Turkey toll from tainted alcohol rises to 19 dead in 48 hours

Nineteen people who drank tainted alcohol in Istanbul have died in the past 48 hours, with dozens more being treated for poisoning, the Anadolu news agency reported Wednesday.The figure raised a toll given late Tuesday of 11 dead in 24 hours, Anadolu said.A total of 65 people were affected, with 43 people still being treated in hospital and three others discharged.Among them were 26 foreign nationals, the agency said without saying if anyone had died.There was no immediate comment from the health ministry.”The death toll is rising,” wrote Istanbul governor Davut Gul on X late Tuesday, saying the “licences of 63 businesses selling counterfeit alcohol were canceled and they were closed”.One of those was a business posing as a restaurant that was selling counterfeit alcohol in water bottles for 30 lira ($0.85) each, the private NTV channel said.In 2024, 110 people fell ill after drinking tainted alcohol in Istanbul, of whom 48 died, the governor said.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 shot up as authorities crank up taxes on alcoholic drinks.The most commonly faked product is raki, Turkey’s aniseed-flavoured national liquor whose price has leapt to around 1,300 lira ($37.20) a liter in supermarkets.On January 1, Turkey’s minimum wage rose to 22,104 lira ($600).Turkey’s authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been accused of trying to Islamize society in the officially secular state, has often criticized the consumption of alcohol and tobacco.