Law on the Prohibition of Alcoholic Beverages in Turkey (1920)
- Arda Tunca
- Oct 22
- 10 min read
The Intersection of Morality and Politics
Turkey of the 1920s experienced a process of reconstruction in the smallest areas of everyday life. The new state’s aim was not merely to achieve political independence but also to create a new model of human being. This model had to be industrious, moderate, disciplined, and above all, “moral.” The Law on the Prohibition of Alcoholic Beverages (Men-i Müskirat Kanunu) enacted on 14 September 1920 was a part of this transformation. On the one hand, it inherited the Islamic tradition of the Ottoman Empire. On the other, it declared the will of the newly emerging state to regulate society.
At first glance, the law appears to be a mere alcohol ban. In reality, however, it was the product of a political conception of morality that sought to regulate individual behavior, discipline public space, and place the body and desire under the supervision of the state.
The Emergence of the Law on the Prohibition of Alcoholic Beverages
The law, adopted by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey on 14 September 1920, opens with the following article:
“The production, sale, and consumption of alcoholic beverages are prohibited.”
This statement marked the beginning of a new era, both legally and symbolically. While modernization efforts since the Tanzimat period had focused mainly on administrative and military reforms, this pre-Republican act of the Assembly represented one of the first examples of the politicization of the social and moral spheres.
Proposed under the leadership of Kütahya deputy Besim Atalay, the law was closely linked to the moral needs of wartime. Under conditions in which a nation was fighting for survival, keeping the body and the mind pure was seen as a kind of “national moral mobilization.”
During the parliamentary debates, deputies described alcohol as an “enemy that weakens the national will.” Some speakers emphasized the religious basis of the ban by citing verses from the Qur’an, while others pointed to social problems such as loss of productivity, poverty, and domestic violence caused by drinking. In this respect, the law was not merely an imposition of faith but a project of social discipline.
The Disciplinary Society and the New Citizen
The law can be interpreted as an example of what Michel Foucault conceptualized as a disciplinary society. The state did not merely punish those who committed crimes. It shaped the body, habits, modes of consumption, and perceptions of pleasure of individuals.
In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), Michel Foucault scrutinizes the nature of modern power. According to Foucault, modern power is not merely a mechanism of punishment. Rather, it establishes a structure that governs individuals through observation, normalization, and the application of internalized discipline. The individual is not shaped solely by the law but becomes a subject who regulates his own behavior through inner surveillance. This form of power materializes in institutions such as schools, hospitals, and factories, where the processes of educating, observing, and normalizing the body constitute the pathways through which power spreads.
The law may be read as a biopolitical approach to power in Turkey. The state intervenes normatively in the body and desires of the individual. Alcohol consumption becomes not merely a personal preference but a national and disciplinary public matter. The person who drinks deviates from the model of the ideal citizen envisioned by the state. In other words, Foucault’s notion of the “invisibility of power” is at play: discipline does not appear as coercion but infiltrates through norms.
Discipline, unlike the law in its classical sense, does not apply direct pressure. Instead of punishing, it guides individuals’ behaviors through internalized norms. Power thus ceases to be an externally imposed force and becomes an invisible mechanism that enables individuals to monitor their own behavior. For this reason, the law is, of course, an instrument of coercion: it prohibits alcohol and imposes penalties. Yet, Foucault’s concept of the disciplinary society describes the behavioral patterns, moral judgments, and social surveillance that extend beyond the law itself.
Over time, people limit themselves not because they fear punishment but because they come to believe in what is “proper” or “right.” Power thus functions not through punishment but through the internalization of the norm. In Foucault’s words, this is the transformation of “invisible repression into visible obedience”:
“Discipline does not punish. It produces. It makes the body docile.” (Foucault, 1975, p. 138)
Therefore, discipline is not a space of freedom where legal coercion disappears, but a field of power where coercion changes form and becomes invisible. The law was not merely a prohibition. It represented a redefinition of the political economy of the body and morality. This new discipline was the forerunner of the modern citizen model—industrious, moderate, orderly, and secular—that would take shape by the late 1920s.
Atatürk’s Approach
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk adopted moderation in his personal life. He perceived alcohol not as a means of pleasure but as a cultural habit. Yet, in the public sphere, he took the concept of “measure” as a guiding principle in every field. In Atatürk’s intellectual world, morality was to be built not upon religious dogmas, but upon reason, science, and social utility. The decision to repeal the law in 1924 may be seen as influenced by this approach: a preference for producing morality through consciousness and education rather than through imposition.
For Atatürk, what mattered was not the forced prohibition of drinking but the individual’s conscious choice. This perspective was consistent with the philosophical foundation of the Republic’s secularization process. The state does not impose proper behavior upon its citizens, it shapes them through free will and knowledge. In practice, of course, the state’s moral guardianship did not completely disappear, and the disciplinary legacy continued in different forms.
From Religious Tradition to National Morality
In the Ottoman Empire, the ban on alcohol existed primarily as a religious norm. Yet, on the social level it was not always strictly enforced. Through the law, this prohibition was removed from its religious foundation and justified instead on the grounds of public welfare and national morality.
This transformation is one of the characteristic features of Republican modernization. The state transferred the source of morality from religion to itself. Morality became a component of public order. Realms of behavior were removed from the supervision of religion and placed under the oversight of the state.
The Economic Face of Moral Reform: The Monopolies Administration
The law remained in effect for about three years. When it was repealed in 1924, the alcohol ban was replaced by a completely opposite approach — the establishment of the Monopolies Administration (İnhisarlar İdaresi), later known as Tekel. Alcohol production and sale were turned into a state monopoly, thus transforming the state from a prohibitive to a regulatory economic actor.
This shift demonstrates that the new regime began to regulate morality not through prohibitions but through economic instruments. The Monopolies Administration became one of the early examples of the Republic’s paradigm that moved “from morality toward development.”
The Reverse Effect of Prohibition: The Rise of Alcohol Consumption
The prohibition between 1920 and 1924 did not reduce alcohol consumption. On the contrary, it increased illegal production and consumption. Records in the Proceedings of the Grand National Assembly (TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 1923, vol. 18) indicate that homemade rakı and wine production rose in many parts of Anatolia. It was noted that during the period, consumption did not decline. Instead, the quantity of alcoholic beverages produced through illicit means grew.
In parliamentary minutes, deputies openly stated that the ban could not be enforced. For example, during the session of 27 February 1923, the following remark appears:
“In the provinces, the prohibition of alcoholic beverages cannot be implemented. People are making rakı in their own homes.” (TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, Term 1, Vol. 18, pp. 145–146)
Moreover, historians such as Erik Jan Zürcher and Bernard Lewis, who have studied early Republican history, also emphasized the reverse effect of the prohibition. Zürcher underlined that the state’s moral intervention in the individual remained limited in practice, while Lewis observed that the enforcement of the alcohol ban clashed with the cultural habits of society.
The data confirm the practical projection of Foucault’s theory: disciplinary power not only establishes norms but reshapes individual behavior through the reproduction of norms within the self. When prohibition fails formally, it can generate the opposite effect.
The years during which the law was enforced coincided with a period when alcohol was being debated worldwide in terms of morality and social order. At the same time, the United States experienced a similar prohibition process.
Under the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act (1919), the production, sale, and transportation of alcohol were prohibited between 1920 and 1933. The justification, as in Turkey, was the “protection of public morality” and the “reduction of crime.” However, the results were no different. In the United States, illegal alcohol production (bootlegging), mafia organizations, and clandestine bars (speakeasies) rapidly proliferated, and large segments of society violated the ban in practice. Ultimately, the law was repealed in 1933 with the Twenty-first Amendment.
This experience, like Turkey’s Men-i Müskirat Law, demonstrated that the pursuit of moral discipline by the state becomes unsustainable when it contradicts economic and social dynamics. Both examples reveal that the politics of morality and the control of behavior are constrained by public resistance.
Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar’s Ladies at the Tavern
Literature offers a rich source for observing the social reflections of moral reforms. Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar approached the transformation of social morality with a satirical, observant, and ironic style.
Ladies at the Tavern (Meyhanede Hanımlar), serialized in the newspaper Son Telgraf between 6 and 13 July 1924, vividly depicts the practical effects of the law. The novel’s plot in which women enter a tavern and drink alcohol in a public place challenges the moral codes of its time.
The novel showcases the power of individual desire, curiosity, and social change in the face of prohibitions. Through this work, Gürpınar reveals both the hypocrisy of male-dominated morality and the suppression of women’s desire for liberation. Ladies at the Tavern stands as a narrative of individual morality’s resistance to state-shaped morality.
The novel’s female characters are not accused of drinking per se, but of entering the public sphere traditionally reserved for men. Therefore, the issue is not merely alcohol, but the presence of women in public life. With keen observation, Gürpınar exposes the social anxieties behind such prohibitions, particularly the desire to control the female body, in a concise yet incisive story.
Although the moral prohibitions of the 1920s were short-lived, the state’s understanding of cultural discipline became long-lasting. The formation of the “proper” citizen gradually permeated all spheres of life from education policy to urban planning, from literature curricula to industrial incentives.
In this process, laws like the Men-i Müskirat can be read as attempts to construct the moral infrastructure of modernity. Yet, such initiatives strengthened not the individual’s freedom, but the moral tutelage of the state.
A Look at the Present
The approach of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) toward alcohol consumption also bears similarities to that of 1920. Some observations on alcohol consumption during the AKP period (post-2002) are as follows:
According to the 2022 Turkish Health Survey, the proportion of individuals who do not consume alcohol (those who have never drunk or no longer drink) rose from 85.1% in 2019 to 87.9% in 2022.
Certain media sources reported that in 2021, total alcoholic beverage consumption increased by 11%, reaching 1,122,593,148 liters.
Between 2004 and 2019, the production capacity of alcoholic beverages increased by approximately 42%.
While rakı consumption has declined, whisky consumption has increased. Over the past 20 years, rakı consumption has fallen by 5%, while whisky consumption has surged by 1,399%.
The data reveal that alcohol consumption during the AKP period has not shown a unidirectional increase but rather variable dynamics across different subcategories.
Since 2002, the AKP government has used alcohol policies not only as economic tools but also as instruments for reshaping moral and social norms.
In 2013, Law No. 6487 prohibited alcohol sales between 22:00 and 06:00, banned advertising, and forbade licenses for outlets within 100 meters of schools.
The concept of “regulatory paternalism” refers to the shaping of individual behavior by the state not through direct prohibition but through indirect guidance. This concept is an extension of the theory of “libertarian paternalism” developed by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler in the 2000s. According to Thaler and Sunstein, the modern state can formally preserve individual freedom, yet through instruments such as taxation, incentives, warning labels, time restrictions, or advertising bans, it can steer citizens toward what is considered “the right” choice.
Sarah Conly, on the other hand, defines this approach as “guidance without coercion” and argues that the modern form of paternalism has become less about prohibition and more about behavioral engineering.
In this context, the AKP-era restrictions on alcohol sales hours, high taxation, and advertising bans represent a form of “regulatory paternalism” that goes beyond Thaler and Sunstein’s model of “soft paternalism,” aiming instead to regulate moral norms. Although such policies are ostensibly justified on grounds of “public health” or “EU compliance,” in reality they function as disciplinary practices of power that redefine behavioral norms.
Between 2002 and 2023, alcohol taxes increased by 379%, giving Turkey one of the highest rates in Europe. Price pressure has fueled unregistered production.
In 2013, the then Prime Minister stated, “The state will take the necessary measures to protect young people from the habit of drinking,” thereby legitimizing these policies. From Foucault’s (1976) concept of biopolitics, this represents not an attempt to regulate health, but an attempt to regulate behavioral norms.
According to WHO data, total per capita alcohol consumption in Turkey (registered and unregistered) declined from 2.2 liters in 2010–2016 to 2.0 liters, while registered consumption dropped from 1.5 liters to 1.3 liters.
The AKP’s regulations, much like the early Republic’s prohibition on alcoholic beverages, reflect the state’s normative intervention into social behavior. Despite the measures taken, the outcomes reveal no significant change in overall consumption patterns.
Morality, the State, and a Conclusion
The Law on the Prohibition of Alcoholic Beverages (Men-i Müskirat Kanunu) is remembered in history books as an alcohol ban, yet it was, in essence, a manifesto of social engineering. During this period, morality ceased to be a matter of faith and became a politics of citizenship. The state sought to shape the nation by regulating individual behavior. It must be particularly emphasized that this period coincided with the extraordinary conditions of the War of Independence.
The law was enacted at a time when the nation was engaged in a struggle for existence. In this sense, the law aimed not only to regulate individual morality but also to strengthen collective resilience. The notion that “the body and the mind must be kept pure” while a nation was waging a war of liberation emerged as an understandable reflex under such extraordinary circumstances. Yet, even these conditions were not sufficient to break the strength of social habits.
Records from 1920–1924 show that during the period when the ban was in effect, alcohol production and consumption did not decrease. Instead, illegal production increased. Even in a time of extraordinary mobilization, state-imposed moral discipline could not transform social behavior.
Society is always more complex than the engineering of the state. Like Gürpınar’s women entering the tavern, the individual continually transcends the limits of official morality through desire, curiosity, and experience.
The Law on the Prohibition of Alcoholic Beverages (Men-i Müskirat Kanunu) is thus not merely a legislative artifact of the past, but a question that continues to confront modern Turkey: does the state shape morality, or does morality shape the state?