That is bad news groovybaby. I found it more expensive than Greece when we were there (olu Deniz) in August so with the hike in prices again it will definitely be out of my range

Won't bother me, I'd still rather go back to Turkey than the likes of Spain, etc - all the more of it for me to enjoy, so ta ta to the rest!

It is possible that some people may holiday in Turkey for reasons other than the price of alcoholic drinks and so this may have little impact on them. If the additional tax is payable on all alcohol then surely all bars etc will have to "hike" their prices. If so people will either have to pay the higher price or go without - they would not be able to avoid your mates bar and find cheaper next door as they will have suffered the same increase in their costs.

Turkey has not gone down the pan because of this additional tax and nor will it. Turkey is still good value for money in my opinion and it's appeal has not gone away just because it is no longer "cheap as chips". If you can find cheaper holidays in Brazil, Mexico or the USA then go for it if price is all that matters.

As for Turkey putting up taxes well take a look at the UK. Higher taxes (income tax, VAT, national insurance etc) and spending cuts on top of that. It's not pleasant but necessary. We can hardly blame Turkey if it chooses to increase taxes of it's own.

I'm inclined to agree with the above post by taxman - we have no God given right to expect cheap holidays. Alcohol is not one of lifes essentials, enjoyable as it may be.

Countrys have to look after their own economys and their own people first and foremost.

Their poiliticians have to take the decisions that they feel are appropriate for their Country and their people, as ours do for us - for good or ill of the tourist Industry and tourists in general. Cheap holidays are a bonus if you can get them.

Somebody has to pay for roads, infrastructures, medical facilities, schools etc Tourists are the first to moan about lack of local facilities on their two weeks abroad whereas residence have to live and work with them for 52 weeks a year.

I for one wont stop going to Turkey because alcohol is more expensive. We don't drink that much, maybe one or two beers a day so it wont make much difference. However I know it willput people off, which is a shame really. The government should realise that tourism is a huge thing in Turkey and many tourists do want cheap drinks, putting the price up will deter people from going if that is what they are after.

Obvioulsy here are many people who go to Turkey because they loe the country but ther are eqaul numbers who go because it has alwasy been cheap. I hope tourism doens't suffer too much because of this.

for those wanting cheap drinks will have to look to other countries outside the eu
i.e Africa, India etc

I do not drink a great deal on holiday , but agree that it will have an impact. One of the reasons people stopped going to Spain Greece etc was due to the ever increasing price of food and drink.

What hacks me off more is the ridiculously high prices of soft drinks. GGGRRRRRRRR

Stewart

a holiday can be as cheap or expensive as you make it . i have been to greece twice rhodes and crete and turkey once hisaronu and to be perfectly honest with you greece was far more cheaper for food and drinks , i am going back to greece next year .

This topic has been covered many times,people will be put off turkey if the goverment are increasing alcohol tax,places such as icmeler have a hard core fan base who return year after year and in a lot of cases more than once a season,a family of four in the present economical climate will find it very hard to make the extra trips if the prices continue to rise.Alchohol is now cheaper in the uk in our local wine lodge / wetherspoons etc a bottle of wine is a mere £5 ,a pint £1.40 (granted this price chasnges at 9 pm to £2.70)and the wine is a lot more palletable than the paint stripper they favour in turkey( and i am no wine buff!!.)I can accept that the powers that be are hiking up alcohol prices i cant however accept that a soft drink is 5/7 lire in some establishments as it mostly comes out of bottles , from the nearest tansas/migros/kippa for around 1 lire!!A lot of bars ask their "friends"to bring alcohol over from duty free and then sell it in their bars at tourist prices sometimes back to their "friends" who provided it in the first place.Another downside to the cost of turkey is the tipping culture ,spain you pay as you go mostly and workers are on strutured wages,turks rely on tips all along the chain from the transfer drivers/maids /hotel staff/bar staff etc etc i have even seen a tip box on the counter of a local shop!!So yes the price hikes are inevitable turkey is a charming country but sadly i think that the cost of things now will maybe put a stop to thoose "cheeky weeks" I have enjoyed over the last few years and perhaps we will have to limit ourselves to just one two week trip!!We are not big drinkers really but we have often joked that it is cheaper to drink efes than soft drinks in a lot of places!!!

Sadly it's not just alcohol prices that have risen so much in Turkey. Food prices have also risen considerably especially meat. We usually visit Datca several times a year and have cut back on the number of trips to restaurants and bars preferring to eat and drink with friends at home. This year we visited Kas and Olu Deniz. Kas prices were fairly similar to Datca but Olu Deniz was so much more and we were astounded. There were not many Turkish holiday makers there, I would think they find the prices astronomical. 18 lira for the rental of a couple of sunbeds and a parasol was shocking. I told one of the restaurant managers that prices in general were more than where we usually visit and his reply was that they get a lot of English there and so they can charge those prices as English will pay it - hmmm.
I will still visit Turkey as my reasons for going were never just about money and we have a holiday home that we love but prices will mean we will enjoy eating and drinking at home more.

Hi JMK ,
Wife and i were in Olu Deniz end of September and it was the dearest place we have been in Turkey - as you say 18TL for 2 sunbeds and an umbrella -
We went AI to the Hotel Tropicana and when we saw the prices of food & drink in the resort we were glad we had.

Not my favourite place I'm afraid - stunning location but nothing Turkish about the place IMO.

Fethiye was nice and we spent a couple of days there - prices more realistic, more authentic and did not feel like we were beeing ripped off

Toffeemen

Hi Toffeeman, we must have been there at the same time. We just stayed there for two days after travelling around a bit and like you were so pleased we booked into a hotel with half board because the restaurants were so pricey. After a busy couple of weeks we loved lazing on the beach and the weather was fab but agree the town was not our cup of tea. During 17 years of visiting Turkey several times a year this was the first place we have been to which didn't seem Turkish at all. I was there about 12 years ago and it seemed so different now. All the signs were in English, we only ever heard English spoken and the prices were a shock. This year I have been to Bodrum, Turgutreis, Datca, Kas and the Bozburun peninsula. Nowhere was as expensive as Olu Deniz. The scenery is very beautiful there but there are many other beautiful places in Turkey and so I'll probably give this one a miss in future purely because of the high prices.

Kalkan and kas(cash as i have heard it called)have a reputation among some turks who work in the icmeler/marmaris region ,of being places where the streets are paved with gold as rumours circulating round are that they are full of "middle class"wealthy english types with lots of money and no "street sense" therefore giving them licence to sell goods at extortionate inflated prices!!Having visited the area twice myself i did notice that is was slightly more expensive than other areas but not significantly so.The rumours might i add have been spread by ex bar boys/waiters who have moved from marmaris/icmeler/turunc to work in the kalkan /kas area and we all know how some turks like to boast about how great their bars/beach/hotel/resort is the best in turkey and far better than the last bar/beach/hotel /resort they worked at/in so i take little notice and we are planning a trip there this summer for a few days.Friends of ours visited olu this summer and found the prices on a par with icmeler,the lagoon is always expensive i presume because its a nature reserve??.Marmaris still seems cheapish but some people are marmaris snobs and liken it to blackpool(i love blackpool lol)and i think it gets unfairly treated as it is far more turkish than icmeler or turunc which literally shut down in winter and are basically just tourist resorts,while marmaris still keeps going as a busy turkish town.I was in icmeler/marmaris two weeks ago and a chicken/pasta or pizza set three course menu was 15 lire in icmeler or 9 in marmaris which to be honest is very reasonable.

Well Kas was ok pricewise, similar in price to Datca really and at least it had a Turkish feel to it with traditional Turkish food available. There were plenty of little side street lokantas catering to the Turkish market and that is where I always find the best value. There was nothing particularly Turkish in Olu Deniz and it was most definately geared to the UK market. We certainly couldn't find any traditional Turkish food which can be delicious. We did have a couple of meals out and we felt the restaurants were catering mainly to the British taste. Lunch was in a cafe near the beach and was a very dreary affair. Our last meal was in a restaurant on the main drag and was a piece of dryish chicken with salad and chips costing about 18 lira for just that one course. We were not impressed. If prices rises are to hit next year, what is already quite expensive for very ordinary food will become rediculous. I hope travellers will become a little more adventurous and try the out of the way resorts where Turkish people take their holidays as that is where they will get better value.

Is there no public outcry against this level of taxation from people in Turkey?

It looks as though it is actually going to be more expensive to buy drinks in Turkey than in the UK, which is insane when you consider the relative average earnings. Aside from rocketing prices putting off many tourists from returning, presumably buying a beer is going to be something of a luxury for any Turk that isn't in a well paid job?

Religious politics via economics indeed...

Well of course once you get away from the coastline the majority of Turks are Muslim and as such shouldn't drink so it won't affect many.

Prices have risen over the whole of Turkey - not just in Oludeniz. It's probably more noticeable there, as it's always been one of the most expensive resorts in Turkey, and so the prices will seem very high. But Marmaris prices have risen too - it isn't exempt from the higher taxes imposed on alcohol.

JMK, the majority of Turks on the coastline are Muslim too. You'll also find that a large proportion of Turkish Muslims do indeed drink alcohol; hence their local drink, Raki. Not forgetting Efes and their local spirits and wines.

Of course, these higher taxes will mean higher prices for holidaymakers, and whilst some people don't drink alcohol (or are not meat-eaters) most people do enjoy a drink when on holiday, so of course it's going to have an effect on tourism. People need to remember, too, that restaurant/bar owners will spread the cost of the alcohol tax by simply increasing the cost of everything else, albeit by a small amount to make it less noticeable.

I think some people are still stuck in the notion that Turkey is cheap; well it was once - but it isn't now. And Oludeniz (from when I first visited in 2004) has always catered for the tourist - I don't remember ever seeing a Turkish restaurant there. However, there were some excellent restaurants there at one time; the White Dolphin (now moved) was fantastic, and the Secret Garden and Olive House were good little restaurants, even though they were not Turkish as such. To find real Turkish food you have to go into Fethiye Town, and when I lived there I had some fantastic meals in authentic Turkish restaurants - and they were inexpensive too. But your average holidaymaker probably wouldn't want to eat in those regularly; for one thing they have the expense and trouble of getting into Fethiye (which somewhat negates the cost-saving exercise) and some of the local restaurants are quite basic - not somewhere you'd particularly want to dine in when on holiday.

Idris Elba, that's how Kas should be pronounced in Turkish - Kash. I never found Kas to be extortionate at all. I think Kalkan is more expensive than Kas. Those rumours going around about middle-class, wealthy English types having lots of money and no street sense is total rubbish. In fact, it's often the case that the people who do have money spend it more carefully than those who don't! Wealthy people can be notoriously bad tippers, and they tend to study their bill meticulously to make sure they haven't been overcharged. So I'd say thay have a LOT of street sense.

Strawberry

JMK wrote:

Well of course once you get away from the coastline the majority of Turks are Muslim and as such shouldn't drink so it won't affect many.

They may very well be Muslim but an awful lot of Turks do drink alcohol, not just on the resorts either

I did say that with tongue in cheek lol. I know full well that many Turks especially along the coastline drink and many very heavily especially during the winter months when there is little to do. Go to any of the harbour towns during the winter and you will find many of the seasonal workers who live there all year constantly drunk. Many of them profess to be muslim but they do not truly follow the religion. My very wealthy professional neighbours have often said to me 'We say we are Muslim but we are not proper Muslims at all. We do not follow the teachings of the Koran and we do not pray.' I am very interested in learning about religion but many Turks I have asked about it tell me they are not believers. I think I read somewhere that they have muslim recorded on their birth certificates no matter what. Get away from the coastline and the big towns though and you will find people who are much more devout and often quite poor. They are the ones who do not drink and it will not affect them. I think it suits the present government to make alcohol less readily available. Making it so expensive may help although I think in some families the head of the household may still decide to spend the money on alcohol but I think that is a problem all over the world.
Prices have indeed risen steeply and I have noticed it most during the last 4 years. I mentioned Olu Deniz in particular as it was so much more noticeable than anywhere else. If next year they have to put prices up even more, I think the UK visitors they attract will start to vote with their feet and go elsewhere. I don't chose my holidays purely on cost and neither do we drink much so I will still visit Turkey but continue to go to smaller less commercialised resorts which don't rely so heavily on the British visitors. We have started to visit Egypt more often though and find it so much cheaper, just as interesting and offers good value for money. I think it could give Turkey a run for it's money in many ways.