Yesterday, I came across a very striking study by IPSOS. When the name is IPSOS, it is not a study you can simply set aside. These are figures provided by one of the world's most important market research companies. It is the latest field research conducted in June of this year. In this study, we are witnessing perhaps a radical shift in Turkey's social history for the first time.

Citizens of the Republic of Turkey over the age of 18 were asked the following question:

• "Have you ever consumed alcohol in your life?"

The responses were as follows:

• 52.6%: "Yes, I have."

This means one out of every two Turkish citizens over 18 has consumed an alcoholic beverage. But the most significant result is this:

Five years ago, the rate of people answering "Yes, I have" to this question was 40%. This indicates that in the last 5 years, the number of people stating they have consumed alcohol has increased by 10 percentage points.

• 27.5 Million People: Yes, 27.5 million people living in Turkey state that they have consumed alcohol.
• Five years ago, when the same question was asked, the number of people saying "Yes" was 19.7 million.

In other words, in the last 5 years, the number of people in Turkey who say they have consumed alcohol has increased by 8 million, surpassing the number of people who say "No, I haven't."

IPSOS also asked this important question:

• "Have you consumed alcohol in the last 3 months?"
• The number of people who consumed alcohol at least once in the last 3 months increased by 700,000.

• The rate of alcoholic beverage consumers in the population over 18 rose from 28% to 33% in the last 5 years.
• The number of regular alcoholic beverage consumers was 13.8 million five years ago. This year, it rose to 17.3 million.

After learning these striking figures from IPSOS, I wondered: What do Turks drink? How much do they drink? One of the two best sources to learn this from was Bahar Uçanlar, the General Manager of Diageo Turkey, and I met with her.

Diageo is the world's largest alcoholic beverage company, with an annual revenue of more than 20 billion dollars.

The number of senior Turkish executives within Diageo has increased significantly in recent years:

• Meltem Azbazdar was appointed as the Legal Director for the entire European region.
• Birsen Çevik Akgünlü serves as the Human Resources Director for Great Britain.
• Duygu Beypınar is the Business Development Manager at the Cameronbridge Distillery in Scotland.
• Özlem Yeşildere heads Finance and Digital Transformation at Diageo Brazil.
• Serkan Solmazer was appointed as the General Manager of Diageo Poland.

Our national drink is still Raki, but we should not be surprised if Whisky takes its place within a few years.

• 2020: Whisky 13,622,361 liters; Raki 30,379,327 liters
• 2024: Whisky 34,738,642 liters; Raki 39,832,627 liters

In the last 5 years, while Raki consumption increased by 31%, Whisky consumption showed an increase of 155%.

Conservative Friends, Rest Easy: We Are Definitely Not a Nation of Wine Drinkers

• Beer consumption has risen from 900 million liters to 1.2 billion liters per year.
• Wine lags significantly behind at 73 million liters per year.

• We consume 18 million liters of Vodka annually.
• Diageo Turkey has succeeded in producing the world's best-selling vodka brand (Smirnoff) in Turkey.

These two drinks are rising, especially among women. We consume 8 million liters of Gin and 2.5 million liters of Tequila annually.

In Turkey, 1.44% of the taxes collected by the state comes from alcoholic beverages. In 2024, the SCT (Special Consumption Tax) collected from alcohol was 104.9 billion TL. In 2025, this figure is expected to reach 170 billion TL.

When the Turkish public is asked, "Which countries would you like your country to resemble?", 70% answer "Western countries." The rate of those saying "I want it to resemble a Muslim country" is only 6%.

My sincere opinion is this: The state should never encourage alcohol consumption; in fact, it should combat it. However, you cannot prevent alcohol consumption through coercion, pressure on lifestyles, or bans. The best way to combat these is through freedom, education, justice, and compassion.

Would you like me to create a comparison table of the consumption growth rates for Raki versus Whisky to highlight the shift in preferences?