Republic of Türkiye
Türkiye runs a state monopoly on betting and prohibits everything outside it, which makes it one of the largest markets in Europe with no licensing route for private operators. Law No. 7258 is the principal statute, and its Article 5 criminalises organising or facilitating betting by internet or other digital means outside the state system, carrying custodial sentences and judicial fines. Casinos have been banned since the late 1990s. Legal betting is channelled through the state: Spor Toto operates sports betting under the İddaa brand, and the national lottery administration runs lottery products. Enforcement is dominated by domain blocking under Law No. 5651, at a scale few jurisdictions match, running to tens of thousands of sites a year. Player liability is a real feature of the Turkish regime rather than a theoretical one, which distinguishes it from most European markets where only the operator is exposed. Player liability changes how the market should be assessed, because demand is suppressed by exposure at the individual level rather than only by the difficulty of reaching a site. Blocking at this scale also means access is a continuous cost for offshore operators rather than a one-off obstacle.
Law No. 7258 on the Regulation of Bets and Games of Chance in Football and Other Sports Competitions
Law No. 5651 on Regulation of Publications on the Internet
Blocking volume keeps rising without changing the underlying market, which is the recurring pattern here. There is no live proposal to license private operators, so the question is enforcement intensity and payment-channel disruption rather than market opening.
Turkish prosecutors instructed 32 banks to freeze thousands of accounts at the moment the World Cup final kicked off, striking at the payment rails of an illegal betting market they estimate could handle as much as US$50 billion across the tournament.
Türkiye reported more than 84,000 illegal gambling sites for closure in 2025 and froze roughly 5.1 billion lira, approximately $131 million, in suspect funds, yet offshore hosting and resilient demand expose the limits of a prohibition-led strategy with no licensed alternative.
The Turkish Football Federation (TFF) has suspended 1,024 players across the country’s professional leagues for breaching regulations by betting on football
Republic of Türkiye
Bıçak Law Firm