Raki, the Turkish anise-flavored spirit, is so much more than just a drink. It is deeply rooted in Turkish culture and an essential part of the country’s lively culinary tradition. Meals that take hours, lots of laughter and communal singing are all hallmarks of an evening during which raki is imbibed.
Famous Turkish poet Orhan Veli Kanik once said he’d like to be a fish living in a raki bottle. Turkish pop legend Sezen Aksu sang about a drunken night where the raki flows. Even the man known as the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was famous for his hospitality, serving raki generously when he hosted friends and artists.
But more recently raki has been getting a different kind of reputation: It’s become known as the guilty party in an increasing number of deaths from alcohol poisoning, in particular in Turkey’s major cities — Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir — as well as at Turkish holiday destinations.
This year, there’s been a dramatic increase in deaths because of “fake” or bootleg alcohol. Since the beginning of 2025, at least 160 people have died as a result of consuming illegally-produced alcohol. According to Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya, by the end of February the government had seized 648,000 liters of illegally produced raki, vodka, gin and other sprints. The government had also arrested 560 suspects.
Prices for alcoholic drinks have increased significantly in Turkey over the past few years due to rising taxes. A bottle of raki now costs around €35 ($38). Given that the monthly minimum wage is about €572 ($617), those sorts of prices make raki unaffordable for many ordinary Turks. In Germany, for example, a bottle of raki is much cheaper, usually selling for between €12 and €18.
Government health warnings
Germany’s Foreign Office, along with other governments such as that of the United Kingdom, has warned about the dangers of consuming bootleg alcohol in Turkey. Tourists heading to the country have been advised to be cautious, to ensure the label on their bottle is not a copy and that the blue-turquoise banderole (a small seal on the bottle top) isn’t damaged or tampered with.
Recently local NGO, Turkish Public Alcohol Policy Watch (Devletin Alkol Politikalarini Izleme Platformu), which monitors public policies on alcohol, added to those warnings with a post on X (formerly twitter): “Avoid restaurants that offer unlimited alcohol, take care to order an unopened bottle and then open it yourself, to make certain the original seal is intact,” the organization warned.
The main cause of alcohol poisoning is the addition of cheap methanol instead of ethanol, which is the main type of alcohol produced by grain fermentation. Methanol is highly poisonous and can lead to visual disturbances, vomiting, dizziness, organ failure and, in the worst case, death.
But a drink containing methanol is almost impossible to differentiate from one that doesn’t, says Cagin Tan Eroglu, of the Turkish Public Alcohol Policy Watch. It smells the same, looks the same and even tastes like regular alcohol, he notes.
Like others in Turkey, Eroglu criticizes the Turkish government tax policy that has led to such huge price increases for drinks. Since 2013, value-added taxes and consumer taxes on alcohol have increased automatically every six months and this has led to disproportionate price increases. Currently taxes make up about two-thirds of the consumer price for spirits. And on top of that, the Turkish economy has been suffering from galloping inflation. All this has forced people to turn to the black market where they can get a cheaper alternative to drink.
Economist Ozan Bingol, a Turkish tax expert, recently added it all up. “Fifteen years ago, the consumer tax alone was around 51.5 Turkish lira per liter of alcohol. It is currently almost 1,366 lira [per liter] — an incredible increase of 2,553%,” he wrote on X in early February.
As one local from the western Turkish city of Izmir told DW, going out to have a drink has become something of a luxury. Because buying alcohol on the black market is way too risky, the local has been distilling his own raki for almost 10 years now. He remembers when raki used to cost around €18 and is of the opinion that the Islamist-conservative government is using alcohol taxation as an instrument of repression and a way to interfere in people’s private lives, trying to force more liberal, less religious Turks to stop drinking alcohol. The government is dividing society, the Izmir local argues, and demonizing anybody who doesn’t conform to their ideals.
Erdogan’s alcohol clampdown
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan makes no secret of the fact that, as devout Muslim, he’s not keen on alcohol. He’ll often say so in his speeches. For Erdogan, Turkey’s national drink is the yoghurt drink ayran.
After the most recent cases of death from alcohol poisoning, two professional groups —the Turkish chambers of food and chemical engineers — made an urgent appeal to the Turkish government. They argued that high taxes haven’t led to any reduction in alcohol consumption and have in fact become a threat to public health. They called on local authorities to do more to curtail illegal alcohol production and for the government to reduce the taxes.
Eroglu, of Turkish Public Alcohol Policy Watch, agrees that the high taxes haven’t had the desired effect of lessening alcohol consumption. Rather they have led to more deaths from alcohol poisoning.
He accuses the Turkish government of pursuing this policy on ideological grounds and of judging the Turkish people who actually do drink alcohol as just “bad citizens.” In fact, Eroglu notes, when members of Erdogan’s ruling AKP party talk about the deaths caused by alcohol, they don’t differentiate between legal and illegal alcohol, as though both were equally bad.
Such public policy has also had social and cultural consequences. Due to increasing social ostracism, public alcohol consumption is increasingly restricted only to certain parts of Turkey’s big cities, Eroglu argues, as if it just didn’t exist elsewhere at all. It’s a culture war caused by government policies, he adds.
Since 2014, Turkey has not allowed any kind of advertising for alcohol, nor may alcohol brands sponsor events, something that’s led to well-known festivals being cancelled. Scenes of drinking in films or on television must be pixelated.
Official figures suggest that in Turkey the annual, per-capita consumption of alcohol sits at around two liters. But how much black-market or illegally made alcohol the Turkish drink, nobody knows.
This story was originally published in German.
