March 3, 2005

So far, twelve people have died of poisoning in the past three days, and Turkish authorities have strong reasons to fear much worse in the coming few days. Raki, a form of aniseed liquor, is Turkey's favorite alcoholic beverage and someone has been counterfeiting it in very large quantities.

Unfortunately, the counterfeit liquor has so much alcohol in it that it is clearly fatal to drink.

Despite police operations that have captured thousands of liters of counterfeit raki and resulted in several arrests, the worst may still be to come.

Turkey's ATV channel reported that someone stole hundreds of thousands of Yeni Raki brand holograms from a factory in Izmir last summer. The use of these holograms by counterfeiters makes it impossible to tell a real bottle from a fake one, so there is no quick end in sight to the nightmare.

The problem is all the worse because, in Turkey, raki is produced by a government monopoly under the Yeni Raki brand, sales of which have plummeted some 80 to 85 percent, according to informal polls by ATV. So, while the counterfeit raki body count piles up, Turkey's government is also losing millions of dollars a day.

ATV took the opportunity to point out that Turkey is a counterfeiter's paradise. Some of the counterfeiting -- e.g. that of CDs, books, and DVDs -- is a mere nuisance to corporations, but other activities (such as the counterfeiting of medicines) result in fatalities.

If Turkey used radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on raki bottles, there is good reason to believe that several Turks would have lived instead of died. RFID chips, as part of an overall supply chain infrastructure, make it possible to validate the origin of any item, in this case easily separating the genuine raki from the counterfeit.

This would also hold true in Turkey's pharmaceutical industry, which is also suffering from a plague of counterfeits (fortunately, in this case, it is easier for consumers to spot the fake medicines, which crumble easily when touched and whose containers are shoddy).

Unfortunately, there is little chance of Turkey adopting RFID use. The legal system does not allow for, say, the suing of retail stores that sell counterfeit raki, let alone the government (for allowing the Izmir theft to take place, and doing nothing to change holograms in the meantime), so there is little incentive for institutions to change.

Most Turks themselves are not aware of RFID and, even if they were, would not necessarily expect the best out of their government and corporations. As Turks are fond of telling you, "Burasi Turkiye," or, "This is Turkey," meaning that all kinds of neglect, cheating, and institutional failures are an expected reality that no one can easily change.

Source: Line 56