From: The National
Hunched over a polystyrene crate with a cup of coffee perched on it, the man, at first glance, appears to be enjoying his refreshment while watching the bustle of market life.
Then, someone approaches, the cup is swiftly removed and the lid lifted on the crate to reveal dozens of cigarette packs of various brands stuffed inside. An exchange of cash for tobacco takes place. This is Turkey’s illicit cigarette trade.
The illegal transaction in Istanbul’s Fatih market district is common in a country where the government is estimated to have lost about US$9.5 billion in tax revenue from cigarette smuggling in the past five years. Demand for black-market cigarettes has ballooned since the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in January 2010 increased the tobacco excise by 30 per cent. Mr Erdogan — who has labelled tobacco as more dangerous than terrorism — has raised the excise every year since. More than a quarter of Turkey’s 76.7 million people are believed to be smokers.
The tobacco industry says the sudden excise spike has hastened the popularity of cheap, often illegal, cigarettes, rather than dampened smoking. Illicit trade rose to 16.2 billion cigarettes last year from 3.9 billion in 2007.
From his cluttered office overlooking the comings and going on the Bosphorus, Mehmet Eryilmaz is on the front line of Turkey’s battle against illicit trade. Surrounded by stacks of dusty papers and black plastic bags filled with cigarettes, counterfeit and genuine, seized from Istanbul’s port, the senior Turkish customs officer estimates that he and his colleagues have seized about $2bn in contraband cigarettes in the past year.
