"The Turkish Government Unleashes Plans to Crack Down on Online Gambling"

Turkey is employing measures in an attempt to block from online gambling sites the growing number of their citizens who have been enjoying playing at these sites. A joint effort is being carried out by several major Turkish organizations including the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency, various state ministries, Internet service providers, universities, and various non-governmental organizations. They are joining together to eliminate the use of the gambling sites through blocking access to such sites, tracing credit card transactions and adding new taxes on gambling.

The sudden growth in the popularity of online gambling sites in that country has pressured officials to attempt to combat such sites. One of these attempts to fight illegal gambling is the imposition of legal sanctions on illegal gambling. An example of this is a new bill that is being introduced that is designed to reorganize the structure of the Turkish National Lottery Administration (MPI). Amendments have been added making MPI’s new structure responsible for overseeing virtual betting games as well as lotteries. Those caught breaking these new laws to be established by the MPI will be subject to fines and possible jail time. It will also be MPI’s responsibility to block access to illegal online gambling and betting sites. In addition to this, regular Internet sites will not be barred from advertising online gambling sites.

A method involving the tracking of credit card transactions is also being considered by Turkish officials as a method for tracking down Internet gamblers. Altogether Turkish citizens are known to spend about two million dollars gambling on the Internet, so tracking them through credit card transactions would not be difficult. Criminal sanctions could than be brought against those players who are caught. According to the banks however, a possible problem with this plan could be that it runs counter to the country’s laws.

The government is also considering the introduction of taxes on those using Internet gambling sites, which could also slow down their use by citizens. This would involve the addition of a kind of lottery tax by the bank on any online transactions.