ISTANBUL: With 38 people dead in four days and 26 in intensive care after drinking bootleg liquor in Istanbul, the politically charged debate over Turkiye’s soaring alcohol taxes has swung back into the spotlight.
The rising death toll made headlines in Turkiye, a nominally secular country where alcohol taxes have risen sharply under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a Muslim who vociferously opposes drinking.
Since Monday, 92 people have been hospitalized after drinking alcohol tainted with methanol, a toxic substance that can cause blindness, liver damage and death.
More than a third have died.
Some bought alcohol from a business posing as a Turkmen restaurant in Istanbul which was selling it in half-liter water bottles for 30 lira ($0.85) each, local media said.
By comparison, buying a liter bottle of raki, Turkiye’s anizeed-flavoured national liquor, from a supermarket costs around 1,300 lira ($37.20) in a country where the minimum wage recently rose to $600.
Such prices, which are higher than in the European Union and rising, are fueling the production of moonshine.
“We are losing at least 500 lives a year as a result of counterfeit alcohol. It’s a massacre, it’s mass murder and it’s caused by the taxes!” raged Mustafa Adiguzel, a lawmaker from the main opposition CHP party on Wednesday.
“We have to address the exorbitant prices of alcohol,” he told parliament, which is dominated by Erdogan’s Islamo-conservative AKP.
Erdogan, who has said nothing about the wave of deaths, quickly hit back, denouncing the CHP as the party “whose greatest promise it to make raki prices cheaper.”
Poisonings from adulterated alcohol are relatively common in Turkiye, where clandestine and private productions are widespread.
Cagin Tan Eroglu, who co-runs an organization that monitors public policies on alcohol, says the number of deaths “is gradually increasing” as a result of the tax hikes that take place every six months.
His organization relies on figures published in the media to count poisoning cases.
Last year, 48 people died in Istanbul after drinking tainted alcohol, the governor’s office said. Contacted by AFP, the health ministry did not give a national figure.
“The taxes allow the government to collect easy money while politically oppressing a certain lifestyle,” Eroglu said.
“But people are dying because of irresponsible policies that are obviously ideologically driven.”
The tax on raki, brought in when Erdogan’s AKP came to power in 2002, has jumped by more than 2,500 percent since 2010, a spectacular increase that cannot be explained by high inflation alone, which has forced up the price faster than wages.
“Nearly 70 percent of a bottle. This does not happen in any other country,” said Ozgur Aybas, head of the association representing so-called Tekel shops that sell alcohol.
Such is the situation in Turkiye that “today you could be served tainted alcohol in even the most high-end restaurants,” he said.
“The government’s bad policies are entirely to blame for the death of these people,” he told AFP, saying people who drink alcohol “are treated like second-class citizens.”
However such price hikes affect only a minority in Turkiye.
Although alcohol is more widely available in Turkiye than in most Muslim-majority nations, only 12.1 percent say they drink it.
And there is a marked difference between the sexes, with 18.4 percent of men drinking, compared with only 5.9 percent of women, Turkish Statistics Institute figures show.
The government has not reacted publicly to the recent wave of deaths in Istanbul, though several European nations have travel adviseries in place warning of the dangers of counterfeit alcohol in Turkiye.
“We keep increasing the price of alcohol and cigarettes ... but they don’t stop consuming,” Erdogan said in 2022. He has gone to great lengths to promote ayran, a yoghurt-based drink, as an alternative national tipple to raki.
Such remarks and regular diatribes against “drunks” has only served “to widen and exacerbate the sociocultural and political rifts that beset Turkiye,” said Emine Evered, a historian an author of a recent book on alcohol in Turkiye since the Ottoman Empire.
Following several arrests this week over the latest poisoning scandal, the Istanbul governorate said: “Those who cause death by producing or selling counterfeit alcohol are no different than terrorists.”
Bootleg liquor deaths revive debate on Turkiye alcohol tax
https://arab.news/z3tse
Bootleg liquor deaths revive debate on Turkiye alcohol tax
- Since Monday, 92 people have been hospitalized after drinking alcohol tainted with methanol
- More than a third have died
Israeli kibbutz says elderly hostage held in Gaza dead
- The kibbutz called on the Israeli government and world leaders “to continue acting with determination to bring back all the hostages, both the living and the dead, and not to allow painful stories like Shlomo’s to repeat themselves”
JERUSALEM: An elderly Israeli man taken hostage by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023, has been declared dead, a statement from his kibbutz said on Tuesday.
“With heavy hearts, we, the members of the kibbutz, received the news this morning about the murder of our dear friend, Shlomo Mansour, 86 years old, who was kidnapped from his home in Kibbutz Kissufim during the Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023,” the community said of the Iraqi-born Israeli.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Tuesday that the “decision to confirm his death was based on intelligence gathered in recent months.”
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a post on X that Mansour had been “murdered in captivity” by Hamas on October 7.
One of the founders of Kibbutz Kissufim, Mansour was kidnapped from a henhouse during Hamas’s attack on southern Israel.
His wife Mazal Mansour, with whom he lived for 60 years, managed to escape the attack. The couple have five children and 12 grandchildren.
The Israeli hostage forum said in a statement that Mansour, born in Baghdad, was a survivor of the Farhud pogrom — a 1941 attack on Iraq’s Jewish community — and immigrated to Israel with his family at 13.
“This is one of the most difficult days in the history of our kibbutz,” the community of Kissufim said in a statement.
“Shlomo was much more than a community member to us — he was a father, grandfather, a true friend and the beating heart of Kissufim.”
“Our hearts are broken that we couldn’t bring him back to us alive.”
The kibbutz called on the Israeli government and world leaders “to continue acting with determination to bring back all the hostages, both the living and the dead, and not to allow painful stories like Shlomo’s to repeat themselves.”
In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he and his wife, Sara, “share in the family’s deep mourning.”
“We will not rest and will not be silent until he is returned to a burial in Israel. We will continue to act with determination and without pause until we return all of our hostages — both the living and the fallen,” he said.
A fragile ceasefire reached last month between Hamas and Israel appeared strained on Tuesday, a day after Hamas threatened to postpone the release of Israeli hostages scheduled for Saturday.
On Monday, US President Donald Trump warned that “all hell” would break loose if every Israeli hostage is not released from Gaza within the coming days, a threat Hamas said “further complicates matters.”
The war in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas attack, the deadliest in Israel’s history, which resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, of whom 73 remain in Gaza, including 35 that Israeli officials say are dead.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the war has killed at least 48,208 people in the territory, figures which the UN considers reliable.
Turkmenistan reaches deal with Turkiye to ship natural gas via Iran
- Turkiye imports gas via pipelines from Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran
ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan: Turkmenistan has struck a deal to ship natural gas to Turkiye via Iran, a government daily reported Tuesday.
The official daily Neutral Tyrkmenistan said that Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, the chairman of the country’s People’s Council, welcomed the deal in a phone call with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Berdymukhamedov said it was a major development in the regional energy cooperation.
Gas supplies under the contract that was signed between the state-run Turkmengas company and Turkiye’s state-owned BOTAS will begin on March 1.
“With this agreement, which we have been working on for many years, we will strengthen the natural gas supply security of our country and our region, while furthering the strategic cooperation between the two countries,” Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said in a statement.
Turkiye imports gas via pipelines from Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran.
Last year, Turkmenistan signed a contract with Iran for 10 billion cubic meters (353 billion cubic feet) of natural gas to be shipped on to Iraq.
The ex-Soviet Central Asian country relies heavily on the export of its vast natural gas reserves. China is the nation’s main customer for gas and Turkmenistan also is working on a pipeline to supply gas to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
Jordan to take sick Gaza kids as Trump pushes takeover plan
- Jordan would take in some 2,000 sick children from war-torn Gaza
- US president called it a 'beautiful gesture' and said he didn’t know about it before the Jordanian monarch’s arrival at the White House
WASHINGTON: Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Tuesday told Donald Trump that his country would take in some 2,000 sick children from war-torn Gaza, as the US president pushed his plan to take over the territory and push out Palestinians.
Speaking at the White House, King Abdullah added that Egypt would present a proposal on how countries in the region could “work” with Trump on the plan, despite Arab nations and the Palestinians having rejected it outright.
“I think one of the things that we can do right away is take 2,000 children, cancer children who are in a very ill state, that is possible,” King Abdullah said as Trump welcomed him and Crown Prince Hussein in the Oval Office.
Trump called it a “beautiful gesture” and said he didn’t know about it before the Jordanian monarch’s arrival at the White House.
The US president meanwhile backed down on a suggestion that he could withhold aid for Jordan and Egypt if they refused to take in more than two million Palestinians from Gaza.
“I think we’ll do something. I don’t have to threaten that, I do believe we’re above that,” Trump said.
Trump stunned the world when he announced a proposal last week for the United States to “take over” Gaza, envisioning rebuilding the devastated territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East” — but only after resettling Palestinians elsewhere, with no plan for them ever to return.
Jordan’s King Abdullah was repeatedly pressed by reporters on whether he supported the plan, but said only that Egypt was coming up with a response and that Arab nations would then discuss it at talks in Riyadh.
“The president is looking at Egypt coming to present that plan... (then) we will be in Saudi Arabia to discuss how we should work with the president and with the United States,” King Abdullah said.
“The point is, how do we make this work in a way that is good for everybody," he added.
UN experts warn Trump Gaza plan would return world to ‘dark days of colonial conquest’
- Call for US to facilitate permanent ceasefire, resume UNRWA funding, and compensate Palestinians for damage caused by US weapons
- US should pressure Israel to pay for reconstruction and reparations, hold perpetrators of atrocities accountable, and support Palestinian statehood, experts say
NEW YORK: A group of more than 30 independent UN experts on Tuesday denounced threats by US President Donald Trump to “take over” and “own” Gaza, warning that such a move would usher in a new era of “predatory lawlessness.”
Referring to Trump’s suggestion that Gaza’s Palestinian population could be relocated through the use of military force if required, the experts said: “Such blatant violations by a major power would break the global taboo on military aggression and embolden other predatory countries to seize foreign territories, with devastating consequences for peace and human rights globally.”
They added that implementing the US proposal would “shatter the most fundamental rules of the international order and the United Nations Charter since 1945, which the US was instrumental in creating to restore peace after the catastrophic Second World War and Holocaust.
“It would return the world to the dark days of colonial conquest.”
The experts underscored that it was clearly unlawful to invade and seize foreign land by force; to forcibly expel inhabitants; and to deny the Palestinian people their fundamental right to self-determination, which includes keeping Gaza as part of a sovereign Palestinian state.
“Such violations would replace the international rule of law and the stability it brings with the lawless ‘rule of the strongest’.”
The experts include Ben Saul, the special rapporteur on the promotion of human rights while countering terrorism; Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian territories, and George Katrougalos, an independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order.
They said that just as more than 50 years of Israeli occupation of Palestine had failed to bring peace or security to either Israel or Palestine, a US occupation would have the same disastrous outcome, driving endless war, death, and destruction.
The mass deportation of civilians from occupied territories was classified as a war crime under the 1949 Geneva Conventions following the Second World War to prevent the repetition of actions such as Nazi Germany’s forced expulsion of populations from European nations.
“The US proposal would accelerate forced displacement of Palestinians from their lands, which began in the 1947-48 Nakba, and has since included home demolitions, evictions, destruction and theft of natural resources and the criminal building of illegal Israeli colonial settlements,” the experts warned.
During his previous term, Trump unlawfully acknowledged Israel’s illegal annexations of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, actions that have been condemned by the International Court of Justice, the UN General Assembly, the Security Council, and a vast majority of countries.
“If the US president is genuinely concerned for the welfare of Palestinians, the US should broker a lasting ceasefire, resume funding to UNRWA, compensate Palestinians for damage resulting from US weapons and munitions supplied to Israel despite the serious risk of violations of humanitarian law, and end arms transfers. It should also pressure Israel to fund reconstruction and provide reparation for violations, pursue accountability for perpetrators of international crimes, and meaningfully support Palestinian statehood,” they said.
The experts said that if the US president truly cares about the well-being of Palestinians, the US should facilitate a lasting ceasefire, resume funding to UNRWA, compensate Palestinians for the damage caused by US weapons and munitions provided to Israel despite the significant risk of humanitarian law violations, and halt arms transfers.
They added that the US should also urge Israel to finance reconstruction, offer reparations for violations, seek accountability for those responsible for international crimes, and genuinely support Palestinian statehood.
Israeli military action in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of over 48,100 Palestinians and left 110,000 injured, mostly women and children. The attacks have rendered 85 percent of the population, roughly 1.9 million people, homeless, and without access to sufficient food, water, and other basic needs. They have also severely damaged or destroyed most homes, agricultural land, public infrastructure, and caused extensive environmental harm.
Kuwait sends 22nd relief plane to Syria
- Kuwaiti air bridge to deliver aid to Damascus beyond the month of Ramadan
- 10 tons of food aid brings total relief supply to 591 tons
LONDON: The 22nd Kuwaiti relief plane arrived at Damascus International Airport, delivering essential aid to Syria as part of Kuwaiti efforts to alleviate the Syrian crisis.
An air force plane delivered 10 tons of food aid, which was organized by the Kuwait Red Crescent Society in cooperation with the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense, the Kuwait News Agency reported late on Monday.
The Kuwait Red Crescent is working with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to deliver food and shelter materials as part of an air bridge planned to operate between Kuwait and Syria beyond the month of Ramadan, which starts in March.
Kuwaiti aid provided to Syria through the air bridge has reached 591 tons of various relief supplies, the KUNA added.
