Tobacco.org

Turkey drags its smokers outdoors 

The Ottoman sultan Murat IV used to stalk the streets of Istanbul in the 17th century ordering summary executions of smokers, who were then viewed as immoral, un-Islamic and potentially seditious.

From Sunday, hard-smoking Turks face another ban, this time on lighting up indoors in cafés, bars and restaurants, expected to be pursued with equal vigour, although less drastic penalties, by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, their ascetic prime minister.

If successfully enforced, it will be a revolution in a country that puffs through more than 100bn cigarettes a year, making it the world’s eighth-biggest cigarette market, and where half of all men are smokers, well above the European average.

The ban will hit hard in traditional village tea houses, where retired and unemployed men spend their days clicking backgammon pieces in a tobacco haze. It will also force the country’s nargile – or water pipe – aficionados outdoors.

“We’ll have hard times,” said Deniz, a 31-year-old who runs a tea house in the unadorned basement of an Ankara tower block. “My customers say they’ll smoke, they can’t give up. But if I get a 5,000 lira ($3,300) fine, I’ll have to close down.”

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