Rising taxes ferment home-made raki production in Turkey

For lovers of Turkey’s unofficial national drink, raki, years of tax hikes on their favourite tipple have been hard to swallow.

Faced with ever-climbing prices and restrictions on alcohol, many are turning to home-brewed booze and rekindling their love for the country’s most iconic liquor.

Since president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party swept to power in 2002, the Turkish government’s taxes and regulation of alcohol consumption have thrust alcohol prices to an all-time high, pushing the cost of popular drinks such as raki beyond what many Turks can afford.

Prices for a 70cl bottle of raki, an aniseed-flavoured drink native to Turkey, have surged nearly 500 per cent since 2004 to the equivalent of £17.80 – far outstripping the country’s consumer price index, which saw a 161.8 per cent increase over the same period.

The founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was a fan of raki, and although Turkey is a Muslim majority country it had a thriving drinking culture. Mr Erdogan’s Islam-oriented ruling party has voted in a series of laws targeting alcohol, winning praise from sociallyconservative supporters. But many consumers, angered by the government’s restrictions and taxes, have decided to abandon storebought alcohol altogether and brew their own raki instead.

“For 30 years as a chemist I’ve been teaching people, and in August [of 2014] I made my first [instructional] video and uploaded it to Youtube,” Cengiz Dev said.

Mr Dev’s Youtube channel – which has accrued more than 1.3 million views – is just one of dozens of similar Turkish videos sharing tips and tricks of brewing and mixing alcohol at home. A Turkish Facebook group devoted to home-made alcohol has amassed some 28,000 followers.

Mr Dev says that for just ten Turkish lira (about £2.05) he can produce a litre of raki in his kitchen. The two-week process involves fermenting a mix of sugar or fruit, water, lemon, salt and dried yeast before distilling the alcohol and adding aniseed oil and water. With a 200-litre fermentation drum, Mr Dev said he can produce 40 litres of pure alcohol, which yields about 80 bottles of raki that he says rival retail brands for taste.

Turkey’s government has introduced other anti-alcohol measures. In 2014 it banned the sale of alcohol after 10pm in corner shops and supermarkets, and prohibited adverts for alcohol in newspapers and on TV. By law, a health warning and the phrase “Alcohol is not your friend” is now printed on all alcohol bottles sold in Turkey.