[1] Smoking in Turkey is banned in government offices, workplaces, bars, restaurants, cafés, shopping malls, schools, hospitals, and all forms of public transport, including trains, taxis and ferries.
[7] Manufacture and import of e-cigarettes is banned,[8] so only combustible cigarettes with deadly[9] smoke are made and sold legally.
The president of the Istanbul branch of the Environmental Engineers' Chamber (ÇMO), Eylem Tuncaelli, said that the smoking ban is a way for political leaders to avoid dealing with the country's real air pollution problems.
[update][4] Traditionally oriental tobacco was grown but nowadays cig manufacturers prefer Virginia, which requires irrigation.
[26] Manufacture and import of ecigs (which are less dangerous) is banned,[27] so only the combustible cigs with deadly[28] smoke are made and sold legally.
[30] According to the World Health Organization this problem is exacerbated by weak governance and a lack of high-level commitment to investigate and prosecute these crimes, ineffective customs and border controls, as well as complicity from within the tobacco industry, notably from the producers of precursor materials used in the manufacture of cigarettes.
While the overall consumption of tobacco in Turkey has declined over the last thirty years, the price of cigarettes rose 4.17% annually between 1970 and 2006, driven in large part by successive layers of VAT and excise taxation.
[32] Counterfeit cigarettes are primarily purchased by younger and lower-income smokers, further exacerbating the health hazards universally acknowledged to be even worse than those associated with commercial tobacco products.
According to the European Parliament budget control committee, an estimated 40 percent of smuggled cigarettes sold in Turkey are produced in Bulgaria by the Bulgartabac company.
[35] In July 2009 a customer shot and killed the owner of a restaurant in the southwestern town of Saruhanli because he was angry that his cigarettes had been confiscated.