also accused the union of “treason” and being “terrorist sympathisers” following TTB's declaration.