The situation with online gambling in Turkey is somewhat similar to Russian: online casinos are prohibited by law, and casino owners receive prison sentences; on the other hand, foreign casino sites willingly accept Turkish players and do not stand on the way of funds withdrawal.
Are land-based casinos banned in Turkey? Partially. The history of the gambling business in this Middle East country resembles Indian dramas: in 1990 casino business becomes legal, which lasts till 1996, the same year when the brazen murder of the “casino king” Omar Lutfi Topal happens. Unexpectedly for everyone, in December of that year, the government quickly passed a law prohibiting casinos, which came into effect 14 months later, in February 1998 (at that time gambling businesses were only taking first steps on the Internet).
At the time of closing, casinos were contributing about $1 billion a year to the budget and giving employment to about 20,000 people. In order to sweeten the pill for avid gamblers, in the late 90s, state lotteries were legalized (horse racing betting, by the way, had been around since 1984).
In the 2000s, casinos were gradually embracing the Internet, becoming mobile and— frustratingly for the authorities—legally elusive. Therefore, in 2007, Turkey completely banned online casinos.
When it comes to land-based casinos, as of October 2019, there are officially 9 gambling establishments in Turkey. However, if someone decides to go there to spin slot machine reels or play roulette, he will be very disappointed: in fact, they just offer another way to bet on racing and play the state lottery. The violators get prosecuted immediately: the Turkish authorities organize large-scale raids against the illegal gambling establishments on the regular basis and sentence their owners to prison terms.
There are rumors going around about some five-star hotels that have games available for their guests, but this is rather anti-advertising. It happens like this: someone on the gambling forums mentions a hotel in mainland Turkey with a roulette table for guests, inviting everyone over to come and play. The information reaches the hotel representatives and one of the employees writes an angry post about how false this information is. Today, land-based casinos legally operate in Northern Cyprus— for some reason they are not covered by Article 228 of the Turkish Criminal Code, which prohibits any gambling operations.
While online casinos in Turkey are outside the legal field, some foreign sites still accept Turkish players and use the common payment methods (credit cards, web-wallets and, of course, cryptocurrency) to pay them. However, the vast majority of online platforms can recognize the player’s location and ban him from entering the site. Every once in a while there are reports that Turkish parliament is ready to make changes to the gambling law because of the Turkey’s popularity among international tourists, but nothing has been done so far. As long as fighting the coronavirus pandemic is the focus of the government’s attention, we shouldn’t expect the situation regarding the legalisation of online gambling and casinos to change. Still, it is only a matter of time before the Turkish government realises how much potential profit lies in gambling and decides to make it entirely legal.
