Despite crackdowns and restrictions, illegal tobacco remains popular in Türkiye

In İstanbul's Kadıköy district, Kemal and his friends run a local tekel, a store selling liquor and tobacco. Nostalgic Turkish 80's pop music blasts through the speakers of the smoke-filled place, with two different types of imported Spanish beer, Daura and Estrella, being today's bargain and illegal cigarettes publicly being sold at the counter.

While his colleague, a retired middle-aged man originally from the Central Anatolian City of Kayseri, runs the daily business, Kemal makes sure everyone in the shop gets their tea.

Kemal, while sipping on his tea, explains that they sell two types of illegal cigarettes. Expensive menthol click-cigarettes, smuggled from Iran, as Türkiye banned menthol cigarettes in 2020. And cheaper pre-rolled cigarettes, filled with heavy local roll tobacco, which are popular these days because of their price, 14 lira (0.71 euro), less than half the price of a regular pack.

The recent economic woes, with approximate annual inflation numbers between 84.39 percent officially and 170.70 percent unofficially, made people look for alternatives.

At a cultural center, two blocks away from Kemal's tekel, Hilal, a recent film graduate, is taking a smoke break. Together with four other graduates, they opened the non-profit spot to offer free cultural alternatives to the local youth.

Although she has a pack in her hand, these days, she favors smoking cheaper Parley rag tobacco and regularly buys cheaper pre-roll cigarettes. When she started smoking, a pack was 9 or 10 lira. Nowadays, it's almost triple, making her look for more affordable options. She is not the only one. Ger friends frequently buy cigarettes trafficked from Iran or Iraq. But these cigarettes also see price hikes, she comments.

Twenty billion cigarettes

Inflation and tax hikes have fueled cigarette bootlegging and people rolling their own or buying pre-rolled smokes. Formal cigarette sales decreased by 2 billion between 2019 and 2020 in Türkiye. People smoked 118 billion legal factory-produced cigarettes while burning through an estimated 20 billion hand-rolled and smuggled cigarettes.

Illicit tobacco constitutes approximately 20 percent of all tobacco sold in Türkiye, according to Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University Economics professor Fuat Oğuz, creating an annual tax loss of 25-30 billion lira.

To combat illegal tobacco, a new amendment was published in the Official Gazette on December 10. People can now face up to 2 to 5 years of imprisonment for unauthorized selling tobacco. Simultaneously, recent crackdowns and inspections across the country have resulted in numerous confiscations and detainments.

Three weeks ago, in the centrally located city of Eşkişehir, authorities seized 650 kilos of illicit tobacco, 4,2 thousand cigarettes, and 2,7 thousand empty filter cigarette papers. In Istanbul, a week later, the police detained 17 people and confiscated 11,53 thousand packs of trafficked cigarettes and 214 kilos of tobacco.

"There has always been cigarette smuggling"

Nonetheless, Kemal does not worry about getting caught. Most tekels in the street sell illegal cigarettes, and local authorities turn a blind eye. When not much later, a police car rolls into the street looking for a parking spot, Kemal does not hesitate to ensure they can park in front of the store.

"There has always been cigarette smuggling in Türkiye," he explains. Before Turgut Özal came to power in 1983, people sneaked foreign brands like Marlboro into the country, as imported cigarettes were illegal, he adds. 

Between 1983 and 1989, Turgut Özal served as Türkiye's 26th prime minister, implementing extensive neoliberal economic reforms. He appointed his son Ahmed Özal to help liberalize the mainly nationalized tobacco market, allowing imported foreign brand cigarettes in 1983 and permitting foreign companies to distribute and manufacture their own cigarettes in Türkiye in 1991.

As a result, consumption of foreign-brand cigarettes increased 46 times between 1990 and 2000, and cigarette consumption rose by 52 percent between 1990-1999, making the country one of the largest cigarette consumers in the world. In contrast, worldwide cigarette consumption declined by 4 percent during the same period.

In the wake of the penetration of transnational tobacco companies and financial crises, Türkiye, historically a major tobacco producer, became dependent on importing tobacco. In the 90s, the government was forced to cut public welfare spending, such as subsidies on tobacco cultivation.

Production declined and Türkiye's share of the world's tobacco production dropped from 4 percent in the 1990s to 1,7 percent in 2012. In 2003, 42 percent of local tobacco was used by Türkiye's cigarette producers. This has now declined to 11 percent, as foreign companies mainly started to opt for the Virginia variety, not the traditional Turkish tobacco. Consequently, Türkiye held a tobacco import deficit in 2020, exporting 992 million dollars of tobacco products while importing over 1.2 billion dollars.

Galatasaray, Kayserispor, and NATO cigarettes

The privatization of tobacco significantly changed the products sold in local tobacco shops. With fond nostalgia, Kemal starts naming the endless amounts of local cigarette brands, Çamlıca, Maltepe, Tekel, Samsun, Bafra, Yenibahar, Sipahi, Asker, Birinci and İkinci, Meltem, Polis, Tokat. His colleague enthusiastically opens up google, finding images of Galatasaray, Kayserispor, and NATO cigarettes.

Today, the only pack regularly sold in the store that recalls the past is Tekel, meaning monopoly in Turkish. However, this brand is also no longer in local hands. Tekel, the state-owned tobacco and alcoholic beverage company was sold to British American Tobacco in 2008 for 1,72 billion dollars.

At Kemal's shop nowadays, Marlboro Touch Blue is one of the most sold cigarettes at Kemal's shop, going over the counter for a bit above 30 lira (1,55 Euro).

This used to be around 20 lira right before new year's day 2021. However, in January 2021, cigarettes saw a hefty 47% tax increase, worrying people that a new price hike will come as a new year's gift in 2023.

It does not seem to worry Kemal and his colleague. They still come to buy their cigarettes, Kemal remarks while puffing on a smoke himself and drinking a cup of tea. A recent survey by research firm NG acknowledges this, as three in four people over the age of 15 say higher cigarette prices have not led to less smoking.

"Drink Rize tea"

Türkiye's smoking habit is a thorn in the side of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Being staunch anti-smoking, he frequently voices his discontent, calling smoking haram and wishing people to drink Rize tea instead. A testimony to his anti-smoking endeavors was the 2022 exhibition at the Presidential Complex in Ankara, showcasing cigarette boxes belonging to people who pledged Erdoğan to quit smoking.

Under his supervision, Türkiye's gradually rolled out heavier regulations "to protect family values" that ban sexuality, alcohol, and smoking. Films and series need to blur cigarettes and smoking and are not allowed to "encourage the consumption of alcohol and smoking".

World champion in men's lung cancer

Despite these anti-smoking campaigns and increased taxation, cigarettes continue to be ever-prevalent. According to a recent WHO report, 30,7 percent of the people in Türkiye smoke. The smoking rate among men has been declining in recent years, from above 50 percent in 2000 to 42,1 percent in 2020. However, more women started smoking during the same period, from 16 percent in 2000 to 19.2 percent in 2020.

These figures make the country not only number one among all OECD countries regarding smoking but contribute to making Türkiye world champion in men's lung cancer, with 37 thousand men and 7 thousand women diagnosed with the disease yearly. As smoking is responsible for an estimated 80-90 percent of lung cancer deaths, experts worry that the rate of female patients will rise. (WM/VK)