Istanbul Hazily Heads Toward Smoking Ban
In this country that takes its smoking very seriously, a ban on lighting up indoors will take effect on July 19, a change that will surely please smoke-averse travelers.
But customers and business owners alike are unsure of how, or even whether, the no-smoking rules will be applied. Turkey remains a major producer of tobacco, cigarettes are relatively affordable, and cities like Istanbul are dotted with smoked-filled water-pipe cafes where young and old alike gather to puff scented smoke, play backgammon and catch up with friends.
Umit Unal, manager of the Parma Café in the American Bazaar section of the Tophane neighborhood in Istanbul, isn’t rushing to make any changes.
“Nothing is clear,” he said recently, as customers lounging on pink and purple bean-bag chairs inhaled fruit-flavored smoke from ornate glass water pipes. “I really don’t know what to do, or what to expect when the law goes into effect. I’m assuming that we’ll have to stop people from smoking inside, but for now, nobody has a plan.’’
Part of the problem is in the definition of “inside.” At Parma, one of several nargile cafes in a block-long stretch of them, people sit under striped awnings or in the open air, sipping tea and inhaling.
But what happens when the weather turns cold? Unal, himself a non-smoker, doesn’t know.
“I guess we’ll have to ban smoking indoors for sure,’’ he said. “It’s harmful to your health, but this is a tradition from Ottoman times. We’ll have to wait and see.’’
Turkey is joining more than a dozen countries, the most recent being its neighbor, Greece, in trying to ban smoking in bars and restaurants.
According to figures provided by the U.S.-based Global SmokeFree Partnership, compliance rates have generally been high at restaurants and bars under the effect of bans: 97 percent in New York City, 98.5 percent in Italy, 94 percent in Ireland, for example.
An initial phase of the Turkish law took hold on May 19, 2008, making it a crime to smoke on public transportation or in most public buildings. Phase two takes effect this month and covers restaurants, bars, night clubs and even kirathanes, old-fashioned, male-only coffee houses. The rules also call for designated smoking sections at places like sports arenas and in prisons.
Many in Istanbul are embracing the changes.
“The smoking ban is the only thing I support from this government,’’ a 30-year-old actor said as she read a newspaper at a cafe in the trendy Cihangir neighborhood. (She asked that her name not be published because she didn’t want her parents to learn that she used to be a smoker.)
“I saw how the ban works in New York, and I think people here will obey,” she said.
And while the ban’s affect on local businesses has yet to be seen, it may bode well for one non-smoker’s romantic life.
“I prefer a nonsmoking boyfriend,’’ the actor added. “It really affects the relationship. In Turkey, every man is smoking. Maybe it’s the symbol of machismo here.’’
Copyright © 2009 Globespotters
