Gambling News - August 2005 Edition

"Government Wages War against Virtual Gambling"

Government of Turkey fighting online gambling.

Online gambling is not a new issue in Turkey. The online gambling issues have already come to the attention of the law and have been put on the agenda of parliament, causing deputies to ask for new regulation for lottery games in addition to gambling.

The United States is not the only country to declare that online gambling is illegal, even though it is the most newsworthy of all the countries to do so. Other countries have done so for other reasons. Turkey is one such country and, recently, has been making strenuous efforts to prevent its citizens from logging in and playing at online gambling sites. The government of Turkey has set up a team of specialists, consisting of members from both the ministry of the Treasury and the ministry of Justice, in order to accomplish this. However, the new Interior Ministry was unable to issue any legal directives against gambling sites since they are all ‘offshore’, located outside Turkey.

But this hasn’t stopped government authorities in Turkey from trying to shut down the sites and they are looking at ways for doing just that. One way includes addressing the numerous questions regarding online gambling in Turkey and the increase in the number of people visiting online gambling sites. Consequently, Ertugrul Yalcinbayir, Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy, submitted a motion asking those questions to the Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu . The motion read, "Thirty gambling sites are available for the Turkish people. What means do we, the government of Turkey have, to prevent our people from gambling? Does Turkey have the power to prevent online gambling? What kinds of precautions can be taken?" What is the economic size of online and other kinds of gambling in Turkey?

In response to the motion, Aksu said that the online gambling sites and lotteries are illegal and, therefore, subject to the legal measures that can be taken against them upon their detection. Aksu said that even though Turkey cannot do anything to close down the Internet gambling sites that operate from outside of Turkey, the government has requested that those sites not be made available to Turkey online.

The Interior Ministry has issued new directives to fight online gambling and is initiating new investigations into the problem as well.

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