Protest against drastic anti-smoking measures
Published on September 2, 2009 7:47 AM
Approximately 1.500 owners of coffee houses gathered in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, outside the Ministry of Public Health to protest against comprehensive smoking ban, which went into effect in July and deeply hurt businesses already hurt by economic downturn.
The desperate people urged the government to reconsider the ordinance to permit lighting up at least in some venues. Otherwise they claimed to vote against the ruling Turkish party AKP (Justice and Development Party) at the upcoming parliament elections.
"No smoking – no light-bulb," one poster said, referring to the party emblem.
Another poster read: "We don’t need a coffee house crisis; we already have the economic crisis."
According to reports, there are more than 150,000 coffee houses in Turkey, as these are the traditional venues for any village and district, where people can smoke, drink tea or coffee and play backgammon and chess.
The bar owners claim that bans hurt their businesses tremendously and demand government to permit puffing in specially designated areas of their venues.
Coffee House Association states that the amount of customers dropped by almost a quarter, forcing many establishments to close their doors. Almost 550 cafes have already become bankrupts in Istanbul, the largest Turkish city.
The legislation, backed by Turkey Prime Minister Erdogan, prohibited lighting up in all public places, including transport, educational venues and restaurants. It went into force on July 19.
Turkey is the 10th biggest tobacco market in the world, with almost 50 percent of all male population lighting up on a regular basis. On average each third Turk puffs.
Turkey applies every possible effort in order to join the European Union, so, the smoking ban was rather expected, since the majority of EU countries already implemented similar measures.
Any person caught on smoking in prohibited places would be subjected to a fine of almost $50, whereas coffee house owners would have to pay almost $4.000 for violation of the ban.
Yasin Uzun, owner of Oriental Coffee and Tea House complained that the government prevents them from earning their fair share of money and feeding their families, what is an essential problem, particularly when the number of tourist dropped significantly.
The Turkey lawmakers thought that the ban would help to reduce terrific smoking rates and curb nicotine addiction. However, they don’t have any consequences, except of negative: from economic to even human. Last week a coffee house owner was killed after having asked one of the customers to put down the cigarette.
