By Timothy S. Donahue
Top Takeaways:
- Age verification: Türkiye considers e-systems to prevent tobacco sales to minors while protecting customers’ personal information.
- Privacy concerns: The proposal follows criticism of a plan to require buyers to provide their national ID numbers when purchasing cigarettes.
- Broader restrictions: Legislation would also address tobacco product visibility, smoking in public spaces and penalties for violations.
Türkiye wants to verify smokers’ ages without getting too personal.
Health Minister Kemal Memişoğlu said the government is considering privacy-protecting electronic age-verification systems as part of proposed legislation to prevent tobacco sales to minors, after criticism of plans to require cigarette buyers to provide their national identification numbers.
In an Oct. 11 statement on the social media platform NSosyal, Memişoğlu said the government was evaluating alternatives to verify purchasers’ ages without unnecessarily compromising their privacy.
“Rest assured, our priority is to prevent the sale of tobacco products to children under 18 through age verification and to protect them from the harmful effects of tobacco,” Memişoğlu said, according to Anadolu Agency.
“We are evaluating all options, including electronic systems that respect privacy, protect personal data and are easy to implement,” he said, adding that the proposed legislation was being developed with those considerations in mind.
The clarification followed comments Memişoğlu made on Oct. 10 during an interview with state broadcaster TRT Haber, when he announced plans to require customers to present their Turkish identification numbers when buying cigarettes.
“Our main goal is to prohibit the sale of cigarettes to people under a certain age,” Memişoğlu said, according to media. “The system will record the identity of each purchaser.”
The proposal drew criticism over personal privacy, including from presidential chief adviser Oktay Saral, who questioned whether requiring a national identification number to buy cigarettes was appropriate.
“We all know that smoking is harmful. However, asking a citizen for a Turkish Republic identity number to buy a pack of cigarettes should not be seen as an acceptable practice either,” Saral said, according to Turkish media reports.
Saral also warned that measures that raise privacy concerns should be reconsidered before implementation.
Memişoğlu subsequently acknowledged the objections, stating that the government was examining alternative verification methods while maintaining its objective of preventing sales to those under 18.
The age-verification proposal is part of a broader tobacco-control package that the government expects to submit to Parliament within several weeks. Memişoğlu said the legislation would aim to reduce the visibility of tobacco products, strengthen restrictions in certain public areas, and clarify penalties for violations.
“The most fundamental issue in preparing the law is eliminating the visibility of cigarettes and the perception that smoking is something normal,” he said during the TRT interview.
The government is also considering additional restrictions on schools, outdoor sports facilities, and indoor public spaces.
Rules governing smoking and nonsmoking areas in cafes and restaurants would be clarified to address what Memişoğlu described as inadequate protections for nonsmokers. He said existing arrangements sometimes leave nonsmokers in less desirable seating areas while exposing them to secondhand smoke.
The minister also cited the scale of Türkiye’s tobacco market, noting that approximately 8 billion packs of cigarettes were sold in 2025, generating an estimated US$20 billion to US$30 billion in revenue.
Memişoğlu claimed that Türkiye ranks second globally in smoking prevalence, though he did not identify the comparative dataset supporting that ranking. He said the government’s objective was to encourage smokers to quit voluntarily while reducing tobacco use, especially among younger people.
The minister also emphasized that nonsmokers have the right to clean air and said the government would continue to address smoking-related problems in public and social spaces. “Let us not forget, the fight against tobacco is all of our fight,” Memişoğlu said in his Oct. 11 statement.
No electronic age-verification system has been formally selected, and the government has neither published the final legislative language nor set an implementation date.
