11 dead after drinking tainted alcohol in Istanbul

Eleven people who drank tainted alcohol in Istanbul have died in the past 24 hours, the Anadolu state news agency reported late Tuesday.

“Thirty eight people, including 26 foreign nationals, were admitted to various hospitals in the city after consuming tainted alcohol. Eleven of them who received hospital treatment in the last 24 hours died,” it said.

In 2024, a total of 110 fell ill after drinking tainted alcohol in Istanbul, of which 48 died, the Istanbul governorate said in a statement on X.

Alcohol tainted with methanol is thought to be the cause, methanol being a toxic substance that can be added to liquor to increase its potency but which can cause blindness, liver damage and death.

Poisonings from adulterated alcohol are quite common in Turkey, where private production has exploded as authorities crank up taxes on alcoholic drinks.

The most commonly faked product is raki, Turkey’s aniseed-flavoured national liquor whose price has shot up to around 1,300 lira ($37.20) a litre in supermarkets.

The minimum wage in Turkey is 17,000 lira ($489) a month.

Turkey’s authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been accused of trying to Islamise society in the officially secular state, has often criticised the consumption of alcohol and tobacco.