Taskin Erduan thought he had gotten a good deal when he paid 15 euros for his three litres of vodka. But two glasses were enough to kill him.
"He arrived a little late one Saturday, saying he could no longer see," Erol Isik and his partner Belgin, the employers of the 51-year-old hairdresser who died in Istanbul at the end of January, told AFP.
As soon as he arrived, Taskin Erduan had to sit down, unable to hold a pair of scissors: "He told us that he saw everything white, so I made an appointment at a private hospital where I took him immediately," explains the boss.
The ophthalmologist immediately understood that it was a case of poisoning by adulterated alcohol, especially since fatal methanol poisonings have exploded since January in Turkey: at least 70 in Istanbul and 63 in Ankara, the capital, according to the local press which continues to update its figures.
At the hospital, Taskin Erduan explained that he had bought his vodka in a local grocery store, five times cheaper than in a supermarket, on the grounds that the alcohol came from Bulgaria.
Doctors gave him folic acid to try to mitigate the toxic effects of the methanol. “He was still perfectly conscious,” his boss recalled, her eyes reddening from upstairs in her living room.
The hairdresser was quickly placed in intensive care and intubated. “On the fourth day, we went to see him with his son. He was all yellow,” she confided. “That same evening, we received the news of his death.”
- " too late " -
"No one should die like this. The alcohol seemed perfectly legal, with the packaging and the brand, when in fact it came from a sweatshop," fumes Erol Isik.
"Taskin was not someone who drank to get drunk, he was not an alcoholic," he repeats.
In his laboratory, Professor Ahmet Aydin, head of the toxicology department at Istanbul's Yeditepe University, confirms that "a glass of fake vodka made from methyl alcohol can be fatal."
The difference between ethanol, found in spirits, and methanol, used as a solvent in varnishes and paints, is only visible in the laboratory, he explains in front of test tubes containing the two alcohols. "By taste, sight and smell, no one can tell them apart."
"The biggest danger of methanol poisoning is that you don't feel the effects right away. They don't show up for six hours. If the person goes to the hospital right away, they have a chance of getting through it," he continues. Otherwise, it can quickly "be too late."
"People really need to be careful," he warns, explaining that the purchase of methanol is less regulated than that of ethanol.
"But who would drink alcohol without a label?" he asks, referring to men who died in January in Istanbul after buying small bottles of water filled with alcohol in a Turkmen restaurant.
– “ready to do anything for money” –
Like the main opposition party, which denounces a "public health problem", Özgür Aybas, head of the Turkish association of alcohol retailers, places the blame on the Islamic-conservative government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a devout Muslim opposed to alcohol consumption.
"Nowhere else in the world is there such a tax on alcohol," says Mr. Aybas, estimating that given the prices in stores - around 35 euros per liter of raki, the traditional aniseed alcohol - "people are forced to turn to contraband alcohol."
In front of the Istanbul grocery store with the blue sign where Taskin Erduan had stocked up, now closed by the authorities, a neighbor also points the finger at the taxes.
"Alcohol is too expensive in Turkey. A one-litre bottle costs 100 pounds (2.60 euros) to produce but with taxes it costs 1,200 pounds (32 euros)", or twelve hours of work at minimum wage, fumes the man who only wishes to give his first name, Levent.
The local resident, bundled up in his raincoat, claims to have known the owner of the grocery store for a long time, "a good guy", and says he suspects an employee of having sold the adulterated alcohol. With the economic crisis, he says, "I'm not surprised by anything anymore".
"People are ready to do anything for money. They have no honor anymore."
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