Prohibition in Turkey

Book excerpt: "Despite the supposed Islamic prescriptions against alcohol, many Muslim-majority countries, including Turkey, have a complicated history with alcohol. Anatolia (the region of modern Turkey) was one of the world's earliest sites of alcohol production. After Muslim occupation and the creation of the Ottoman Empire in 1300, alcohol was still enjoyed by non-Muslims and many Muslims alike, especially as new spirits were eventually introduced from Europe. Taverns were popular places to gather and do business, and their guilds controlled many aspects of production and sales, even during periods where employees and patrons were looked down upon and culturally derided. Although there were many governmental attempts to control the sale and consumption of alcohol over the centuries, the prohibition movement did not gain a strong foothold until the early 20th century, roughly coinciding with the United States' own temperance movement and constitutional prohibition. Emine Evered traces the history of alcohol and attempts to control it through Turkish history before focusing on this period of prohibition. She examines both the religious and public-health rationales that strengthened the temperance movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the role that US Prohibition played in Turkey's own prohibition from 1920 to 1924 even as the Ottoman Empire ended and the modern Turkish republic was created"--