Turkish Smokers Punished

From today Turkey falls into line with the EU and extends its ban on smoking to bars and restaurants , previously it had applied to offices, public transport and shopping malls. predictably bar owners are up in arms because of anticipated loss of revenue, and they are right to be so, Turkey  is known as a smoking nation with a high percentage of smokers, other Country’s that have put the ban in place have seen business’s fold because of the ban notably in England where even now pubs are closing at a rate of up to 5 a day.  Turkey hope to join the European union and would need to sign up to the smoking ban then anyway, but I fear a more sinister reason, Prime Minister Recip Erdogan a pious Muslim does not smoke and discourages smoking around him, none of his Ministers smoke, he even goes as far as taking cigarettes of staff and making them promise to stop, this new legislation dovetails nicely with Islam’s distaste for drinking and smoking and  its feared this is his way of punishing establishments that serve alcohol.  An army of 4500 snoopers have been employed to enforce the ban in a country that is the fourth largest tobacco producer in the world, where 22 million people including half the adult population smoke.