Light Up a Cigarette in Istanbul
Published on April 29, 2009 4:49 AM
Every country has its legislations and rules. For example, in Istanbul, smokers can stop a taxi for to light a cigarette.
In Turkey, people smoke as if they’re living in a Godard film. At the snack bars, they smoke through dinner, eat mezes and drink raki with one hand and smoke cigarette with the other. Turks will not follow the footsteps of New Yorkers, Parisians, and the entire bar-loving nation of Ireland and wait a smoking ban, never. According to Elif Dağlı, head of the National Coalition on Tobacco and Health, 22 million Turks smoke in this country of 72 million, spending $20 billion annually on tobacco. They rack up $30 billion in health-care costs. But 100,000 of them die each year of smoking-related illnesses.
The smokers all over the world worried about their bad habit. For example, New Yorkers worried that a smoking ban would impede American binge drinking, and Parisians fretted that it would conquer French café society. Turks fear the ban will destroy vital mainstays of the Turkish community—especially, the water-pipe cafés and the teahouses.
In Turkey the smoking ban for the first time was in effect since May 2008. Smoking was prohibited only in taxis, malls, offices, and in the beloved Bosporus passages.
So, even cabdrivers began supplying customers with ashtrays so they could duck behind the seats and smoke out of sight. Aggrieved office workers puffed furtively out their windows. But on July 19th, however, every enclosed establishment must ban all tobacco products or face 5,000-lira fines (about $2,800). This means that nargile cafés with no outdoor seating will likely shut down and the tourist attraction will be decreased too.
Hundreds of teahouses, suffering from rising utility costs and the innumerable effects of the global financial bankruptcy, have already closed in the past few months. Smokers from Turkey can’t accept the new legislation, they said: "We can understand banning cigarettes, but this is a water-pipe garden. This is in our culture.
Researchers asked them if they think that the smoking ban will work in Turkey. "Of course," replied a smoker. Then he sat down and light up a cigarette.
