At least 30 children, most of them British, are feared to have been conceived by IVF treatment in northern Cyprus using the wrong sperm or egg donors.
In each case, the parents suspect they did not get the donors they had selected.
The figure is one of several new findings in an investigation that, earlier this year, uncovered the first seven cases.
All the parents say they carefully selected anonymous donors based on information such as their medical history, appearance, personality, education and hobbies.
However, they have concerns the requested sperm and egg donors may not have been used in their fertility treatments.
Half of the 30 children were born from procedures at one clinic, Dogus IVF Centre.
“It’s absolutely scandalous,” said one of the mothers, Rachel, who recently learned that she received the wrong sperm donor from the clinic.
Three people – Dr Firdevs Uguz Tip, Dr Sevket Alpturk, and a patient co-ordinator Julie Hodson – were involved in the care of many of these patients at Dogus.
Parents suspect these members of staff may have misled them. Firdevs denies any wrongdoing and neither Alpturk or Hodson have responded to our questions.
In northern Cyprus – a territory where European Union laws do not apply and which is only legally recognised by Turkey – clinics are loosely regulated and promise patients low prices, high success rates and a wide choice of sperm and egg donors.
The Turkish-occupied territory is one of the most popular destinations for British people seeking fertility treatment abroad.
We first revealed the emerging scandal in March where a small group of parents appeared to have been misled about donors.
Responding to the allegations, the territory’s Ministry of Health said it had launched an official investigation. However, it has not responded to our repeated requests for more information.
Since then, more parents have contacted us and their stories have concerning similarities.
The majority said the clinics they had used had promised them screened, healthy donors from Western Europe, but that they had become suspicious after their children were born.
Eleven of the 30 children have now taken commercial DNA tests which show they have inherited genetic ancestry from Turkey or surrounding countries.
This suggests their parents’ requested donors were not used.
The majority of the children who have done DNA tests were conceived through IVF between 2012 and 2024 at Dogus clinic.
Families have been left with questions about who their children’s real donors are and their medical histories.
“These reports are deeply troubling,” said Laura Bridgens, founder of the charity Donor Conceived UK. “It’s a fundamental human right for a donor-conceived person to know the truth about their origins.”
In the past few days, the UK’s Foreign Office has also updated its travel advice warning that fertility treatment in northern Cyprus “carries risks” due to a lack of regulation and it encourages those seeking IVF in the territory to conduct thorough research beforehand.
Wrong sperm donor
Rachel says she spent years questioning whether she had been given the wrong sperm donor during her treatment at Dogus IVF Centre.
After reading our first article, she and her donor-conceived son Jonah, 13, decided to do DNA tests and the results indicated her fears were justified.
“I used to think the clinic had made a one-off mistake,” she said. But now, after we told her about more families coming forward, she said “it feels like this is something much bigger and more deceitful”.
Rachel chose Dogus in 2012 because of a “helpful and friendly” patient co-ordinator called Julie Hodson, whose role was to liaise between Rachel and Dr Firdevs Uguz Tip – known professionally as Dr Firdevs – who was carrying out her treatment.
Rachel, who was 39 at the time, needed a sperm donor so her eggs could be fertilised in a lab to create an embryo which could then be implanted into her uterus.
The IVF package cost about €4,000 (roughly about £3,200 at the time), significantly cheaper than similar treatment in the UK, and included donor sperm from the world’s largest sperm bank, Cryos International, in Denmark.
Rachel selected an anonymous Danish sperm donor on the Cryos website. Known as Ditto (not his real name) on his profile, he stated he would be happy for any of his offspring to find out his identity when they turned 18.
“I wanted any child of mine to have the choice of being able to contact the donor,” said Rachel. “For a child trying to figure out who they are in the world, it could be really important.”
Several patient co-ordinators at the IVF clinic, including Hodson, told Rachel that Firdevs would arrange her sperm donor order.
Rachel travelled to northern Cyprus for the fertility treatment – and became pregnant shortly afterwards.
She says she first became concerned that Ditto was not the donor when patient co-ordinators, including Hodson, repeatedly refused to send her a medical report confirming his sperm had been used.
When he was born, Jonah’s physical appearance also raised questions – it differed greatly from both her own and the one described in Ditto’s profile.
Now, after 13 years of uncertainty, Rachel and Jonah’s DNA tests indicate that he is her biological son, but that Ditto was not the sperm donor.
After viewing the DNA results, they approached Cryos which says it has no record of ever delivering sperm to the Dogus clinic. That is despite Dogus having advertised its relationship with the sperm bank as a key selling point for many years.
This adds further weight to the belief of several families that they were deceived about the real sperm donors used in their treatments.
There could be many more.
Rachel says what has been uncovered makes no difference to the love she has for Jonah – but what upsets her the most is that Jonah may have lost the opportunity to contact his donor in the future.
She also does not know if his real donor has been used in other IVF treatments. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there are genetic siblings out there,” she adds.
Negligence or deception?
When we presented the findings of our latest investigation to a range of fertility experts, they were shocked that 30 children could be affected.
The accidental use of an incorrect donor during an IVF procedure is extremely rare, they told us, and for an error of this magnitude to occur on multiple occasions suggests “negligence” or “deception”.
It indicates a “systemic problem which transcends one rogue doctor and one rogue clinic”, according to the British Fertility Society.
Of the 15 cases linked to Dogus, three members of staff were repeatedly involved.
Dr Sevket Alpturk is the owner and “responsible manager” of the clinic whose role it is to sign off all procedures and activities, according to the northern Cypriot government.
Source: BBC
