Turkish newspaper Zaman reported last weekend that the Turkish government will soon enforce online gambling laws, doling out punishments for Turkish poker players that have disobeyed the law and placed poker bets online. The exception to this ban on online gambling is of course made for those gambling on the countries own gambling website.

The article in the Zaman newspaper leads readers to believe that more than 4000 illegal poker players have already been identified. According to the news report the average online poker player in Turkey has played more than 12 poker games online. Much like the United States and state ran lotteries, Turkey wishes to keep other countries out of their gambling market. The Turkish IDDAA gambling firm is in fact partially owned by the state.

Online gamblers choosing to ignore warnings can be fined as much as 100 lira per game of online poker engaged in ( that's right around 85USD 59EUR or 42GBP). Since the investigation began Turkish gamblers have allegedly played a total of 46,000, there is no information available as to how that number was reached.

At this point, there is no talk of completely making online poker illegal in Turkey, only of regulating play to the states own website.


- 2007-12-23