Turkiye: 33 Dead in Ankara from Bootleg Alcohol Poisoning, 20 in Critical Condition

[C0RI0LANUS]

Last edited Mon Feb 10, 2025, 03:20 AM - Edit history (1)

The provincial governor's office reported that 33 persons died in Ankara following bootleg alcohol use while another 20 are in intensive care.

In Turkiye, where bootleg alcohol is frequently contaminated with methanol, a poisonous chemical that can cause blindness, liver damage and death, such poisonings are rather prevalent and result from covert manufacturing.

Police confiscated 102 tons of contaminated alcohol and arrested 13 individuals on suspicions of selling it.

Though the governor omitted a chronology, his office's X account on Tuesday cited "an increase in counterfeit alcohol deaths in recent days". A spokeswoman for the governor's office informed AFP the statistic was "from the beginning of the year".

Previous consumption of bootlegged alcohol had left 26 people in intensive care and 38 people died in Istanbul in Jan 2025.

Since then, no official comment on whether the number of victims rose or on the state of those in intensive care has been made.

Inquired by AFP for a Friday update, a spokeswoman from the Istanbul governor's office responded: "We are not going to make a statement on that."

Turkiye is an ostensibly secular nation, although alcohol tariffs have surged under pious President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Purchased from a supermarket, a liter bottle of raki, Turkey's aniseed-flavored national spirit, currently costs over 1,300 lira ($37.20) in a nation where the minimum salary just recently exceeded $600.

Critics claim high prices and low salaries are driving the manufacture of moonshine alcohol.


Turkish police officers.

I wrote an OP about the January case. This is just appalling. People just want to have a good time and they're paying the ultimate price for it. These cases occurred in Turkiye's capital, the bureaucratic center of the country and is a black eye for President Erdogan.


The founder of modern Turkiye, Kemal Pasha Ataturk, holding a glass of what looks like raki cut with water.


Source:

https://www.samaa.tv/2087328618-33-dead-in-ankara-from-bootleg-alcohol-poisoning-20-critical?q=2087328618-33-dead-in-ankara-from-bootleg-alcohol-poisoning-20-critical